Author: Victoria Basualdo
Co-Authors ⁄ Presenters: Larissa Correa
Workers and unions facing global economic and social change in the 1970s: transformations of productive relations, labor discipline, repressive policies and labor struggles in Latin America
Organizers (also panelists): Dr. Victoria Basualdo (FLACSO-CONICET, she will discuss the case of Argentina) and Dr. Larissa Rosa Correa (PUC Rio de Janeiro, she will discuss the case of Brasil). Additional panelists: Rodrigo Araya Gómez (Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano, Santiago de Chile, he will discuss the case of Chile), Sabrina Álvarez (Universidad de la República, Uruguay, she will discuss the case of Uruguay), Carlos Gómez Florentín (State University of New York, Stony Brook (USA), he will discuss the case of Paraguay).
This symposium aims at discussing the transformations experienced by workers and trade-unions from a time of industrial development, to another of neoliberal policies in Latin America. Each of the panelists will contribute to the analysis of the global structural changes of the 1970s, considering it a key moment of the attempts to challenge the role and strength of workers and their organizations in the region, also dramatically affecting the process of import substitution industrialization that had been developed during the previous decades. The presenters, each of whom will focus on a particular national case, building together five different national trajectories (Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay), will discuss the existing studies on the impacts of the dictatorships in the region on workers and trade-unions, specifically analying the changes in labor relations and labor rights. In all of these cases, the presenters will analyze the labor, economic and repressive policies developed both by the State and business elites, affecting the labor movement broadly conceived, that is, including registered and non-registered work, rural and urban, private and public, of all economic activities from the primary sector to the wide range of industrial activities and services. the symposium will therefore make a significant contribution towards a regional and international perspective to understand the global changes of the 1970s for labor, and the ways workers and trade-unions confronted these transformations.