The constant and continuous voice of workers in Argentina

ATZENI, M.

Advances in Industrial and labour Relations

Emerald

Año: 2016 vol. 23 p. 1 - 18

0742-6186

In Argentina workers? voice has never been silenced. In a legislating system protecting workers and politically and legally empowering trade unions, these organisations have historically represented workers. Voice however it has never been limited to institutionalised and organisational forms. It has often exploded in informal ways out of workers? experiences of the precariousness of their labour processes and of the contradictions generated between this and formal voice and representation. But it has also emerged in novel forms, through the occupation of factories, roads and public places, in moment of deep economic crisis or among groups of informally employed workers. The paper attempts to trace this multiple forms of voice in the recent social history of Argentina using ethnographic research conducted by the author in recent years in the country. The case of Argentina certainly calls for a broader understanding of voice tied to the idea of this as a socially mediated process through which formal and informal channels of voice can be alternatively created, destroyed and recreated.