Industrial relations models, anticommunism and antiperonism in the Argentinian and American trade union relations, 1940-1960

ANDRÉS STAGNARO

Ithaca, NY

Conferencia; ILR LR/ICL Workshop Series Spring 2022; 2022

School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University

Although the relations between the Argentinian and the major US trade union federations were never quite fluent –mostly because of the repetitive accusation of imperialism from the Argentinian labor leaders to the American counterpart-, from the middle of the 1930´s the common basis of fight against fascism allowed the convergence of both labor movements in different regional and international organizations. But the coup d´etat in 1943 in Argentina and the changes in the geopolitics as the War World II was getting near to the defeat of the Axis countries switched the political orientation of the labor movements. The fought against fascism was giving way to the fight against communism in the rise of the Cold War. This changes got the relation between the US and the Argentinian labor in an impasse. And the rise of Peronism as a dominant ideology of labor trade unionism linked with the changes that the Argentinian government stablished in the labor relations were another obstacle in the international project of the US labor movement –specially the AFL expansions into Latin American-. This tense and mostly conflictive relation between two of the most important labor movements in the continent ion a phase of strong internationalizations of the labor movement had long term impacts and eventually avoided the establishment of a strong continental organizations and and closed the possibility of success of Panamericanism as an organizing ideology among workers.