Partisan Loyalty and Union Competition: Macroeconomic Adjustment and Industrial Restructuring in Mexico

Abstract

Abstract After the Debt Crisis of 1982, the PRI implemented policies of stabilization and structural reforms although it had previously advanced protectionism and state intervention during the post‐war period. These reforms triggered processes of industrial restructuring in the private and public sector and challenged the very institutions, which had sustained the historic alliance between unions and the PRI in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution. Although the majority of Mexican unions were subordinated to the governing party, some unions chose to negotiate or oppose the reforms. This chapter analyses the responses of the Mexican Workers’ Confederation (CTM) and industry‐specific unions in the automobile, education, electricity, oil, and telecommunication sectors, to explain the variation in the responses of Mexican unions. It focuses on the common behaviour of union leaders facing similar challenges linked to structural reform and the resulting exposure to international economic forces. It explains union responses by highlighting the influence of the competition among unions for the representation of workers and the competition among leaders for the control of the union as well as the historical legacies of the PRI‐CTM relationship.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 6 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.