Labor Justice across the Americas

In this interesting study of labor courts in the Americas, the editors Leon Fink and Juan Manuel Palacio have tried to bring together stand-alone studies that address the universal questions of why and how these courts emerged. The point of the study, as Palacio states in the introduction, is to identify “common patterns” while paying close attention to the “particularities of national cases” (p. 2). The editors chose labor courts as the topic because they were arenas of class conflict and can bring together the subdisciplines of legal and labor history. The essay authors largely succeed but with an uneven standard. Strikes and social unrest were the breeding grounds for the establishment of labor courts. Just as vital, these courts rested on the efforts of jurists and politicians who saw their creation as an attempt to either control or curtail class conflict. Interestingly, each national study identifies international influence. Canada was influenced by British arbitration law, while for Brazil it was Australia's and New Zealand's compulsory arbitration systems. There is a remarkably clear pattern regarding the influences. Many of the authors see the establishment of the International Labor Office (ILO) in 1919 as a key ingredient in the development of these labor courts, as many countries sent emissaries to the ILO. Another profound influence was the Catholic Church. Pope Leo XIII's 1891 labor encyclical did much to galvanize both jurists and labor leaders. Finally, each study points to social and political upheaval as a factor that galvanized reformers. As these influences suggest, more than just local or national conditions held sway, but few of the studies provide concrete evidence of this influence. The same critique applies to the ILO; in only a few of the cases do these countries send emissaries to the ILO. Additionally, just turning up at ILO headquarters does not make a convincing case. Where else did these emissaries travel? Very few of the authors provide narratives of strikes or political upheavals, either. In many respects this problem is repeated with a lack of context in the essays—the authors too often only state that a certain act, such as assassination, is part of the broader picture. But readers with little knowledge of these local or national histories will need additional explanation

Arbitration · Class conflict · Economic Justice · Labor relations · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Unrest · International Labor and Employment Law · Labor Movements and Unions · Law