The International Labour Organization as a domesticating arena: Argentinian trade unions and workers’ representations at the ILO in the first half of the twentieth century

Abstract

This chapter analyses the figures of Argentinian worker delegates at the International Labour Organization in the first half of the twentieth century. It presents worker delegates’ trajectories as part of different disputes: between ideological options in the Argentinian trade union movement, the state’s cooptation of trade union representative delegates, the international disputes of the trade union movement in a local frame, and even the dispute between the European and American trade unions and the Argentinian trade unions, seen as an imperialist imposition. This chapter also presents the Argentinian worker delegates’ disputes about the International Labour Organization’s objectives, such as the internationalisation of labour standards and regulations, and principles, such as the liberty and dignity or tripartite government, which was not exempt from anti-imperialist judgements and accusations about the ILO’s Eurocentrism.