ILPC 2026

This research explore the relation between the tactical repertoire used by workers and his effect in the possibility to triumph in strikes in Chile. The labor conflict literature has scarcely studied the power of the strike in terms of the strategies and tactics of mobilization deployed by the workers to beat the counterpart. Rather, the analysis has focused on structural aspects of workers to determine their capacity to win. Within this framework, the duration of the strike -and his determinants- are a well-studied indicator of workers ability to damage production, wherein shorter strikes tend to be more successful. However, this indicator has not been studied in relation to the complementary actions of mobilization, that is, according to the decision of the workers to deploy more or less disruptive tactics.

To explore the relation between the duration of the strikes and the tactical repertoires, we use the statistical database of Observatorio de Huelgas Laborales COES-UAH (Labor Strikes Observatory) of Chile 2010-2016. This database register the labor strikes through the Protest Event Analysis methodology and include many sociological variables as tactics and police presence. The analysis have two moments. In first place, we use the Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to detect the tacticals repertories present in the strikes in Chile by the combination of patrons of tactics in the events. Second, we explore the hazard function in relation to the strike ending by the Event History Analysis through the Cox Regression and estimating the time in days. In this way, we evaluate the capacity of triumph of each tactical repertoire in differents moments on the strike.

The results suggest that we are in presence of a different kind of power considered by Olin Wright -Associational and Structural Power. Rather, this is a power in movement or mobilization power. Specifically, the use of complementary tactics enhace the hazard of finish the strike, but just in the first ten days of strikes. Then the workers loose the control on the results and they should straggle back. Further, this suggest an employer strategy of wear down to the strikes avoiding make consessions and start the negociations. Also, we found three classes of repertories in the strikes: a group without complementary repertorie, content repertoire and transgressive repertorie. The use of a transgressive repertorie is more usefull in the first three of strikes, then are not significant differences with the content repertorie.