This article aims to present the significant changes and continuities in the Welfare Regimes of Argentina and Uruguay at the beginning of this century, after the coming to power of governments characterized as progressive and which pretend to move away from neoliberal guidelines in the process of construction of public policy. With that purpose, it chooses a conceptual framework related to Historical Institutionalism, paying special attention to health and labor policies propelled by the new governments, and to the ways in which the labor movement has taken part in such processes.