The General Workers' Union ( es, Unión General de Trabajadores; abbreviated UGT) was an Argentine national labor confederation from 1903 to 1909. It was founded in 1903 as a rival to the country's first national labor confederation, the

Argentine Workers' Federation The Argentine Regional Workers' Federation (Spanish: ''Federación Obrera Regional Argentina''; abbreviated FORA), founded in , was Argentina's first national labor confederation. It split into two wings in 1915, the larger of which merged into ...

(FOA), known as the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation (FORA) from 1905. Around this time, the FOA had become more openly anarchist, leading to tension between the socialist syndicalists and the anarchists in the federation. The UGT was thus founded by the former and it was more moderate than its predecessor. Unlike the FOA, it did not discourage participation in elections and encouraged its members to become Argentine citizens - as the majority of the Argentine working class at the time consisted of European

immigrants Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, a ...

who were thus disenfranchised. Nonetheless, it claimed that general strike "can be an effective means of struggle", but rejected starting it for "violent ends". This position became more radical in the following years as the relations between the syndicalists in the UGT and the

Socialist Party Socialist Party is the name of many different political parties around the world. All of these parties claim to uphold some form of socialism, though they may have very different interpretations of what "socialism" means. Statistically, most of t ...

became more strained, and in 1906 the UGT declared that the general strike was "an arm of struggle of superior effectiveness". The UGT had 7,500 members in 1904, membership peaked at 10,000 in 1906. Despite the two organizations' rivalry, there was a lot of cooperation between the FORA and the UGT. Together, they fought against the 1902 Residence Law, which allowed the expulsion of subversive aliens and collaborated on many strikes. On the local level, the cooperation was even more intense. During its last years of existence, the UGT was unable to gain members. Therefore, it merged with the more moderate syndicalists in the FORA in 1909, to form the Argentine Regional Workers' Confederation (CORA). Pg. 29 and Thompson 1990, pg. 170, 172.

References

{{Trade unions in Argentina 1903 establishments in Argentina Syndicalism National trade union centers of Argentina Organizations disestablished in 1909 Trade unions established in 1903