Mexican State-Labor Relations and the Political Implications of Free Trade

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4500441
AutoresM L Cook (0000-0002-1897-612X, autor de correspondencia)
Año1995
Volumen22
Número1
Páginas77-94
Fecha de publicación1995-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLatin American Perspectives (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0094-582X • E-ISSN: 1552-678X
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0094582x9502200106
OpenAlexW2055471199
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas11
Referencias citadas7

Throughout Latin America, organized labor has been seriously affected by a decade of economic crisis and neoliberal economic restructuring that has resulted in increased unemployment, declining real wages, and reduced union prerogatives. In Mexico these economic changes have been accompanied by a dramatic reduction in organized labor's political influence and the virtual destruction of union militancy and autonomy. Plant closures, layoffs, and the dismantling of strongly prounion collective bargaining agreements have eliminated or debilitated once militant workers' organizations in such industries as auto, mining, and steel. The capacity of either official or independent unions to articulate an alternative vision for Mexican economic and social development-a capacity in existence as recently as the late 1970s-is scarcely in evidence today. These changes have also brought about an initial restructuring of statelabor relations in Mexico. Because of the historical significance of Mexican labor's relationship with the regime, changes in state-labor relations affect the nature of the regime itself: its social bases, the relationship between party, government, and social sectors, and forms of mediation between state and society. In the 1980s it was commonplace to talk about the decorporatization of society. In the 1990s few observers deny that a transition is taking place, but there is greater disagreement over the nature and direction of the transition. Understanding what is changing in the relationship between organized labor and the state in Mexico is fundamental to understanding what type of regime is taking shape in response to both the global economic and the domestic political challenges of the 1980s and 1990s

Autonomy · Collective bargaining · Economic growth · Economic restructuring · Economic system · Economics · Economy · Government (linguistics) · Labor disputes · Labor history · Labor relations · Labour economics · Militant · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Restructuring · State (computer science) · Trade union · Unemployment · Employment, Labor, and Gender Studies · Industrial relations · Latin American socio-political dynamics · Law