Murillo and Ronconi 2004

Murillo, Maria Victoria, and Lucas Ronconi. 2004. "Teachers' Strikes in Argentina: Partisan Alignments and Public-sector Labor Relations". Studies in Comparative International Development (SCID). 39 (1): 77-98.

• Intro
• Teachers have been the most militant sector since 1989 (77)
• increase in militancy is related to, but can't be fully explained by (78)
• worsening of conditions
• challenges to income security (through decentralization)
• "Patterns of teachers' militancy are better explained by political alignments between public employees' and teachers' unions than by labor institutions (78)
• How does/would this explanation change in the context of no viable parties outside the PJ?
• then partisan alignments are less salient, but alignments with factions of the one party may be important
• at some point this may become clientelism, depending on your definition of clientelism, as unions may ally themselves with personalties or groups within the PJ (as they have in the past)
• Teachers' strikes reflect a larger but uneven trend of provincialization of protests, which happened no doubt because of the decentralization of the education system
• Explaining Public Teachers' Strikes
• economic conditions don't quite play in here, since these are public sector workers (79)
• labor strength can var across provinces, so it could bean important variable
• but political alignments will likely be very salient, given that governors have a high degree of discretion in implementing labor laws (80)
• Argentine Public Education and the Provincial Analysis
•  by 1993 primary and secondary public education administered at the provincial level (81)
• provincial governors now have the power to decide legality of strikes, etc, but also have a lot of discretionon how they use labor laws
• provincial governors also control education expenditures
• CTERA has traditionally been the national union (82)
• teachers caught between government and parents at times 
• A Cross-Provincial Test on Teachers' Militancy
• dependent variable: strike days lost
• independent measures: (82-83)
• political affiliation of union leaders compared to governor, percentage of legislators of governor's party, change in teachers' real earnings, unemployment, attendance bonus, unionization, union fragmentation
• downside: data are for a short period of time, so some independent variables don't really change much (85)
• Political alignment (of union leaders/governors) has the strongest effect, though other variables have an effect as well (86)
• if job stable and unemployment high (ie low exit alternatives), union members will protest for better things
• authors suspect that executive discretion diminishes the effect of institutional and organizational variables, which is why they weren't necessarily strong effects here (88)
• Conclusion
• politicization of labor relations thanks to provincialization of education AND executive discretion re: labor laws
•  suggestion: labor laws should be strengthened to decrease executive discretion, which should in turn decrease strike days (89)