Federation of Chilean Workers (FOCH)

A Chilean labor union created in 1909, the Federation of Chilean Workers (Federación Obrera de Chile—FOCH) was originally a mutual-aid organization of railroad workers who contributed small sums monthly to provide members with medical assistance. Named FOCH in 1917, it was reorganized in 1919 into a confederation of skilled and unskilled workers who called for unions to operate the factories and who opposed capitalism. FOCH initially included socialists, anarchists, non-political Social Democrats, and even bourgeois Radicals as well as Communists. Eventually the Communist members purged the non-Communists from positions of leadership within the federation. By the mid-1920s, FOCH was identifying itself as part of the Communist Party and tending to recruit its members from among the nitrate and coal miners, with whom the Communists had made the most inroads. At its height, FOCH's membership may have numbered as many as 150,000. The federation eventually collapsed during the late 1920s as the result of government oppression, particularly during the Ibáñez period (1927–1931), and declining economic conditions in FOCH's most important constituencies, the nitrate mines.

See alsoLabor Movements .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alan Angell, Politics and the Labour Movement in Chile (1972), pp. 32-38.

Peter De Shazo, Urban Workers and Labor Unions in Chile, 1902–1927 (1983).

Additional Bibliography

Garcés, Mario, and Pedro Milos. FOCH, CTCH, CUT: Las centrales unitarias en la historia del sindicalismo chileno. Santiago: Educación y Comunicaciones Ltda., 1988.

Rojas Flores, Jorge. La Dictadura de Ibáñez y los sindicatos (1927–1931). Santiago: Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos, Centro de Investigaciones Diego Barros Arana, 1993.

                                          William F. Sater