Cambios y continuidades en la historia de los trabajoadores industriales argentinos (1973-1983). Una aproximacion a traves del caso de Ford Motor Argentina.

This research aims to make a contribution to the history of Argentine workers from the experience of Ford Motor Company labourers in Argentina between the years 1973-1983. To investigate the changes and continuities that operated during this decade, main organization and struggle actions inside the factory and its relations with socio-economic and political context were reconstructed. For that purpose, in the first place, the creation of the body of delegates is reconstructed and also its intervention a few years before the coup d'état of 1976. The objects of analysis are the main workers’ demands, the way they channeled them and the fluctuations in the relation of the grassroots organizations with the national leadership of the guild. In the second place, the repressive policies implemented by labor and economic dictatorship with a direct impact on workers, the role of the automotive company as well as the resistance strategies deployed by workers during the period, its features and its limits and potential are reviewed. Finally, we reconstruct the situation of workers after radical transformation process operated by the dictatorship in the factory and its impact on the automotive industry, with special emphasis on the response of workers to company policies and new union strategies (SMATA).

In the present study different types of sources were analyzed. First, it was conducted a survey of the national press articles on the Argentine labor movement. Furthermore, it was carried an analysis of a set of testimonies and interviews with former delegates of Ford who were "detained-disappeared" in 1976. Finally, different kinds of documents were used. First, it should be pointed out the documentation available in the file of the Intelligence Directorate of the Province of Buenos Aires (DIPBA), the collective bargaining agreements between 1973 and 1975, among others. The news media, documentation and oral testimony were related and articulated in order to reconstruct this history.