Politization in Labor Conflict: Analyzing the Demands of Post-Authoritarian Chilean Strikes

By examining the demands of labor strikes in the private sector, this article claims that Chilean trade unions have experienced a politization process from the transition to democracy to our days (1990–2019). Assuming a Marxist perspective on the labor process, we propose operationalizing politization into three levels based on the nature of demands: (1) remunerative, (2) related to work conditions, and (3) related to the organization of the labor process. The study regards these three levels as a latent variable ranging from less to more control over the productive process, but, also, as a continuum ranging from more legal demands to more illegal demands according to Chilean labor regulation. The results show an increase of politized demands (i.e. more control and less legality) through the years. This case study sheds light on the consequences of a rigid and ineffective regulation and on the necessity to rethink politics in the workplace.

The Late-19th-Century Economy

The United States underwent massive economic change in the four decades following the end of the American Civil War in 1865. A vibrant industrial economy catapulted the nation to a world leader in mining and manufacturing; the agricultural sector overcame organizational and technological challenges to increase productivity; and the innovations in financial, accounting, and marketing methods laid the foundation for a powerful economy that would dominate the globe in the 20th century. The emergence of this economy, however, did not come without challenges. Workers in both the industrial and agricultural sectors offered an alternative path for the American economy in the form of labor strikes and populist reforms; their attempts to disrupt the growing concentration of wealth and power played out in both the polls and the factory floor. Movements that sought to regulate the growth of large industrial firms and railroads failed to produce much meaningful policy, even as they raised major critiques of the emerging economic order. In the end, a form of industrial capitalism emerged that used large corporate structures, relatively weak unions, and limited government interventions to build a dynamic, but unbalanced, economic order in the United States.

More Power to the People: Electricity Adoption, Technological Change, and Labor Conflict

Will technical change spur conflicts in the labor market? In this study, we examine electricity adoption in Sweden during the first decades of the twentieth century. Exploiting that proximity to hydropowered plants shaped the electricity network independently of previous local conditions, we estimate the impact of electricity on labor strikes. Our results indicate that electricity adoption preceded an increase in conflicts, but strikes were of an offensive nature and most common in sectors with increasing labor demand. This suggests that electrification provided workers with a stronger bargaining position from which they could voice their claims.

The Labor Strikes That Catalyzed the Revolution in Egypt

Nadine Naber accounts for the ways everyday life engagements with multiple structures of oppression underlined the conditions and the grievances that inspired the participation of many of the women in the Egyptian revolution. She explains how the women workers’ struggles that emerged in 2005 coincided with the struggles against gender injustice. She also relates gender-based demands to broader struggles such as racial justice, anti-imperialism, and anti-authoritarianism and warns against the potential dangers of attaching lesser value to different forms of oppression during different time periods.

The Anticommunist International

This chapter outlines how, by the late 1940s, the Philippine state—with the support of U.S. military dollars, equipment, and advisers—launched a war against its own citizens in the name of global anticommunism. After World War II, peasant uprisings in Central Luzon, labor strikes on U.S. military bases in the islands, and the appeal of the Philippine Communist Party threatened to dissolve U.S. policymakers' efforts to promote Philippine independence as a testament to the benevolence and anti-imperial impulses of U.S. foreign aid and policies. In opposition, a multiyear counterinsurgency campaign brought millions of dollars of U.S. military aid into the country, resulting in the increased militarization of Philippine society as well as the near total defeat of peasant and working-class alternatives to Philippine elite control of the state. But while Filipino politicians affirmed decolonization in Southeast Asia, they also faced the challenge of explaining how Philippine independence could effectively coincide with the substantial U.S. political, economic, and military intervention needed to quell the violence in Central Luzon. Despite U.S. and Philippine pronouncements that the nation represented a “showcase of democracy,” the bloodletting in Central Luzon would eventually attract the attention of the international press, which also called into question the stability and legitimacy of the newly independent Philippine Republic. In response, Americans and Filipinos effectively collaborated to reinterpret peasant complaints against the state through the lens of a global war against communism.

State Violence and the Problem of Political Legitimacy

This chapter explores how the remobilization of colonial anticommunism in postwar politics was fundamentally connected to the legitimation of state violence and the strategic and symbolic value of the Philippines to U.S. empire in the age of decolonization. The upsurge and demand for social change in the postwar Philippines took many forms, from protests across barrios and villages of Central Luzon to large-scale labor strikes and the formation of new political parties. One particular group, the Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon—the People's Army against the Japanese—had fought against the Japanese occupation but had no intention of welcoming colonial elites back into power. As a consequence, Filipino political elites and their U.S. allies, intent on rebuilding the social order constructed during the U.S. colonial period, deemed the Hukbalahaps, or Huks, as threats to national—and eventually international—security. In effect, postwar U.S. policies in the Philippines not only helped to recriminalize peasant, labor, and progressive social movements, but they also helped fuel a nearly six-year-long civil war that would have long-standing effects on how both Americans and Filipino politicians and policymakers conceived of the Cold War and the wars of decolonization in Southeast Asia.

The Consequences of Organized Labor and Mass Protest for Social Spending in Latin America

I am very pleased to participate in this dialogue on the effect of collective protest on social spending in Latin America, which initiated when the editors of LAPS invited me to review the research note titled “Organized Labor Strikes and Social Spending in Latin America: The Synchronizing Effect of Mass Protest.” Dongkyu Kim, Mi-son Kim, and Cesar Villegas engage with my paper, published in Comparative Political Studies (Zarate-Tenorio 2014), which analyzes the effects of organized labor strikes and mass protests on social security and welfare, health and education spending in Latin America, 1970–2007.

Organized Labor Strikes and Social Spending in Latin America: The Synchronizing Effect of Mass Protest

ABSTRACTThe theories and evidence about relationships between democracy and social spending in Latin America are highly contested. A recent study shows that collective protest by organized labor effectively increases social security and welfare spending, whereas mass protest does not have comparable effects on human capital spending in Latin American democracies. This article reexamines the analysis and demonstrates that organized labor alone cannot sway democratic governments. Labor strikes require the synchronizing effect of mass protest to obtain government concessions. Only through concurrent episodes of mass protest can organized labor overcome the numerical disadvantage of pressing democratic government for social welfare spending. In understanding the relationship between labor protests and social welfare spending through the lens of insider-outsider dichotomy, it is critical to consider the synchronizing effect of mass protests. The findings remain robust with alternative measures of democracy and various model specifications.

ANALISIS YURIDIS TERHADAP MOGOK KERJA SEBAGAI ALASAN PEMUTUSAN HUBUNGAN KERJA (STUDI KASUS: PUTUSAN NOMOR 67 PK/PDT.SUS-PHI/2018)

A strike is a basic or normative right attached to workers so it needs to be protected. The meaning of strike is regulated in Law Number 13/2003 concerning Manpower Article 1 Paragraph (23), illegal strike is regulated in Decree of the Minister of Manpower and Transmigration Number KEPMEN-232/200. Regarding the Legal Effects of a Strike Invalid. Lately there have been cases of employers terminating employment with workers who are on strike. The main problem here is how the judicial analysis of the judge's decision on termination of employment by reason of a legal strike and how legal protection for workers who are terminated due to strikes at PT. Sanfu Indonesia. Conducting research methods in a normative, prescriptive manner, conducting research using primary and secondary data in the form of interviews and in the form of books or literature. With the conclusion, in accordance with the provisions of Law Number 13/2003 Concerning Labor Strikes conducted by workers is legal because workers have carried out strike procedures that are not in conflict with KEPMEN Number 232/2003 Concerning the Legal Results of Non-Strikes Legitimate. In terms of protection, the worker / laborer has received protection because the worker has obtained his right in the form of severance pay, and also because the worker is carrying out a legal strike, so that it is protected by Law No. 13 of 2003 concerning Labor Article 153.