Introduction: New Studies/New Organizations; Labor Organization in Latin America and Beyond (original) (raw)
2007, International Labor and Working-class History
This special issue of International Labor and Working-Class History seeks to understand how Latin America's trade unions and other workers' organizations have responded during the last three decades to the wholesale reorganization of their economies and polities --and how the history of worker organizations in southern Africa in this era is strikingly similar, despite surface differences in political and cultural context. In Latin America, workers faced monetary stabilization and neoliberal policies; the globalization of trade, finance, and production; as well as civil wars and military regimes that eventually gave way to civilian rule. From approximately 1930-1970, Latin America's modern labor movements became powerful social and political actors that grew with industrialization and the rise of proto-welfare states. Today, the picture is starkly different. With few exceptions, decades of military rule and civil war, debt crisis and hyperinflation, globalization and neoliberal policies have left Latin America's traditional labor organizations and allied political parties severely weakened. During these same decades, new movements
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