This book explains why Latin America’s pattern of protective labor regulation has been surprisingly resistant to fundamental reform over the course of the last century, especially during the period of intense pressure from globalization. It develops a theory based on two factors – the skill distribution in the economy and the organizational capacity of labor – to explain the remarkable continuity in national-level labor codes. It argues that where workers have mid- to high-level skills and sufficient leadership or ties to political parties, they can be most effective in forming coalitions that ... More

This book explains why Latin America’s pattern of protective labor regulation has been surprisingly resistant to fundamental reform over the course of the last century, especially during the period of intense pressure from globalization. It develops a theory based on two factors – the skill distribution in the economy and the organizational capacity of labor – to explain the remarkable continuity in national-level labor codes. It argues that where workers have mid- to high-level skills and sufficient leadership or ties to political parties, they can be most effective in forming coalitions that preserve or increase the protectiveness of labor legislation. Where unskilled labor predominates, and where ties to political parties are weak, labor regulation is less developed and less protective. This theory is tested in two ways. First, the book takes a quantitative approach, conducting a systematic analysis of the determinants of 23 different labor law provisions in 18 Latin American countries over the period from the 1980s to the 2000s. Second, it employs a longer-term qualitative historical analysis to trace out labor law development and attempted reform over the last century in three representative countries: one which had highly developed protections for individual workers, but whose laws fragmented collective action by unions (Chile), one which provided only narrow protection of individual workers but accorded unions significant freedom (Peru), and one that was strongly protective of both individual workers and the unions that represented them (Argentina).