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- Alberta Labour History Institute
- Archive of Social Democracy (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung)
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Uruguay
Uruguay is a Latin American country with a population of approximately 3,400,000 inhabitants and a continental area of 176,215 square kilometres. Influenced by massive overseas migration (mainly from Southern Europe and elsewhere), it built workers' associations of various ideologies during the last three decades of the 19th century. Official federations and trade union centres were then estabilshed in the 20th century.
From 1964 to 1966, the National Workers' Convention (CNT) was established: a unified trade union organization made up of Uruguayan workers of different classes. However, during the period of dictatorship in Uruguay from 1973 to 1985, left-wing parties, trade unions, and the CNT were severely repressed and illegalized. As such, workers and active core members established a new organization, the Plenario Intersindical de Trabajadores (PIT), on May 1, 1983. The collective PIT-CNT was then formed on May 1, 1984 as both organizations came together, raising the historic banners of trade unionism in Uruguay to the present day.
In 2018, the PIT-CNT created the Documentation Centre of the PIT-CIT. Preceded by many initiatives of the Founding Commission, this Centre has since worked to collect, organize, and preserve the heritage of trade unionism in Uruguay.
Major Unions in Uruguay
In the 20th century, Uruguayan unions worked tirelessly to preserve historical documents, collect oral records of the memories of trade unionists, establish projects of remembrance (of commemoration and of places of remembrance), and engage in the elaboration of histories of their respective unions. Some of these unions include:
- Sindicato Único Gastronómico y Hotelero del Uruguay (SUGHU)
- Sindicato de Artes Gráficas (1920)
- Sindicato Único de la Aguja (1920)
- Asociación de Empleados Bancarios (AEBU, 1942)
- Sindicato Único de la Construcción y Anexos (SUNCA, predecessors since 1936)
- Federación de Obreros de la Industria de la Carne y Afines Autónoma (FOICA-A, 1942, documentation in the hands of the Asociación de Jubilados y Pensionistas de la Industria Frigorífica y Afines, Ajupen-FOICA)
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