Parties And Unions In The New Global Economy

Katrina Burgess

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 2010
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9780822972488
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

For much of the twentieth century, unions played a vital role in shaping political regimes and economic development strategies, particularly in Latin America and Europe. However, their influence has waned as political parties with close ties to unions have adopted neoliberal reforms harmful to the interests of workers.What do unions do when confronted with this "loyalty dilemma"? Katrina Burgess compares events in three countries to determine the reasons for widely divergent responses on the part of labor leaders to remarkably similar challenges. She argues that the key to understanding why some labor leaders protest and some acquiesce lies essentially in two domains: the relative power of the party and the workers to punish them, and the party's capacity to act autonomously from its own government.

Table of contents

• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction: Choosing Sides
• 2. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty in Party-Union Relations
• 3. Loyalties Under Stress
• 4. Power and Autonomy in Party-Union Relations
• 5. Survival of the Postrevolutionary Alliance in Mexico
• 6. The Socialist Divorce in Spain
• 7. Back from the Brink in Venezuela
• 8. Party-Union Relations in a Liberalizing World
• List of Acronyms
• Notes
• References
• Index