Murillo and Schrank 2005

Murillo, M. Victoria, and Andrew Schrank. 2005. "With a Little Help from my Friends". Comparative Political Studies. 38 (8): 971-999.

• Introduction
• 13 of the 18 collective labor reforms between 1985 and 1998 have enhanced labor’s ability to bargain collectively, despite rampant neoliberal reforms (972)
• two possible explanations
• labor-backed parties are trying to keep their constituents happy
• transnational activism between US and labor repressive states have forced improvements in labor law as a condition to have access to US market
• Both explanations are right, depending on the past institutional context of the country in question (973)...regardless, interestingly enough globalization seems to be improving the influence labor has over collective labor law!
• Labor Rights and Economic Reform in Latin America
• free market reforms have certainly hurt labor, and individual labor codes have gotten worse for workers, but not collective codes (974)
• yet we would expect neoliberal reforms to include deregulation of collective labor codes as well as individual labor codes (976)
• nor are the improvements to collective law merely cosmetic!
• Labor Mobilization Legacies and Labor Reform Strategies
• The process of globalization has altered the costs and benefits of union-friendly labor law reform (979), integration in the global economy and trade have:
• increased the political returns to pro-labor reform in countries with labor-backed parties, as those parties are trying to win-back the allegiance of working class constituencies
• increased the material costs of non-reform in labor repressive countries, who don’t want to lose trading status with the US over labor rights issues
• Quant model (980-985)
• Results:
• Partisan and transnational alliances work through preexisting institutional configurations (985)
• “...partisan alliances foster union-friendly reform in organized labor’s traditional strongholds, but yield indeterminate results elsewhere.” (987)
• “...transnational alliances yield their biggest payoffs...in countries where labor has never achieved enough organizational strength to be considered a serious player in the political arena..” (987)
• Qualitative Case Studies: Argentina and the Dominican Repbulic
• Similarities
• both were model neoliberal reformers (987)
• both adopted union-friendly collective labor law (987-988)
• Differences
• they feature radically different labor relations and party systems (988)
• Argentina
• PJ survived the 1990s by abandoning labor (989)
• pro-labor reform in 1998 BECAUSE:
• 1997 elections saw Pj start to lose electoral support
• new law was opposed by business, IMF, non-PJ labor activists, and the two opposition parties (990)
• also, after Alianza came to power, they tried to deregulate collective labor law
• In 1998 PJ tried to win back it’s friends, My take: but wasn’t successful enough to win next elections
• Dominican Republic
• DR economy based on textiles, other low-cost production in EPZs (990-991)
• In 1989 America’s Watch filed GSP petition against DR (991)
• AFL-CIO threatened similar actions, focusing especially on EPZs
• DR initiated reform in 1992 to not lose trade with US (991-2)
• Granted:  wages, conditions still not great, but better than in a lot of other EPZs (992)
• Conclusion
• though similar outcomes re: collective labor law, there is not a convergence of tactics/strategies in Latin America....still depends on institutional context (994, 993, respectively)
• Important differences
• labor repressive regimes are aligning their labor codes with generally accepted conditions, etc (994)
• labor-backed parties are implementing labor reforms that specifically improve the organizational capacity of unions