ILPC 2027

The ‘three basic labor laws’ (laodong sanfa) form the core legal framework governing employment relations in Taiwan. In 2011, despite its pro-business orientation, the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) party enacted a series of labor friendly revisions. These included extending unionization eligibility to teachers, foreign workers and new categories of industrial workers, stipulating employer penalties for fair labor practice violations, and establishing a labor adjudication board under the Ministry of Labor.  

The revisions are not only politically anomalous, they also run counter to lines of thought questioning the capacity of labor movements to promote working class interests in an economic environment of declining union strength. In this context, labor scholars have cited evidence of union revitalization both in active campaigns by transnational labor groups demanding labor reform and in grassroots militancy arising from alliances between labor unions and anti-capitalist movement groups. But these were not decisive factors compelling the 2011 revisions in Taiwan.

I adopt a Polanyi-Gramscian framework to interpret the apparent paradox of enacting this pro-labor legislation in Taiwan. Gramsci’s examination of coercion and consent and crises of legitimacy are useful for investigating how democratization of an authoritarian regime propels political actors to restructure capitalist relations among various class forces. Polanyi adopts an economic perspective asserting the centrality of the commodification of specific capital inputs, namely land, labor, and money, in fomenting and shaping the contours of social and political mobilization. Coupled together, these two theoretical insights provide a set of tools to explore how interlocking relationships between the economy, society, and the state influence the nature and intensity of socio-historical change.  

In this paper, I argue that KMT concessions to the labor movement evident in the 2011 revisions can be partly explained by legacies of the party-state era. The historic loss of presidential power in 2000 forced the authoritarian party to reassess the quality and strength of relationships with heretofore sympathetic social groups, including teachers and trade unionists in state-owned enterprises (SOEs). After regaining power in 2008, the KMT was further squeezed by the potential for groups mobilizing against various forms of commodification to join forces with pro-localization groups, for whom the former authoritarian party has always been anathema. In addition to these constituent rumblings, the KMT’s pursuit of a preferred but highly controversial policy of accelerated economic integration with China was severely challenged by a deepening, national economic malaise. The authoritarian party hastily enacted revisions to the labor relations system seeking to rekindle support among its former social bases and to pacify segments of the opposition. In this case I show that legislation protecting and extending working class rights and interests is compatible with neoliberalism and post-2008 changes in global capitalism. 

This research is based on secondary literature, contemporary newspaper articles, document analysis, and fieldwork conducted in Taiwan (2016). Fieldwork data consist of observations from personal attendance at study-related events and more than 60 interviews with labor and social movement activists, union officials and members, civil servants, academics, political party staff and journalists. A thesis paper is in first draft.