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Sentencing the Social Question: Court-Made Labour Law in Cases of Occupational Accidents in Argentina, 1900–1915*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2009

LINE SCHJOLDEN
LINE SCHJOLDEN
Affiliation:
Line Schjolden is Associate Professor of Latin American History and Culture, University of Bergen, Norway. Email: line.schjolden@if.uib.no
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Abstract

This article shows how Argentine judges effectively came to make labour law when ruling in occupational accident cases between 1900 and 1915. During this period, in the absence of a specific occupational accident law, a number of Argentine workers who had been victims of occupational accidents sued their employers for damages according to the Civil Code. By reinterpreting the principles of the Civil Code in these cases, Argentine judges attempted to accommodate aspects of a new social and economic reality to an increasingly outdated legal framework. The article argues that, in doing so, these judges articulated their own solution to one of the central issues of the time: the ‘social question’. Furthermore, the article shows how the judiciary's particular solution to the social question effectively defined the kind of citizenship rights workers were able to claim in court.

Sentenciando a questão social: leis trabalhistas feitas nos tribunais em casos de acidentes de trabalho na argentina, 1900–1915

Síntese: Este artigo mostra como ao sentenciarem casos de acidentes no trabalho, juízes argentinos vieram efetivamente a criar leis trabalhistas entre 1900 e 1915. Na ausência de uma lei específica para acidentes de trabalho, um número de trabalhadores argentinos vítimas desses acidentes processaram seus empregadores por danos de acordo com o Código Civil vigente durante este período. Ao reinterpretar os princípios do Código Civil nesses processos, juízes argentinos tentaram acomodar aspectos de uma nova realidade social e econômica a uma estrutura legal cada vez mais defasada. O artigo argumenta que, ao fazê-lo, esses juízes articularam sua própria solução a uma das questões centrais da época: a “questão social”. Além disso, o artigo demonstra como a solução específica do judiciário para a questão social efetivamente definiu quais direitos da cidadania poderiam ser reivindicados por trabalhadores nos tribunais.

Palavras-chave: Argentina, questão social, lei trabalhista, juízes, jurisprudência, acidentes ocupacionais, lei e cidadania.

Sentenciando a la cuestión social: legislación laboral en los juzgados alrededor de casos de accidentes de trabajo en argentina, 1900–1915

Resumen: Este artículo muestra cómo los jueces argentinos efectivamente elaboraron la ley del trabajo cuando se ocupaban en casos de accidentes laborales entre 1900 y 1915. Durante este periodo, en ausencia de una ley de trabajo específica sobre accidentes en el trabajo, un grupo de trabajadores argentinos que habían sido víctimas de accidentes durante su trabajo demandaron a sus empleadores por daños de acuerdo al Código Civil. Al reinterpretar los principios de dicho Código para tales casos, los jueces argentinos intentaron acomodar aspectos de una nueva realidad social y económica a un cada vez más caduco marco legal. El material señala que, al hacerlo así, estos jueces articularon su propia solución a uno de los temas principales de ese tiempo: la “cuestión social”. Asimismo, el artículo muestra cómo la solución particular del poder judicial a la cuestión social efectivamente definió el tipo de derechos ciudadanos que los trabajadores pudieron utilizar para llevar adelante sus reclamos en la corte.

Palabras clave: Argentina, cuestión social, leyes laborales, jueces, jurisprudencia, accidentes laborales, ley y ciudadanía

Keywords

Argentinasocial questionlabour lawjudgesjurisprudenceoccupational accidentslaw and citizenship
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , February 2009 , pp. 91 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Cambridge University Press

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References

1 For a recent and innovative history of Argentine industrialisation, see Fernando Rocchi, Chimneys in the Desert: Industrialization in Argentina During the Export Boom Years, 1870–1930. (Stanford, California, 2006).

2 The term ‘occupational accident’ seems to most accurately represent the phenomenon that in Spanish is referred to as ‘accidente de trabajo’ whereas ‘industrial accident’ would not cover the range of accidents that occurred in the workplace in Argentina in the early twentieth century. In fact, according to the investigations of the National Labour Department, the occupational groups that suffered the highest number of occupational accidents were carriage drivers (carreros) and bricklayers (albañiles). For numbers from the city of Buenos Aires, see Boletín del Departamento Nacional del Trabajo (hereafter BDNT), no. 20 (31 July 1912), pp. 153–82.

3 Significant attention has been paid to these debates in the Argentine historical literature. See especially Eduardo Zimmermann, Los liberales reformistas: La cuestión social en la Argentina, 1890–1916. (Buenos Aires, 1995) and Juan Suriano (ed.), La cuestión social en la Argentina 1870–1943. (Buenos Aires, 2000). For the case of Chile, see James O. Morris, Elites, Intellectuals, and Consensus: A Study of the Social Question and the Industrial Relations System in Chile. (Ithaca, 1966). For an impressive account of how debates on the ‘social question’ and ‘social politics’ played themselves out in Europe and the United States, see Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age. (Cambridge MA and London, 1998).

4 Morris, Elites, Intellectuals, and Consensus, p. 78. Even this broad definition might be considered limited. Juan Suriano argues that, in Argentina, the term also referred to issues involving gender and ethnicity. See Juan Suriano, ‘Introducción: Una aproximación a la definición de la cuestión social en Argentina’, in Suriano (ed.), La cuestión social, p. 2.

5 Juan Suriano, ‘Introducción’, in Suriano (ed.), La cuestión social, pp. 2–3. All translations from Spanish are mine.

6 See John Henry Merryman, David S. Clark and John O. Haley, The Civil Law Tradition: Europe, Latin America, and East Asia (Charlottesville VA, 1994).

7 See Siri Gloppen, Roberto Gargarella and Elin Skaar (eds.), Democratization and the Judiciary: The Accountability Function of Courts in New Democracies (London, 2004); Matthew M. Taylor, Judging Policy: Courts and Policy Reform in Democratic Brazil (Stanford CA, 2008), and ‘Veto and Voice in the Courts: Policy Implications of Institutional Design in the Brazilian Judiciary’, in Comparative Politics, vol. 38, no. 3 (April 2006); Rachel Sieder, Line Schjolden and Alan Angell (eds.), The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America (New York, 2005); and Juan Manuel Palacio and Magdalena Candioti (eds.), Justicia, política y derechos en América Latina (Buenos Aires, 2007).

8 The term is taken from Ricardo Salvatore, Carlos Aguirre and Gilbert M. Joseph (eds.), Crime and Punishment in Latin America: Law and Society since Late Colonial Times (Durham NC, 2001).

9 For the first point see Osvaldo Bayer, La Patagonia Rebelde (Buenos Aires, 1992); Juan Suriano, Trabajadores, anarquismo y Estado represor: De la Ley de residencia a la Ley de defensa social (1902–1910) (Buenos Aires, 1988) and ‘El estado argentino frente a los trabajadores urbanos: Política social y represión, 1880–1916’, Anuario Escuela de Historia, Rosario, no. 14 (1989–90), pp. 109–36. The second has been persistent in much of the literature since David Rock published his Politics in Argentina 1890–1930: The Rise and Fall of Radicalism (Cambridge, 1975).

10 Zimmermann's focus on the legislative rather than the executive branch brought a fresh perspective to the debates about state-labour relations and showed that Argentine political elites sought other solutions to social conflict than just state repression.

11 The examples of this current in the historiography are abundant: Diego Abad de Santillán, La FORA: Ideología y trayectoria (Buenos Aires, 1971); Jacinto Oddone, Gremialismo proletario argentino: [Su orígen, su desarrollo, sus errores, su ocaso como movimiento democrático libre] (Buenos Aires, 1975); Sebastián Marotta, El movimiento sindical argentino: Su génesis y desarrollo (Buenos Aires, 1960); Iaácov Oved, El anarquismo y el movimiento obrero en Argentina (México, 1978); Alberto Pla, Socialismo y sindicalismo en los orígenes del movimiento obrero latinoamericano: México, Argentina (Puebla, 1985); Rubén Zorrilla, El liderazgo sindical argentino: Desde sus orígenes hasta 1975 (Buenos Aires, 1983); Julio Godio, El movimiento obrero argentino, 3 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1987–1989).

12 Labour unions did sometimes seek state mediation of labour conflict at the beginning of the twentieth century. See Korzeniewicz, Roberto P., ‘The Labour Movement and the State in Argentina, 1887–1907’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, vol. 8, no. 1 (1989), pp. 25–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Mirta Lobato, La vida en las fábricas: Trabajo, protesta y política en una comunidad obrera, Berisso, 1904–1970 (Buenos Aires, 2001).

14 Daniel James, Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine Working Class, 1946–1976 (Cambridge, 1988), p. 16.

15 This fact does not rest power from James's argument that the novelty and appeal of Perón with workers was rooted in his making the social dimension of citizenship a political concern. In other words, when Perón put the social dimension of citizenship on the political agenda, he framed it as rights that ought to be politically guaranteed for all workers. This was a very different kind of social citizenship from that which workers could invoke in the courtrooms at the beginning of the twentieth century.

16 Matthew B. Karush, Workers or Citizens: Democracy and Identity in Rosario, Argentina (1912–1930) (Albuquerque, 2002).

17 This term generally applies to the body of historical literature written mainly from the 1990s, which has focused on studying ‘the law’ in a wide sense as a system that both ‘shapes and is shaped by larger processes of political, social, economic, and cultural change’. Carlos Aguirre and Ricardo D. Salvatore, ‘Introduction: Writing the History of Law, Crime, and Punishment in Latin America’, in Salvatore, Aguirre and Joseph (eds.), Crime and Punishment in Latin America, pp. 1–2.

18 See, for example, Ricardo Salvatore and Carlos Aguirre (eds.), The Birth of the Penitentiary in Latin America, 1830–1940 (Austin, 1996); Robert Buffington and Carlos Aguirre (eds.), Reconstructing Criminality in Latin America (Wilmington, 2000), and the majority of the essays in Salvatore, Aguirre and Joseph (eds.), Crime and Punishment in Latin America. For a work that focuses specifically on Argentina, see Lila Caimari, Apenas un delincuente: Crimen, castigo y cultura en la Argentina, 1880–1955 (Buenos Aires, 2004).

19 Aguirre and Salvatore, ‘Introduction’, in Salvatore, Aguirre and Joseph (eds.), Crime and Punishment in Latin America, p. 14.

20 Jeremy Adelman, Republic of Capital: Buenos Aires and the Legal Transformation of the Atlantic World (Stanford, 1999).

21 Juan Manuel Palacio, La paz del trigo: Cultura legal y sociedad local en el desarrollo agropecuario pampeano, 1890–1945 (Buenos Aires, 2004). Palacio uses civil and commercial lawsuits to show how conflicts that arose in the insufficiently regulated wheat economy found resolution in the local courts. Because central elements of the wheat economy, such as credit, land tenancy and labour arrangements were either insufficiently or ineffectually legally regulated, a range of informal arrangements emerged between creditors and debtors, landlords and tenant farmers, employers and rural labourers. One of Palacio's main arguments, is that the myriad of conflicts that arose from these precarious arrangements found their peaceful resolution in the local Juzgados de Paz, thereby insuring the relatively smooth functioning of the wheat economy and preventing social conflict from assuming greater proportions that could possibly have resulted in large-scale rebellions.

22 The literature has amply documented how indigenous communities and women have used the courts to resolve conflict, both in the colonial and modern period. See Steve J. Stern, Peru's Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest: Huamanga to 1640 (Madison, 1982); Idem., The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power in Late Colonial Mexico (Chapel Hill, 1995); Sergio Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority: Challenges to Spanish Rule in Eighteenth-Century Southern Andes (Durham, 2003); Charles Cutter, The Legal Culture of Northern New Spain, 1700–1810 (Albuquerque, 1995); Arlene J. Díaz, Female Citizens, Patriarchs, and the Law in Venezuela, 1786–1904 (Lincoln and London, 2004); Christine Hünefeldt, Liberalism in the Bedroom: Quarrelling Spouses in Nineteenth-Century Lima (University Park, 2000).

23 Código Civil de la República Argentina (con las notas de Vélez Sarsfield) (Buenos Aires, 1939).

24 The terms are taken from Federico Figueroa, ‘La jurisprudencia nacional sobre accidentes del trabajo’, BDNT, no. 20 (31 July 1912), p. 35.

25 Gonzalo Figueroa Gacitúa, ‘La culpa en materia de accidentes del trabajo. Su estudio en el derecho argentino’, doctoral thesis, Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires – Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias Sociales, 1918, p. 40.

26 Figueroa, ‘La jurisprudencia nacional’, p. 38.

27 For a list of average salaries for various occupations in 1903, see BDNT, no. 5 (30 June 1908), pp. 245–51.

28 Sentence cited in Figueroa, ‘La jurisprudencia nacional’, p. 39.

29 Rafael Bielsa, La culpa en los accidentes del trabajo. Su estudio y crítica en la ley argentina (aspecto jurídico de la cuestión) (Buenos Aires, 1919), p. 43.

30 Sentence cited in Figueroa, ‘La jurisprudencia nacional’, pp. 39–40.

31 The sentence and its rationale is reproduced in its entirety in ibid., pp. 44–9.

32 Ibid., p. 44.

33 Ibid., p. 46.

34 Alejandro Ruzo, ‘Fundamentos jurídicos del riesgo profesional’, BDNT, no. 20 (31 July 1912), p. 17.

35 Ibid., pp. 37–8 (footnote) and Alejandro M. Unsain, ‘Principios generales de la legislación de accidentes’, BDNT, no. 20 (31 July 1912), pp. 21–31.

36 For a fairly recent example, see Julia Rodríguez, Civilizing Argentina: Science, Medicine, and the Modern State (Chapel Hill, 2006).

37 BDNT, no. 20 (31 July 1912).

38 Miguel Angel Garmendia, Jurisprudencia del trabajo: Exposición y crítica (Buenos Aires, 1918), p. 12.

39 For a treatment of the Labour Code bill and its reception, see Zimmermann, Los liberales reformistas, pp. 178–87.

40 Ibid., p. 91.

41 Ernesto Quesada, ‘La cuestión obrera y su estudio universitario’, BDNT, no. 1 (30 June 1907), p. 112.

42 Oscar Terán, Vida intelectual en el Buenos Aires fin-de-siglo (1880–1910): Derivas de la ‘cultura científica’ (Buenos Aires, 2000), p. 267. See especially Chapter IV.

43 For an analysis of the Anarchist movement in Argentina at the turn of the century, see Juan Suriano, Anarquistas: Cultura y política libertaria en Buenos Aires, 1890–1910 (Buenos Aires, 2001).

44 Garmendia, Jurisprudencia del trabajo, p. 29.

45 Figueroa, ‘Jurisprudencia nacional’, p. 40.

46 Ibid., pp. 41–2.

47 The sentence is published in its entirety in BDNT, no. 16 (31 March 1911), pp. 56–61. See also Figueroa, ‘Jurisprudencia nacional’, pp. 42–3.

48 BDNT, no. 16 (31 March 1911), p. 59.

49 Ibid., p. 61.

50 Published in its entirety in BDNT, no. 19 (31 Dec. 1911), pp. 817–23.

51 Ibid., p. 819.

52 The sentence is reproduced in its entirety in Garmendia, Jurisprudencia del trabajo, pp. 102–6.

53 Ibid., p. 105.

54 The sentence is partially reproduced in ibid., p. 33.

55 Ibid.

56 When using the term ‘contractual agreement’, I am not referring to a specific written labour contract between the worker and the employer. Rather, these were rights and obligations considered inherent to a labour contract sui generis, without the necessity of a written contract.

57 For an explanation of the doctrine of contractual fault, see Ruzo, ‘Fundamentos jurídicos del riesgo profesional’, pp. 14–15.

58 The doctrine of contractual fault was invoked in the sentence Aurelio Guevara v. Ferrocarril de Buenos Aires al Pacífico, not in the first instance, but in the federal court of appeals in the capital of Buenos Aires. The sentence was pronounced on 30 May 1916 and was thus posterior to the passing of the 1915 Occupational Accident Law. Since the accident itself had occurred before the law was passed, however, the lawsuit was filed for damages according to the principles of the Civil Code, due to the impossibility of invoking the new law retroactively. Even if the new law could not be applied in this case, it is interesting to note that the doctrine of contractual fault was invoked after the employer's responsibility had already been established by law according to the principle of occupational risk. In two different lawsuits against the same company, the first filed by Victoria Graint de Coch and the second by José Castiñeiras, the same court of appeals ratified the doctrine of contractual fault. The court of appeals pronounced their final decisions on 12 August 1916 and 29 March 1917, respectively. The doctrine was also invoked in Catalina Monreal de Lara de Hurtado v. Gobierno Nacional, sentenced in the federal court in the first instance in the capital of Buenos Aires on 5 November 1915 and in the court of appeals on 15 May 1916. The Supreme Court upheld the sentence on 30 November 1916. As is evident, all the sentences were posterior to the passing of the Occupational Accident Law. Garmendia, Jurisprudencia del trabajo, pp. 71–86.

59 Ley de Ferrocarriles Nacionales, Anales de Legislación Argentina (hereafter ALA) (1889–1919), pp. 239–48.

60 The sentence is cited and analysed in Garmendia, Jurisprudencia del trabajo, pp. 87–90.

61 The Reglamento de Ferrocarriles was the detailed specification of the Railroad Law's practical implementation.

62 Carlos F. Díaz Alejandro, Ensayos sobre la historia económica argentina (Avellaneda, Buenos Aires, 2002), p. 53.

63 ALA (1889–1919), p. 244.

64 Preceding the part cited above, Article 65 states: ‘It is the duty of the companies to assure that all their employees are diligent and competent. Their responsibility toward their passengers and cargadores for damages caused by faults of their employees extends to all acts executed by the latter in the performance of their duties.’ Ibid.

65 Garmendia, Jurisprudencia del trabajo, pp. 91–4.

66 Ibid., pp. 94–6.

67 Sentence reproduced in ibid., pp. 97–9.

68 Ibid., p. 97.

69 Ibid., p. 98.

70 Sentence published in BDNT, no. 17 (31 June 1911), pp. 281–92.

71 The Commercial Code's Article 156 established that principals of commercial establishments were responsible for all damages suffered by their employees (dependientes) while in their service.

72 The sentence is published in BDNT, no. 19 (31 December 1911), pp. 812–16.

73 Ibid., p. 812.

74 Ibid., p. 814.

75 Unfortunately, the sources do not contain information about the legal cost amounts in these lawsuits.

76 Ibid., pp. 817, 823.

77 BDNT, no. 16 (31 March 1911), pp. 56–60.

78 BDNT, no. 17 (30 June 1911), pp. 281–92.

79 Garmendia, Jurisprudencia del trabajo, pp. 65–9.

80 For a discussion of the ideas of José Nicolás Matienzo, as he expressed them in the Revista Argentina de Ciencias Políticas, see Eduardo Zimmermann, ‘José Nicolás Matienzo en la Revista Argentina de Ciencias Políticas: Los límites del reformismo liberal de comienzos de siglo’, in Darío Roldán (ed.), Crear la democracia: La Revista Argentina de Ciencias Políticas y el debate en torno de la República Verdadera (Buenos Aires, 2006), pp. 269–97.

81 Garmendia, Jurisprudencia del trabajo, pp. 84–6.

82 Ibid. See also pp. 107–8.

83 BDNT, no. 2 (30 September 1907), p. 160.

84 Ibid., p. 161.

85 BDNT, no. 17 (30 June 1911), p. 296.

86 BDNT, no. 33 (30 January 1916), pp. 236–7.

87 Ibid.

88 BDNT, no. 33 (30 January 1916), p. 240 bis (2). It is not clear why the trend declined, or if the numbers reflect inaccuracies in the statistics of the National Labour Department.

89 Garmendia, Jurisprudencia del trabajo, pp. 38–44.

90 Ibid., p. 44.

91 Alejandro Unsain, Accidentes del trabajo: Exposición y comentarios a la Ley N° 9688 y a sus decretos reglamentarios (Buenos Aires, 1917), pp. 237–8.

92 Garmendia, Jurisprudencia del trabajo, 31.