Abstract

"North American and Argentine Companies: Productive Articulations and Training Strategies: The Siam Di Tella and the Westinghouse (1935-1945)"

Sebastián Elisalde, University of Buenos Aires (sebaelisalde@hotmail.com)

Why the Siam company as a possible unit of analysis? Because this factory is still considered an icon and model of Argentine industries. It was created in 1910 as a society - founded by Torcuato Di Tella - with the aim of manufacturing bread kneading machines superior to those imported; The first one was patented under the name of Industrial Section Mechanical Mixers (Siam).
We can differentiate two stages in the process of applying technological innovations in the Siam company: the first extends from the creation of the Avellaneda business plant in 1929 to the completion of the first significant agreements with the Westinghouse corporation in 1940. And the second , from the forties to the late fifties, when new changes and transformations were introduced in the technological and productive organization. This stage is in which both companies share and exchange productive and training strategies, especially with contributions from the US firm to the Argentine company.
But above all, and this is the aspect that we are interested in highlighting, from the Siam there were multiple experiences of discipline and control over workers who were considered advanced compared to other factories of the same era.
Precisely on this aspect will deepen our work. To what extent are the reforms applied in the training field - for example in technical education and labor manufacturing reforms - by the Argentine firm related to proposals by the American firm? Why is it established that the so-called Rynders Plan signed by the two companies represented a productive and formative model, based on our managerialist policies of the time? What was the reaction of the workers' campuses to these reforms?