Union and Employer Resistance to a Government Sponsored Welfare Program: Argentina, 1923-24
Joel Horowitz
Department of History

St. Bonaventure University
St. Bonaventure, NY 14778
Jhorowitz@sbu.edu


The paper examines the attempt of the Radical government of Marcelo T. de Alvear to create a more comprehensive pension plan for many blue and white collar workers and the opposition that this created among many workers and employers. The pension legisla tion achieved something rare, agreement between employers and most unions. They both disliked the law. In 1924, waves of agitation and unrest erupted against the law, including a general strike/lockout, which prevented it from being fully implemented a nd severely limited its utility from the political perspective of the Radicals. A long-term impact of the unrest was to further weaken a declining labor movement. Undoubtedly, an unwillingness to create any large scale national welfare schemes also occ urred. The costs were too high. While the paper does not posit any overarching theories on the reasons for Argentina's inability to create a larger social welfare system, an important factor was that there was little organized political support for it in the period prior to the rise of Juan Perón. Key segments of the labor movement, especially Syndicalists but also at times Communists, disliked the idea for ideological reasons. Industrialists also opposed it. In a more immediate sense, the pap er discusses why the Radicals so badly misread the political climate. What did they hope to gain? What led to the overwhelming opposition? What was the end results of the opposition? Were the Radicals really so bad at reading the popular will, or did they have an understanding of the electorate that surpassed that of the opposition? Some of the primary points that the paper made was that the Radicals' motivation for introducing and supporting the legislation was primarily electoral and combined with the concept of obrerismo or the Radical perception that a special relationship existed between Yrigoyen and the workers. The Radicals kept supporting the legislation even after it became evident that a sizeable portion of the labor movement vehemently o pposed it. This demonstrates two factors. One is that the Radical-labor alliance was purely pragmatic and did not involve consultation. Also, the Radicals believed that continued support for the measure, despite the opposition, would help garner support. They may have been correct.
The movement against the pension plan also weakened and helped shape the labor movement. A number of unions suffered severe losses because of the general strike versus the pension plan. For example, the union hold on the port of Buenos Aires was broken, a nd with the defeat of the port workers the Syndicalists became much less important because they no longer controlled a strong union. The introduction and defeat of the Radical's proposed pension plan are a window to examine the Radical views of labor a nd social welfare issues. The conflict that the plan produced also helped shape the labor movement.

---

LANIC |