New Labor Actors Under Corporatism: Complementarity and the Renewal of Class Representation for Precarious Workers

Abstract

Labor scholars identify increased roles of “new labor actors,” such as civil society organizations, in workers’ representation. Previous work found their increasing tendency to cooperate with unions, opening these up to inclusion of precarious workers. Praising these cooperative relations, research has understated other interactions that might develop between labor actors and their contributions to workers. Focusing on the relations among new labor actors and unions in the context of Israeli corporatism, this article analyzes conflictual interactions among labor actors and their implications of these for union legitimacy as well as for workers’ representation. Comparing two cases—of noncitizen Palestinian construction workers, and of subcontracted cleaning and security workers—the article argues that “conflictual complementarity” persists in the relations between labor actors in corporatist contexts. Conflictual complementarity is identified as based on sectoral traditions, contributing to transformations in union representation of precarious workers.

Collective labor relations and juridification: A marriage proposal

“…Hence, although institutions accord relative advantage in centralized settings to cross-class collaborations and partnership, these too are under threat from external pressures and their impact on the relations between the social partners and their constituencies. These pressures constitute a growing challenge to previously stable IR frameworks, eroding their capacity to generate gainsharing schemes and leading to increased reliance on juridified regulation and on new representative actors (Bondy, 2020b). In the context of a strong corporatist institutional legacy, then, we would expect juridification (and the consequent erosion of centralized collective bargaining) to spur both unions and EAs to change strategy.…”

“…The Israeli construction sector was a leading industry in the first decades of the Israeli economy, based on extensive public investment and ownership, and a highly unionized workforce (Bondy, 2020b). By the time of the case covered here, the industry had been completely privatized (Grinberg and Shafir, 2000) but its legacy of corporatist governance and general stagnation had left collective labor relations intact.…”

“…This governmental enforcement arrangement was characterized by insufficient resources and internalized racism (Shalev, 2017), and as the Histadrut refrained from organizing and representing noncitizen workers, Palestinians were de facto excluded from ‘normal’ employment relations. This latter factor further perpetuated recurrent violations of workers’ rights (Bondy, 2020b; Niezna, 2018), which the Histadrut – given its institutional security that reproduced its representative status – had no incentive to address.…”

“…In the face of the Histadrut’s inaction concerning noncitizen Palestinian workers’ rights in the construction sector, it was civil society organizations (CSOs), seeking both labor and ethno-national justice, that opened the way for noncitizen Palestinians to bring their grievances to the labor courts (Preminger, 2017), making CSOs’ activity a major driving force in regulating and enforcing precarious workers’ rights (Bondy, 2020b; Mundlak, 2007). Kav La’Oved (‘the workers’ hotline’, established 1991), followed by other CSOs such as HaMoked LePlitim VeMehagrim (‘the center for refugees and migrants’), pioneered IR juridification through judicial representation of noncitizen Palestinian workers and the expansion of their (access to) human and labor rights (see Preminger, 2017).…”

“…institutions (e.g. Bechter et al, 2012;Bondy, 2018Bondy, , 2020aBondy, , 2020b. Heeding Guillaume (2018: 239), who argues for a 'nuanced and contextualized approach to the juridification of employment relations', we present a precedential development in the sectoral IR of the Israeli construction industry -the establishment of an 'enforcement committee' under the auspices of the traditional social partners (the union and the EA), to address recurrent grievances of noncitizen Palestinian workers.…”