Inducements

Registration. The first inducement, both in terms of the timing of its appearance in each country and in terms of the low level of “corporatism” it represents by itself, is the registration or official sanctioning of unions by the state. This has appeared in every country in Latin America. Registration confers specified rights, including typically juridical personality and the right to represent workers’ interests before the employer and before the state. Prior to the appearance of registration in each country, unions had either been repressed or could become legally incorporated only under general legislation concerned with freedom of association. In some important cases this mode of incorporation was not an attractive alternative to unions because the unlimited civil liability it imposed appeared undesirable in contexts in which unions might be held responsible for damages incurred during a strike (ILO 1930, 163). The provisions for official registration considered here created a separate type of incorporation that was particularly suited to the needs of unions. The point at which registration first appears is, in most cases, the point at which labor law first emerges as a distinct body of legislation designed to encourage the formation of worker organizations.Footnote ¹⁸

Right of Combination.Footnote ¹⁹ These provisions facilitate the formation of unions, primarily by protecting them from various forms of harassment by employers. Because they protect the right of unions to exist as organizations, these provisions might be seen as providing a basis for either corporatism or pluralism. However, the notion that the state has to intervene actively in society in order to make it possible for workers’ organizations to exist already takes one beyond the vision of interest politics contained in the conventional version of pluralism and into the sphere of state involvement in shaping interest politics that is the focus of our analysis.

Monopoly of Representation. This involves the degree to which there is an absence of competition among unions to represent workers in a particular occupational grouping. The relevant provisions range from the few cases in which several unions within a given occupational grouping are allowed to compete for members and to bargain with employers to the exclusive granting of the right of representation to a single union.

Compulsory Membership. This rarely exists in the form of an outright legal requirement that all workers must become union members. Rather, one finds a series of partial approximations. Some countries have legal provisions that permit collective bargaining agreements to include clauses requiring all workers to be union members. In other cases, there are requirements that nonmembers be subject to the same authority or obligations as members with regard to specific issues. For instance, collective bargaining agreements may apply to nonmembers as well as members, or nonmembers may be subject to a dues check-off.

Subsidy. Worker organizations are of course subsidized in a great variety of ways, both formal and informal. The provisions of interest here are those that involve the state directly in helping unions receive a regular source of revenue.

Constraints

Collective Bargaining and Strikes. Collective bargaining over wages and working conditions is one of the most important areas of activity and demand-making of labor organizations, and the strike is labor’s most important weapon. One of the most significant types of state control involves intervention in collective bargaining to avoid class conflict and the disruption of economic activity. In recent years, the state has become involved in setting wages and in decreeing other policies that have removed much of the substance of collective bargaining to the area of administrative and/or judicial decision. This state role has become so complex that it was· not feasible to score all aspects of it, particularly the state role in wage-setting. However, the provisions considered in the present analysis, which regulate the conditions of collective bargaining and the use of the strike, represent a large proportion of the important regulations in this area, particularly for analyzing the earlier phases in the emergence of labor law in Latin America.

Other Constraints. A series of additional constraints are commonly found which (1) limit the kinds of demands unions may make and the kinds of demand-making activities in which they may engage; (2) control leadership and leadership recruitment with the goal of restricting the role of radical political groups, or earlier in this century, radical foreign immigrants; and (3) give legal sanction to direct state monitoring and intervention in internal union affairs.