Workers' Interunion Plenary-National Workers' Assembly

Uruguay's union confederation resulted from the merger of the names of the historical Convención Nacional de Trabajadores and the Plenario Intersindical de Trabajadores. The PIT came to public light through the demonstrations of 1 May 1983, and from then on was a fundamental force in the democratic movement, organizing demonstrations and general strikes that helped legitimize the opposition and erode the military regime. Toward the end of the regime in 1984, the PIT was renamed PIT-CNT, confirming its historical roots in the CNT, which had never been questioned. During the first democratic administration, it adopted a profile less radical than the one it had before 1973. While maintaining its radical rhetoric, it became highly conciliatory in practice.

See alsoLabor Movements .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Martin Weinstein, Uruguay: Democracy at the Crossroads (1988).

Fernando Filgueira, "El movimiento sindical en la encrucijada: Restauración y transformación democrática," in Revista Uruguaya de Ciencia Política, no. 4 (1991): 67-82.

Charles Gillespie, Negotiating Democracy (1991).

Additional Bibliography

Alexander, Robert Jackson, and Eldon M. Parker. A History of Organized Labor in Uruguay and Paraguay. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005.

Rodríguez, Roger, and Jorge Chagas. Del PIT al PIT-CNT: Réquiem para el movimiento sindical? Montevideo: Instituto de Formación e Invetigación Sindical: Centro de Apoyo y Asesoramiento Sindical, 1991.

                                     Fernando Filgueira