Legislación laboral y organización productiva. jornada de trabajo y descanso dominical en chile: 1901 - 1925

Abstract

This article attempts to analyze the claims for reduction of the working day and the establishment of the Sunday rest in a context inclined to improve conditions of employment. A main point is the suggestion that there was agreement, at the onset of a social policy in Chile, between the claim of the workers' organizations for reducing the working day and the entrepreneurs' need for establishing a new productive rationality in accordance with the new industrial organization. To this purpose, an analysis is made of the early social law drafted between 1906 and 1917 as well as of the bills of the 1919 Conservative Labor Law and of the 1921 Liberal Labor Law, a discussion of which addresses this sort of negotiation between the objective of improving the worker's condition and the delegitimization of practices long ingrained in the Chilean worker, such as inefficient production and absences from work.