Questions:
Why don't poor people and workers team up?
Why would they?
The urban poor and workers are both in tenuous positions. In many cases the urban poor were workers, and have lost their jobs or otherwise slipped into poverty. Under a Marxian analysis they share similar interests and similar oppressors.
Why don't they?
This is an important question.
- There is a collective action problem, and neoliberal society might be more atomized (Kurtz 2004).
- Labor unions have gotten weaker (cite everyone), and have lost their political partners in many instances (Levitsky 2003, Murillo 2004, Burgess 2004).
- Roberts (1999?) has an analysis of class-cleavages without class, where class identities aren't prevalent but class issues still are.
- They have differing demands on the government
- unions want jobs
- unions want higher wages, for which informality may be a subsidy
- poor want social spending, which could come at the expense of higher wages for unions
- poor want jobs
- unions want leverage over employers
- poor don't necessarily care about this, as they would prefer first to have an employer, no?
- poor have to spend a lot of time waiting on the government (Auyero 2012)
- incorporation for the poor is waiting in waiting rooms, being subjugated
- incorporation for the workers is improved wages but smaller unions, more precarious work
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