Class power and labor policy
Unions, business associations, and reform in Chile

The chronic weakness of the labor movement in Chile has been essentially explained by the labor deregulation imposed by the Pinochet dictatorship and by the subordination of unions to political parties. In this book, Pérez Ahumada introduces a crucial and innovative perspective: class power. He meticulously studies how the strength of social actors, especially employers, channeled through their “associative power,” becomes decisive in explaining the absence of pro-union reforms, even at times when political conditions were optimal, such as during the Nueva Mayoría government. Along the way, he shows how the reproduction of class power has its own present logic, which goes far beyond the institutional legacies of the dictatorship. A key book for understanding not only the case of Chile, but also how power relations play out in contemporary political economies.