Union training in post-dictatorship Argentina: ideological pluralism, unity and Latin American integration

Abstract

Democracy acted as a political opportunity to show initiatives –not sufficiently studied– aimed at encouraging discussion and training of workers in new contents and forms of organization. The objective of this work is to recover some union training projects that had the support of transnational networks, seeking to promote union democratization. Methodologically, the work is inscribed in the reflections about collective action forms of transnational activism, concentrating on one of themdeveloped during the exit of the dictatorship and the first years of democratic recovery. It also revolves around the concern about the reinsertion of leftist traditions in the face of the recovery of democracy and, in particular, the rethinking of the relationship with the trade union field by revolutionary Peronism. The dimensions worked refer to the specific actions developed by these networks. The hypothesis is that various ventures of sectors of the Peronist left would have converged with other more innovative initiatives such as the Trade Union Training Centers (CEFS) or the Latin American Workers' Central, based on common values. I conclude that although these experiences were neutralized during the 1980s, they achieved an effective concretion in the following decade.