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Social Solidarity for All? Trade Union Strategies, Labor Market Dualization, and the Welfare State in Italy and South Korea

Niccolo Durazzi, Timo Fleckenstein, Soohyun Christine Lee


Author
Niccolo Durazzi, Timo Fleckenstein, Soohyun Christine Lee

Title
Social Solidarity for All? Trade Union Strategies, Labor Market Dualization, and the Welfare State in Italy and South Korea

Journal
Politics & Society

Year
2018

Abstract
Challenging the new political-economic “mainstream” that considers trade unions to be “complicit” in labor market dualization, this article’s analysis of union strategies in Italy and South Korea, most-different union movements perceived as unlikely cases for the pursuit of broader social solidarity, shows that in both countries unions have successively moved away from insider-focused strategies and toward “solidarity for all” in the industrial relations arena as well as in their social policy preferences. Furthermore, unions explored new avenues of political agency, often in alliance with civil society organizations. This convergent trend toward a social model of unionism is ascribed to a response of unions to a “double crisis”: that is, a socioeconomic crisis, which takes the form of a growing periphery of the labor market associated with growing social exclusion, and a sociopolitical crisis, which takes the form of an increasing marginalization of the unions from the political process.

Durazzi, N., Fleckenstein, T., & Lee, S. C. (2018). Social Solidarity for All? Trade Union Strategies, Labor Market Dualization, and the Welfare State in Italy and South Korea. Politics & Society, 46(2), 205-233.