Labor Law Reform Research Articles

Commandeering Crisis

The Eurozone crisis has triggered profound political and economic changes across the debtor member states. This article shows how the crisis and the imposition of austerity policies by the Troika have (1) forced Spain (and by extension other Eurozone debtor states) to pursue internal devaluation as a means of economic adjustment through the reduction of real wages, (2) increased pressure for liberalizing labor market institutions, and (3) given Spain’s conservative government the opportunity and cover to pursue radical neoliberal labor law reforms. Spain’s 2012 labor law reforms went well beyond external demands. The crisis and the Troika’s policy demands generated mass unemployment, devastated Spain’s Socialist Party, and created the enabling conditions for economic reforms. But domestic partisan considerations led the conservative People’s Party (PP) to commandeer the crisis to weaken unions as the electoral and organizational base of the center-left opposition. The PP channeled reform into an attack on labor that decisively shifted power to employers. As organized labor relations were reduced to concession bargaining, real wages have plummeted for the vast majority of Spaniards, even as mass unemployment and economic stagnation persist. Analysis suggests the emergence of a winner-take-all economy that will have lasting consequences for the Eurozone and the European Union.

Access to Justice and Labor Law Reform in Asia

The existence of national labor law system guarantees fair is one of legal reform to achieve access to justice. This study aims to analyze whether the system of labor law has given capacity to achieve access to justice as the basis for implementing international labor relations in Asia. The method of this study is a normative legal research with statute approach. The findings support that there was an inconsistency on the substance of the legal structures that affect the low legal culture. The substance of the national labor law systems have not adapted the comprehensive International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions. Less robust system of national labor laws affect access to justice in the weak field of labor in the region.

Nuit Debout: Frankreich gerät in Bewegung!

France is in motion! In spring 2016, a huge movement against the French labor law reform formed and is since then protesting in the streets and squares all over France. The article examines these struggles and asks, why the movement is currently on the rise. It discusses the struggles in relation to the general crisis dynamics and focuses on the protests of trade unions and civil society (Nuit Debout). Furthermore, the labor law reform of the Valls-Government is being illustrated in the context of the recent French labor market policy and its continuities.

Assessing the Potential Impact of Labor Law Reforms on University Faculty

This article presents the findings of a survey of unionized professors and professional librarians at a public university in Southern Ontario to examine their views on the prospect and desirability of “right-to-work” legislation and “paycheck protection” laws. The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to assess the level of opposition to such legislative initiatives among unionized faculty, and, second, to determine the extent to which the passage of such laws would undermine the dues base of the faculty union. Based on the findings of a mixed methods survey, we found that a strong majority of the university professors and professional librarians surveyed were opposed to “right-to-work” and “paycheck protection” laws and that their passage would not deter them from paying dues or authorizing expenditures for political action.

Learning to Love the Government

One counterintuitive variation in wage-setting regulation is that countries with the highest labor standards and strongest labor movements are among the least likely to set a statutory minimum wage. This, the author argues, is due largely to trade union opposition. Trade unions oppose the minimum wage when they face minimal low-wage competition, which is affected by the political institutions regulating industrial action, collective agreements, and employment, as well as by the skill and wage levels of their members. When political institutions effectively regulate low-wage competition, unions oppose the minimum wage. When political institutions are less favorable toward unions, there may be a cleavage between high- and low-wage unions in their minimum wage preferences. The argument is illustrated with case studies of the UK, Germany, and Sweden. The author demonstrates how the regulation of low-wage competition affects unions’ minimum wage preferences by exploiting the following labor market institutional shocks: the Conservatives’ labor law reforms in the UK, the Hartz labor market reforms in Germany, and the European Court of Justice'sLavalruling in Sweden. The importance of union preferences for minimum wage adoption is also shown by how trade union confederation preferences influenced the position of the Labour Party in the UK and the Social Democratic Party in Germany.

New Frontiers in Empirical Labour Law Research

Students of labour law, both in the UK and elsewhere, hardly need to be reminded that labour law has long been in retreat. As has been comprehensively documented, the scope of employment law protection has been pared back in innumerable ways as the view that it is obstructive of economic efficiency and advancement has become entrenched and policy choices have continued to whittle back legislation conferring employment rights. Reforms over recent years in the UK imposing the payment of fees in respect of employment tribunal proceedings are but the latest manifestation of that long-term trend. Against this background, a number of books published over recent years have considered the proper scope as a discipline of, the potential development of, and the future prospects for labour law as an academic discipline. Not only do these works consider the current areas of debate for labour lawyers but also, to a greater or lesser extent, they betray a more or less explicit existential concern about the subject, its scope and its future viability. Contributions to collections of essays such as Davidov and Langille (eds), Boundaries and Frontiers of Labour Law (Oxford: Hart, 2006), Barnard, Deakin and Morris (eds), The Future of Labour Law (Oxford: Hart, 2004) and Davidov and Langille (eds), The Idea of Labour Law (Oxford: OUP, 2011) have to some extent reflected this concern both in their titles and their substantive content. One of the starkest assessments of what it portrays as labour law’s ongoing and ultimately doomed search for continued viability and relevance is Alan Hyde’s contribution to The Idea of Labour Law (at Ch 6). Entitled ‘The Idea of the Idea of Labour Law: A Parable’, his analysis, from the US perspective, is that labour law cannot ‘like a Platonic form...survive the disappearance of every one of its earthly manifestations’ in terms of ‘jobs, strikes, cooperative employers, legislation and... specialised government officials’ and that inspiration needs to be found elsewhere than labour law ‘traditionally conceptualized’ (see pp 96–7). More prosaically, the incessant reform of labour law domestically risks labour law as a discipline being seen as unrealistically wishing to turn back the clock in economic and political terms.

Problems and prospects of occupational health infrastructure in India

The organised sector of the Indian economy has witnessed tremendous economic growth and enhanced employability in the past three decades. This growth has raised concerns over occupational health and safety in the manufacturing sector, including tertiary and quaternary services. The authors critically review the need for initiating, developing, and implementing knowledge- and practice-based inputs for a well systematised occupational health policy in the organised sector. They propose the systematic expansion of occupational health and safety measures, along with improved policy and labour law reforms, to achieve universal health status of industrial workers. In addition, the authors argue, there is an immediate need for health impact assessment and public health surveillance of organised-sector workers. Towards this end, an epidemiological database needs to be created and occupational health-related diseases and illnesses monitored. In its latter section, the paper highlights the need for strong political will to drive reforms in occupational health policy, and implement such a policy to promote and safeguard the occupational health of industrial workers.

Can Overtime Premium Flexibility Promote Employment? Firm- and Worker-Level Evidence from a Labour Law Reform

In 2012, in the midst of a recession, a labour law reform in Portugal allowed firms to reduce the overtime premium paid to their workers by 50% or more. Until then, overtime premiums were set by law at a relatively high level and could not be cut unilaterally. We analyse matched employer-employee panel data, including worker-level base and overtime hours and pay, to shed light on the effects of the resulting greater flexibility in overtime pay setting. We find that half of the firms using overtime in 2011 did reduce their overtime premiums in a manner consistent with the reform, in particular those firms making greater use of overtime and paying higher premiums. Moreover, using difference-in-differences matching and a long list of covariates, we find that those firms that cut overtime premiums exhibit significant relative increases in overtime usage, employment and sales following the reform. Overall, our results highlight the important but not exclusive role of legal restrictions behind downward nominal pay rigidity. Our findings also suggest a significant potential of overtime pay flexibility to promote employment, even during a downturn.

Chinese Workers Without Benefits

Millions of in China are not afforded the rights and benefits of its labor and employment laws and thus are not workers with benefits. China's labor reforms and worker net have come so far in the past 30 years, producing workers with benefits. Why are there still millions of in the urban sector who do not have the protections of these labor and employment law reforms, who are the workers without benefits, falling outside the labor safety net? They have been called precarious, atypical, irregular, contingent, and include casual, temporary, part-time, dispatch, and called subcontractors and independent contractors, which may include construction workers, students, domestic workers, and the many other in informal employment relationships. They fall outside the legal protections of the labor laws; or, they may be covered, but excluded or exempted or misclassified. This situation of precarious occurs not only in China, but globally, and it has not gone unnoticed by the International Labour Organization (ILO).' Labor laws in China began in earnest in 1994 with the Labor Law, which defined labor rights and obligations in somewhat general terms, with local regulations sometimes more specifically supplementing them. This was followed in subsequent years with more specific labor rights and benefit laws, including for health and safety, work-related injuries, unemployment insurance, and other social security benefit laws. These laws are tied into and for the benefit of in the employment relationship of a labor contract. Outside this relationship is a contract for labor services, which is not eligible for the benefits of the labor laws, but rather is dealt with under the con- tract law, as a contract of employment, such as an independent contractor might have. There are legal definitions and issues arising under the various labor laws, national and local, as to how to categorize that this paper undertakes to explicate. The differences in consequences are the availability of the rights and benefits of the labor laws, as well as the right to resolve labor disputes under the Labor Mediation and Labor Arbitration Dispute Law. Because as employers understand they can lower labor costs by hiring and/or classifying as contractors for services, there are a number of these worker categories for which legal interpretations will be discussed to test the language and the application of the law. These results will be compared with relevant ILO conventions and labor standards to evaluate how China's laws fit with those standards and identify any areas that might benefit from reform. In the end analysis, it is proposed some clarity will be provided on the issue of which worker in China should be an employee with benefits.

Report: Criminalising peaceful assembly: South Korea sentences trade union leader

INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 28 Volume 23 Issue 2 2016 from 8 to 18 months under the same charges. The judicial harassment of trade unionists since the November 2015 rally is the latest step in a long campaign against unions. As we reported last year in IUR 221, the repression of trade union rights in South Korea has reached new heights in recent years. The current government has taken this hostility to a new level, attempting to crack down on trade union activity by a combination of branding strikes illegal, imprisoning trade union leaders, and even suing unions for vast amounts of money. In response to strike action by the Korean Railway Workers’ Union (KRWU) to oppose rail privatisation, around 5000 riot police raided KCTU offices in December 2013, searching for KRWU leaders. Hundreds of KCTU staff were arrested. Later in 2014, some 138 KRWU leaders were charged, and huge compensation claims against the union were made (amounting to over EUR 47 million for seven strikes). The scale of these attacks on unions is driven in no small part by the dominance of the country’s ‘Chaebol’ or conglomerates, whose privileged status is a legacy of South Korea’s economic growth and development strategies. On 12 July 2016, unions joined with civil society groups and opposition parties to demand reforms to address the family-owned conglomerates’ abuse of power. Choi Jong-jin, acting leader of the KCTU, noted that, ‘since the 1997 financial crises, wealth inequality has widened in tandem with the Korean economy’s deepening reliance on chaebol’. Calling for reforms, Choi said that the Chaebol system ‘worsens inequality and destroys labour unions’1 . The General Secretary of the ITUC, Sharan Burrow, responded to the harsh sentencing of the KCTU President, stating: ‘This criminalisation of legitimate protest is totally unacceptable, and reinforces the power of Korea’s Chaebol industrial conglomerates which already dominate the economy. President Park Geun-hye’s governing party already lost its parliamentary majority in the elections in April, but she seems determined to continue to allow business to call the shots regardless of the harm caused to working people. The sentencing of Han Sang-gyun shows that the courts are subjugated to the political agenda of a government that has no majority, rather than standing up for the rule of law. The international trade union movement will continue to press for his release and the withdrawal of all the charges against those facing court proceedings for simply standing up for workers’ rights and other fundamental freedoms’2 . Notes 1 Korea Herald, ‘Opposition parties, civic groups allign to reform chaebol’, 12 July 2016. Available here: http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20160712000799 2 ITUC, ‘Korea: Imprisonment of KCTU President a Travesty of Justice’, 4 July 2016. Available here: http://www.ituc-csi.org/ korea-imprisonment-of-kctu The sentencing of Han Sang-gyun shows that the courts are subjugated to the political agenda of a government that has no majority, rather than standing up for the rule of law O n 4 July 2016, Han Sang-gyun, the President of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), was sentenced to five years in prison by the Seoul Central District Court, for the crime of ‘obstruction’. This constitutes the harshest sentence for a rally organiser in South Korea’s post-democratisation history. The prosecution against Han stemmed from a series of legitimate protest assemblies in 2015, including a rally against proposed labour law reforms held on 14 November 2015 in Seoul in which 100,000 demonstrators participated. The protesters were met with 20,000 police officers from 248 squadrons, armed with 19 water cannons , 679 buses, and 580 capsicum spray devices. According to reports of the November demonstration , police fired water cannons and tear gas directly at peaceful protesters. In the ensuing violence it is understood that dozens were injured, including one protestor (Baek Nam-gi) who was struck by the jet of a water cannon and remains unconscious seven months later. Criminal procedures were launched against 585 KCTU leaders and members, but no investigation has been opened into the violent actions of the police. Han’s sentencing has provoked widespread national and international condemnation. The...

Focus: The Union's Dual Role in Cuban Labour Restructuring

INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 3 Volume 23 Issue 1 2016 FOCUS ❐ LATIN AMERICA The Union’s Dual Role in Cuban Labour Restructuring Notwithstanding active support for State-initiated reform that has contradicted workers’ immediate interests, the CTC has asserted critical independence camp acknowledge that recent labour law reform ‘challenges the unions in their dual roles of developing the Revolution’s ‘socialist state of workers’ in general, and of protecting workers rights in particular ’ (Ludlam 2013). Thus, this article’s examination the union’s role in contemporary labour restructuring fills a gap in empirical data with respect to the CTC’s status as a ‘two-way transmission belt’ responsible for resolving contradictions arising between the state and workers during reform. Methodology Because of its national economic importance and union density, Matanzas, the second largest province in Cuba, is ideal for examining the role of the CTC during labour restructuring. Comprised of 13 municipalities, Matanzas is responsible for 4.6 percent of total national production, and 45 percent of the income generated by the tourist industry, a sector to which most workers displaced in the state sector are expected to be redeployed. Moreover, 17 of the CTC’s 19 affiliated trade unions have branches in Matanzas, servicing over 290,000 members through 5,828 local affiliates, with 23,000 leaders at the local level. Table 1 and Table 2 show state sector production by product and national trade unions under the CTC umbrella by industry, respectively. This article presents qualitative data collected using three methods: semi-structured interviews with union leaders, participant observation of workers in their assemblies, and content analysis of union documents. Specifically, the author conducted a one-on-one interview with a key CTC official involved with the workforce reduction process at the national level. This semi-structured interview employed open-ended questions about the CTC’s support for workforce reduction, workers ’ response, and the impact of restructuring on workers’ rights. Additionally, a 3-hour panel interview with 9 of the 17 CTC affiliates in the region was conducted at the CTC’s Matanzas office on the topic of implementation at the local level. To ground the interview data, the author attended worker assembly meetings at two state enterprises in the vital tourist sector: the Museum of Slavery and Las Cuevas restaurant, both chosen because workers were actively engaged in the restructuring of their enterprises. Finally, to understand existing worker protections , and the impact of on-going labour reform, the author participated in an educational exchange with Cuban jurists. In conjunction with the exchange, the CTC provided internal training materials, including paper and digital copies of the constantly evolving labour code up to that point, (Código de Trabajo 2011), as well as complementary labour law materials. All research occurred in March 2011, thee months following the conclusion I n May 2011, the Cuban Communist Party adopted a set of socio-economic guidelines that emerged after a nationwide mass consultation between the State and workers. As the Cuban political economy took another swing toward market liberalisation, some of the reforms have been seen by outside commentators as an erosion of worker labour protections. Even on the island, there are concerns. For instance, one of the most workercontested policies has been the state’s workforce reduction plan, seeking to shift 20 percent of workers from guaranteed security of state employment to the growing non-state sector. Even as the CTC (Central de Trabajadores de Cuba), Cuba’s official trade union federation, contends with worker concerns , it has continually supported the state’s policy . This article focuses on early implementation of labour restructuring to examine the CTC’s dual role as state mobilising agent and defender of workers’ rights. I argue that notwithstanding active support for state-initiated reform that has contradicted workers’ immediate interests, the CTC has asserted critical independence from the Cuban party-state in representing workers’ rights. It is well settled that traditional communist unions are tasked with dual roles arising from simultaneous obligations to support the partystate ’s economic policy and to represent workers’ interests (Evenson 2003). Sometimes referred to as ‘mediators’ responsible for resolving contradictions between the party and civil society (Ashwin 1999), unions in most...

Time for legal reform and regulation on business and human rights

16 | International Union Rights | 23/4 ICTUR IN ACTION | BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS Time for legal reform and regulation on business and human rights The ICTUR representatives opened their submissions by outlining concerns that the UK’s Good Business: Implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (2016) action plan does not address the question of Business and Human Rights adequately, for three reasons. First, the government fails to acknowledge or to take seriously the full extent of its human rights responsibilities. Secondly, the government shows insufficient awareness of, or concern for, the shortcomings of British business overseas and little acknowledgement of its role in addressing these. And thirdly, the government offers no meaningful commitment proactively to embrace human rights obligations with a view to ensuring that tragedies on the scale of Rana Plaza are prevented in the future. Concerning British law at home, ICTUR observed that the ILO Committee of Experts (CEACR) has expressed reservations about new restrictions on industrial action in what was then the Trade Union Bill, highlighting the application of these restrictions to transport and education workers, but that the government appears to have ignored these reservations. The Trade Union Act 2016 includes transport and education workers within the scope of the term ‘important public services’ to whom the new restrictions apply, relevant for present purposes because transport is now delivered mainly by private corporations. ICTUR further observed that the European Social Charter was ratified by the United Kingdom in 1962 and is the most comprehensive social rights treaty anywhere in the world, but expressed regret that this instrument is not mentioned in Good Business. British law, ICTUR noted, had been repeatedly found in breach by the European Social Rights Committee, responsible for monitoring that instrument. In the main body of its submissions, ICTUR turned to serious cases of human rights violations overseas involving British companies. ICTUR concentrated on the cases of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh and the 2012 Marikana strike in South Africa. While recognising and welcoming the fact that a number of British companies have engaged with compensation schemes and follow-up work around industrial safety in the wake of Rana Plaza, ICTUR focused its attention on the situation prior to the factory collapse, outlining a list of violence, repression, murders and industrial disasters, and arguing that British companies knew about – or should have known about – these conditions, and yet tolerated them. ICTUR recalled the industrial relations background in the years leading up to the Rana Palza collapse: ● Trade unions were banned in the EPZs. ● Workers toiled under poor and dangerous conditions. ● Lacking avenues for the airing of industrial grievances, workers’ anger spilled out into street protests on several occasions, to which employers and police often responded violently. ● In 2003 police fired on a workers’ demonstration in the garment sector, killing one person. The previous day their leader had been arrested on his way to join negotiations. ● In 2006 the arrest of two strike leaders and the killing of a worker by police led to mass protests by more than 5000 workers, which ended violently, with damage to factories and injuries to workers. After this the 2006 labour law reform was passed but unions remained banned in the EPZs. ● Six workers were killed and dozens injured by police in 2009. ● In 2010 45 garment workers were killed in various workplace fires and 150 were injured. ● Four garment workers were shot and killed by police on 12 December 2011 when police opened fire on a demonstration in the Cittagoing EPZ. ● In 2012 four garment workers were shot dead in protests over low pay and poor safety standards. ● On 4 April 2012 Aminul Islam, President of the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation (‘BGIWF’) and Organiser with the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity (‘BCWS’), disappeared and was later tortured and murdered. For all the welcome actions taken by a number of British companies since the factory collapse, ICTUR argued that too little attention has been paid to the fact that this was the situation in which MNEs had chosen to source their clothing. ‘Even a cursory investigation’ of the industrial relations situation, the ICTUR team argued, ‘would have revealed that this was a very...

CASUS REELEKCJI PREZYDENTA REPUBLIKI G. NAPOLITANA (2013) I WYBÓR S. MATTARELLI NA TEN URZĄD (2015) – OKOLICZNOŚCI FAKTYCZNE, UWARUNKOWANIA POLITYCZNE I PROCEDURA WYBORU

The article has informational purposes and is focused on explaining the procedure of electing the President of the Italian Republic. It also describes the silhouettes of two Italian presidents. The first is Giorgio Napolitano, whose presidency aroused much controversy and is accused of abuse of asserting his prerogatives. The second is Sergio Mattarella – the current president, elected in 2015 after the resignation of Napolitano. His presidency is an example of performance of the functions in apolitical and balanced way. These two very different presidencies are shown on the background of accompanying events in Italian politics, such as changes in the position of prime minister, party crises and major reforms. Article contains also an information about the government of Matteo Renzi – the youngest Italian Prime Minister, who while assuming the office, announced far-reaching changes including tax reform, labor law reform and changes to the constitution.

Collective Bargaining 3.0

The first lesson network leaders learn in the Jobs With Justice training is never give your power away. While easier said in a workshop than in the North Carolina General Assembly, it does compel us to remember how change happens. While we need labor law reform, we should not wait for it to build a movement to expand the scale and scope of collective bargaining. Early industrial unions were bargaining long before the Wagner Act codified the practice, leveraging their ability to halt production when necessary. Only through exercising their power, and even breaking some rules, were they able to win the legal protections to back up workers’ ability to bargain equally with employers.

Shyam Sundar K.R.: Labour law and governance reforms in India; Some Critical Perspectives

Shyam Sundar K.R.: Labour law and governance reforms in India; Some Critical Perspectives

The Dialectic of Institutional and Extra-institutional Tactics: Explaining the Trajectory of Taiwan’s Labor Movement

This article offers an interpretation of the development of Taiwan’s labor movement as an evolving dialogue and conflict between two tendencies. Due to democratization and liberal labor law reform, the usage of institutional tactics in the form of parliamentary lobbying and tripartite participation became the mainstream strategy of the movement over the years. This current, however, was periodically contested by the radical wing, which relied on extra-institutional social movements. This divide reflected an organizational division within Taiwan’s working class, that is, the growing gap between unionized workers and marginalized workers (foreign workers, laid-off workers and part-timers). While the contention between two streams might seem irreconcilable, I shall argue there have been possibilities for mutually beneficial cooperation.

The Enduring Ambiguities of Antitrust Liability for Worker Collective Action

This Article examines the origins of the rule that antitrust law regulates and largely prohibits collective action by workers who fall outside the bounds of employment, and who therefore presumptively do not receive the benefit of the labor exemption from antitrust. The threat that organizing for decent wages and working conditions will be prosecuted as price-fixing is a powerful constraint upon such workers' ability to take action to change their circumstances. Antitrust has historically structured the nature and content of labor regulation in this country, and it is currently poised to do so again in a new form. It did so directly and punitively in the Gilded Age. During the New Deal era, the default rule that worker collective action is illegal under antitrust actually solidified its subterranean hold while the law of the labor exemption mostly blunted its practical effects. In today's deregulation era, it is of increasing significance in regulating workers who fall outside the bounds of the NLRA (and other employment and labor law); as a limit upon new forms of labor regulation that would bring these nontraditional workers within their scope; and as a potential baseline for labor law reform generally. Antitrust has irreducible political and normative content, despite its sometime claim of being justified on economic grounds that are independent of politics and moral norms. The key cases show that such extrinsic normative considerations operate, albeit tacitly, in antitrust's relationship to labor, which has changed over time according to the specific policy project embraced by decision-makers. The default rule that workers and other less-powerful economic actors are subject to the heavy hammer of the price-fixing doctrine for cooperation in pursuit of a decent livelihood ought to be revisited.

Union representation elections and labor law reform: Lessons from the Minneapolis Hilton

Union representation elections and labor law reform: Lessons from the Minneapolis Hilton

The Economic Crisis and Labour Law Reform in Italy

This article analyses the labour law reforms enacted in Italy in recent years, paying special attention to their ambiguous relations with the economic crisis and EU requirements. Between 2007 and 2013, Italy's GDP contracted by 8.7% and average per capita income fell by around 10 percentage points: from this starting point, significant improvement in terms of the economy and employment is likely to be hard to achieve. This is a matter of concern for the European institutions, giving rise to the need for structural reform of the labour market. The Italian government has been forced to focus on employment protection measures in their legislative action, since extensive action in terms of public funding in favour of employment and income would be untenable due to insufficient budgetary resources and the need to avoid any further expansion of public spending. In this connection, this article focuses on the approval in February 2015 by the centre-left Renzi Government of the decree aimed at further reform of the labour market introducing a new form of open-ended contract with a growing level of economic protection against unfair dismissal, and concludes by examining the implications for job security.

Continuity despite change: the politics of labor regulation in Latin America

As the dust settles on nearly three decades of economic reform in Latin America, one of the most fundamental economic policy areas has changed far less than expected: labor regulation. To date, Latin America's labor laws remain both rigidly protective and remarkably diverse. Continuity Despite Change develops a new theoretical framework for understanding labor laws and their change through time, beginning by conceptualizing labor laws as comprehensive systems or regimes. In this context, Matthew Carnes demonstrates that the reform measures introduced in the 1980s and 1990s have only marginally modified the labor laws from decades earlier. To explain this continuity, he argues that labor law development is constrained by long-term economic conditions and labor market institutions. He points specifically to two key factors-the distribution of worker skill levels and the organizational capacity of workers. Carnes presents cross-national statistical evidence from the eighteen major Latin American economies to show that the theory holds for the decades from the 1980s to the 2000s, a period in which many countries grappled with proposed changes to their labor laws. He then offers theoretically grounded narratives to explain the different labor law configurations and reform paths of Chile, Peru, and Argentina. His findings push for a rethinking of the impact of globalization on labor regulation, as economic and political institutions governing labor have proven to be more resilient than earlier studies have suggested.