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The Labor Judge Unleashed: Rule of Law and Labor Rights in “Neoliberal” Chile

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

César F. Rosado Marzán
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Abstract

Hoping to improve labor justice, some Latin American countries have reformed their labor courts without necessarily buttressing working-class power. Class power theories make us skeptical of these state-centric strategies for labor rights. Will the “rule-of-law” reforms work? This article reports ethnographic evidence collected by the author in the Chilean labor courts during 2009–2010, and secondary sources. It compares contemporary labor courts, reformed but in an otherwise “neoliberal” context, with the unreformed labor courts of the “socialist” years (1970–1972) to gauge the efficacy of rule-of-law reforms. Results show that despite the neoliberal context, the labor courts were more responsive to workers' claims than under socialism. Rule of law and procedural rules matter for effective labor rights.

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Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , Fall 2018 , pp. 1574 - 1603
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2018 

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