Author: Nicolás Ratto
The Strike and the structural power in workplace. An analysis of labour strikes results in chilean private salaried area (2006-2016)
Several analysts identify (and describe) a resurge and revitalization of workers mobilization in Chile during the past ten years. This context connects with the emergency of different social movements that, together, may be stressing the neoliberal hegemony that governed in relative peace from the military dictatorship (1973-19189) to the end of the Concertación period (1990-2010)
About the results of this new collective conflictive actions of the workers in Chile, mainly the strikes (most of which happens at workplace level) there has been a big lack of sociological work: there’s too little preoccupation for identifying the levels of success that the strikes reaches (salary adjustments, for example) nor for identifying the diverse causes that makes the strikes in neoliberal Chile reaches good results for the workers. In general, analysis tend to look at Chilean workers as a whole, what finally highlights the low power that they have, due to the productive restructuration during the last 40 years and the still active labour laws “pro company” implemented during the dictatorship. Because of that, it is logical to expect bad results in the mobilizations. In this way of studying the workers as a whole, the political and legal analysis attending to the last failure that meant to the workers the discussion and approbation of the Labour Reform in the years 2015-2016 become important. Also, the comments about the low incidence that collective negotiation has to reduce the salaries inequality in Chile.
This investigation contributes to revert this situation describing the tools and positions of workers, referring to structural power in the labour place, market and associative power (Wright, 2000; Silver, 2003), that makes of the labour strikes in the private sector of the economy an effective one in economic and organizational terms. This powers emerge in different ways between the diverse economic sectors, due to the unequal capitalism develop, and due to the different trade union efforts to revitalize collective labour action.
For this, a qualitative study has been made through interviews, about ten labour strikes that took place in Chile between 2006 and 2016. This strikes were made by workers of diverse economic sectors, and reached different economic and organizational results for them. The conclusions points that is the structural power of the workers in the working place the dimension that tends to explain in the best way the effectiveness of a strike.