Fighting Unemployment in Twentieth-Century Chile

by Angela Vergara

Overview

In Fighting Unemployment in Twentieth-Century Chile, Ángela Vergara narrates the story of how industrial and mine workers, peasants and day laborers, as well as blue-collar and white-collar employees earned a living through periods of economic, political, and social instability in twentieth-century Chile. The Great Depression transformed how Chileans viewed work and welfare rights and how they related to public institutions. Influenced by global and regional debates, the state put modern agencies in place to count and assist the poor and expand their social and economic rights. Weaving together bottom-up and transnational approaches, Vergara underscores the limits of these policies and demonstrates how the benefits and protections of wage labor became central to people’s lives and culture, and how global economic recessions, political oppression, and abusive employers threatened their working-class culture. Fighting Unemployment in Twentieth-Century Chile contributes to understanding the profound inequality that permeates Chilean history through a detailed analysis of the relationship between welfare professionals and the unemployed, the interpretation of labor laws, and employers’ everyday attitudes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822946793
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	04/13/2021
Series:	Pitt Latin American Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Ángela Vergara is professor of history at California State University Los Angeles. She is the author of Copper Workers, International Business, and Domestic Politics in Cold War Chile and co-editor of Company Towns in the Americas.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 5

Part 1 Discovering Unemployment (1900s-1920s)

1 The Global Debate on Unemployment 23

2 Unemployment in Early Twentieth-Century Chile 37

Part 2 Experiencing Massive Unemployment (1930-1938)

3 Fighting Unemployment 53

4 Social Assistance and the Rationalization of Aid 75

5 Protecting Consumers 96

Part 3 The Road to Full Employment

6 Incomplete Reforms 117

7 Full Employment and Labor Rights during the Long 1960s 137

Epilogue. Unemployment, Dictatorship, and Neoliberalism 153

Notes 163

Bibliography 215

Index 237

Editorial Reviews

Ángela Vergara has written a compelling, well-researched account of unemployment’s human consequences and the Chilean state’s efforts to relieve the suffering caused by cyclical economic crises. . . . The book makes an important contribution to our understanding of the limits of Chilean social and economic rights and will be of great interest to social and labor historians of Latin America.” —Hispanic American Historical Review

“This volume by Vergara investigates the evolution and disintegration of unemployment laws, policies, and benefits in Chile from 1900 to 1989. The author’s extensive research illustrates the interplay of international and domestic, top-down and grassroots efforts to influence unemployment discourses and who unemployment assistance could cover.” —CHOICE

"Fighting Unemployment in Twentieth-Century Chile is a fascinating and richly documented history of the evolution of the concept of “unemployment” and the political struggle over its material consequences in Chile. Vergara makes a major contribution to Latin American economic and labor history." —Heidi Tinsman, Professor of History, University of California Irvine and author of Buying into the Regime: Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States

From the Publisher