Big Idea #1, Round 2

Of the many parts of one's life that define a person, the world of work and of politics are two of the most important fields of the human experience.  Most humans spend the greater part of their day working; moreover, local, state, and national politics shape and create the environment and rules that form the basis of everyday life.  Though neither political actions nor work are exhaustive of the experiences and identities of many people, many still come to define themselves in great part through their politics and job.  In doing so, however, people also tend to demand a voice in both of these spheres.  Few choose to be under the sway of a tyrant, be it an authoritarian president or an authoritarian manager.

But outside of such generalizations, it is often difficult to trace the more specific connections between the world of work and of politics.  At a macro level, the labor laws set by governments serve to define and structure the the workplace, both in its general functioning (through laws about working conditions) and in the seemingly inherent conflict between workers and management (Cook 2007, OTHERS?).  But those labor laws tend to be mediated through local- and state-level institutions, by the amount of funding and enforcement available, and many other factors that can shift the actual effects these macro-dynamics have at the local level.  Similarly, one finds a great many macro-level research projects that relate the political leanings of the popular classes (a term I use to denote those who, in more classical definitions, might be considered peasants or workers, but don't quite fit these concepts given the current development and economic context), but similarly micro-level experiences are important in shaping the specific political opinions and activism of the popular classes (Auyero______).  WHY STUDY WORK AND POLITICS?

In order to understand the complex relationship between political action and the workplace, it will be helpful to employ a theory of fields.  Fligstein and McAdam (2012) use the concept of interconnected, embedded fields to describe the environments through which individuals interact with and are influenced by the world around them.  Using this complex concept it is possible to conceive how workplace experiences can have an effect of political experiences, and vice versa, without oversimplifying this connection into a one-way interaction, wherein one set of experiences produces the other.  (But is this what I am arguing, that these two experiences can cause each other?)


<<<The puzzle is:  why wasn't Mexico able to join the Left turn?  Why don't union leaders jump to left parties when they don't get any resources from their traditional parties?>>>


The general fields of politics and the workplace are, independently, two of the most important places that people interact with each other, larger society, and create their own identity.  Politics and work are important to people because they shape everything from a person's individual day to the society around them.  Though they are not exhaustive of the experiences of many people, still many come to define themselves through their political acts and their work.  In doing so, however, people also tend to demand a voice in both of these spheres.  Few choose to be under the sway of a tyrant, be it an authoritarian president or an authoritarian manager.

Using the theory of interconnected fields, however, we can begin to explore the relationship between ones work experience and political action.  Rather than viewing the individual as a blue- or white-collar worker, and then additively combining that identity with their political leanings, I propose exploring the ways contention both in the workplace and in the political sphere can interact with one and inform one another. 

Latin America is an especially key place to study this interaction due to its long history of alliances between the state, parties, and labor unions.  Starting at the turn of the century and extending well through the middle of the twentieth century, many Latin American countries undertook efforts to incorporate the growing urban working class into the national political system.  Landed elites, the general narrative goes, initially dealt with grassroots level labor discontent using overt repression.  As the oligarchic elites began to be displaced by the rising middle class, the new middle-class elites began to incorporate movements into the political system in order to gain the support of the working class in elections nd governance (Collier and Collier,1991: Chapter1).  In many places this labor-state (or labor-party) alliance resulted in a national system through which the state supported organization of the working class into workplace-level unions, and those unions subsequently supported the party/state in elections(for the case of Mexico see, Middlebrook 1995, ______).  In this way, unions acted a nexus both of political incorporation and what one might call "workplace incorporation;"  that is to say, through unions workers had a voice both in politics and in their workplace. (Admittedly this is oversimplified:  unions were often undemocratic, mitigating the actual voice workers had.  Nevertheless, these channels existed and at times worked in favor of workers.)

Much of this political bargain was based on a certain set of developmental policies which called for interventionist, state-led development; namely, import substitution industrialization.  Beginning in the 1980s, however, this model of development contributed to economic crises in a number of states, starting first in Mexico.  These crises combined with international pressures caused many countries to shift development policies.  State-led ISI development gave way to neoliberal policies.  By shifting to neoliberalism countries essentially broke with the union as a mechanism of political incorporation.  Starting in the 1980s and lasting through the 1990s, presidents enacted structural changes to the state and economy that served to divorce unions from their previous political allies (Murillo 2001, Burgess 2004).  (This would be expanded to include the more specific histories of the countries I would include in the study.)  As unions and workers lost their privileged channels to the government, they also lost some of their most important organizational, political, and economic resources.  In addition to this general weakening, many states began actively promoting business interests to the detriment of workers and unions.  Whereas before the state had been an lly to unions during labor conflicts, now the state increasingly sided with business against workers (Bensusán).  In this way workers lost much of their voice in the workplace as well.

In the current era the neoliberal project is in many ways complete; though certainly no economic development policy is ever truly "finished" in its work, neoliberalism has become a stable and institutionalized state policy. (That is not to say it is hegemonic, nor irreversibly institutionalized, as some countries with recently-elected governments from the Left and Center-left are proving.  Nevertheless, in most countries neoliberal policies are the dominant, status quo economic policy.)  The end of the reform-era of neoliberalism has still left important questions about the voice of the popular classes in their workplaces and political society. For much of the past century there was an important link between the project of political incorporation and workers' voice in the workplace; since the drastic losses to unions during the neoliberal turn, however, these two forms of incorporation have become decoupled.  In a broad sense citizenship used to include a voice in politics and in the workplace.  In the current era, however, citizenship/political incorporation guarantee only a voice in political elections, not a voice at work.  And though there have been some moves in the opposite direction, even the rise of the Left has not brought with it a strong renewal in union power at the workplace.

I propose to study the connection (or lack thereof) between voice in teh workplace and voice in the political process.  Are these two forms of voice interchangeable? That is to say, can the feeling of political voice and/or power replace the desire voice at the workplace, and vice versa?  Will workers accept authoritarian regimes in the workplace if they feel that they have a voice on the national stage, or an ally in the government (on second thought, this is likely better done on the local to state-level)).  Similarly, are workers more likely to demand enhanced voice workplace if they feel the state government does not represent them?  Finally, pushing this analysis further, when are political voice and workplace voice not enough?  At what point will people seek extra-institutional measures to make their demands (be they political or work-related)


Important context to keep in mind for work and politics:
The world of work has changed a great deal.  With the collapse of ISI and dawn of neoliberalism workers did not just face restructuring in public state-owned enterprises.  Rather neoliberalism often resulted in more flexible work arrangements for workers in almost all sectors.  Firms began locating and relocating production to greenfield sites, far away from the urban strongholds of unions.  Countries also began creating export processing zones, places where both unions were not historically strong, and where the reach of labor law itself at times came into question.  Whereas the government had attempted to homogenize much of the working class in the working class, at least politically, now workers were hired and labored in increasingly decentralized, contingent, and irregular ways.  Women and youth have entered the workforce to much a greater extent, creating new divisions and heterogeneity in the workforce. Perhaps most importantly, in the current era these new work arrangements have brought into question the use of class, and specifically the working class, as a concept that has any roots in actual society.  Though one can find class cleavages in a broad sense, mainly in the form of inequality, it has become harder to find a coherent working class identity group (Roberts 1999, Kurtz 2004?).  Thus finding a "workplace voice" isn't so easy as merely forming a union.  Nevertheless, I would argue workplaces that are difficult to organize, and thus less likely to ever allow a worker any sort of voice in the workplace, should still be considered in this inquiry.  Work is still one of the most important facets of human life, and is not less important to individual lives even in its more decentralized form.
The world of politics has also changed a great deal since the initial incorporation period.  During the initial period of working class incorporation into the state and politics, creating alliances with unions gave political parties important access to workers in a number of senses.  Perhaps the most important form of access was the preferential channel of communication political parties gained by allying with (and/or coopting) union leaders.  Before the era of mass communication these union-party connections allowed parties to effectively communicate with, educate, and mobilize workers across the country, and without having to recruit these members through more arduous means (setting up party offices, building local machines, etc.).   The alliance allowed the party to collaborate with, and often coopt, the almost ready-made political chapters that were unions at the time.  Now, however, party systems have changed to the point where well-institutionalized parties do not have as large a competitive advantage in nationwide elections.  In many specific cased economic or political crises have weakened institutionalized parties, or worse delegitimized them (is this helpful?).  But across Latin America the consistent expansion of mass media has also allowed political candidates to reach those in areas where they (or their party) have little or no on-the-ground presence.  In that sense, unions are no longer necessarily an important ally to political parties.  Indeed in some countries the weakening (or historical weakness) of the labor movement has allowed for other social movements to become important interlocutors with parties and the government.  The indigenous movement in Ecuador (under the leadership of CONAIE), for example, became a strong political force starting in the 1990s; the cocaleros and other movements filled the vacuum left by the weakened COB in Bolivia; and the unemployed movements are increasingly replacing labor unions important constituents of the Peronist party in Argentina (though the PJ is relying more heavily on clientelist relations in general than alliances with social movements [Levitsky 2003?]).