A History of Organized Labor in Uruguay and Paraguay

Robert J. Alexander

mar 2005 · Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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In this volume, Alexander sketches the history of organized labor in the countries of Uruguay and Paraguay. He covers such topics as the role of organized labor in the economics and politics of these two countries and their relations with the international labor movement. It is based on extensive personal contacts of the author with the labor movements over almost half a century. It may seem unusual at first to have both of these countries in one volume because there does not exist anywhere else in Latin America such historical political disparity between neighboring countries as that between Uruguay and Paraguay. However in spite of the political contrasts, there are certain similarities in the history of the labor movements of these two republics.

In both Uruguay and Paraguay, the earliest organizations to be founded by the workers were mutual benefit societies, rather than trade unions. But in both countries, trade unions which sought to protect their members against employers began to appear. By the early years of the 20th century, these unions began to demand that employers negotiate with them, and there were an increasing number of strikes, attempting to make these demands effective. There were soon efforts to bring together the various trade unions into broader local, national, and international labor organizations.

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Robert J. Alexander is Professor Emeritus of Economics and Political Science, Rutgers University. He was a member of John F. Kennedy's Task Force on Latin America where the Alliance for Progress was developed, and he is a former consultant to the American Federation of Labor and the AFL-CIO on Latin American and Caribbean organized labor. One of the country's most respected scholars of Latin American politics and economic affairs, Professor Alexander is the author or editor of forty-five earlier books, most of them focusing on Latin America and the Caribbean, including The Bolivian National Revolution, the first English-language study of that upheaval, and the history of labor and radical movements.