The effects of “neoliberalism” on the world of work and labor unions are topics of contemporary debate in most countries. According to David Harvey, neoliberalism can be understood as a theory of political economy practices that seeks to enhance human well-being by maximizing entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional framework characterized by the protection of private property rights, individual liberties, free markets, and free trade. However, these general features constitute only one model, and neoliberalism, in its empirical forms, varies across different historical and geographical contexts. In other words, neoliberalism is understood as a “bricolage of practices and ideas,” forming a kind of “collective thought.” Harvey emphasizes that the manifestations of neoliberalism differ from its theoretical models.

Workers Trapped in the Expansion of Precarious Self-Employment
The spread of neoliberalism, which is part of capitalist globalization and accelerates it, has had a significant impact on the international division of labor. While resource extraction and dependence on raw materials (mineral, fossil, and agricultural) remain key features of the economy in many countries, particularly in Asia where industrial production (such as clothing, cars, and low-cost products) has expanded, labor dynamics differ across countries and regions. Overall, in “emerging” and “developing” economies, the share of agricultural jobs significantly declined in the 1980s and continued to do so between 2000 and 2015, while the services sector rapidly expanded. Meanwhile, the share of industrial jobs in many countries has remained nearly constant, dropping below 10%.

These countries have gradually become laboratories for neoliberal reforms. In the 20th century, many analysts believed that the global South would follow the path of “developed” countries, but this view no longer holds. This raises the question: are types of work that are typically informal and precarious in the South becoming increasingly common in the North? Does the “Uberization” of economies in global capitalist centers reflect the spread of precarious self-employment and self-exploitation that describes the situation of many workers in the South? The assumption is that workers no longer need factories or bosses and instead have space for individual initiative, entrepreneurial maneuvering, and resilience.

One characteristic of neoliberalism is that it “equates political freedom with market and trade freedom.” In this framework, “the labor market has been liberated from regulatory constraints or barriers.”

The conclusion that the rise of neoliberalism inevitably accompanies the decline of labor organizations and institutions would be misleading and could even favor neoliberal advocates. Therefore, it is better to address the various specific impacts that neoliberal policies—privatization, deregulation, and financialization—have on workers and their organizations, particularly labor unions.

Workers and labor unions are not merely passive victims of neoliberalism; they play a role in shaping neoliberal policies and can either embrace or challenge neoliberal discourses.

The Need to Study Labor Unions Without Romanticizing Them
Neoliberalism does not signify the end of class formation or class struggles. Labor unions still play an important role in mobilizing workers, defending their rights, and striving to improve their living and working conditions. However, unions emerged from a specific historical context: the expansion of wage labor and the proletarianization of workers due to the industrial revolution and its associated relations of production. Unions then spread globally, adapting to different conditions and contexts. Today, workers and their organizations are affected by neoliberalism, which is nearly ubiquitous, though it manifests differently. With this view, we no longer see labor unions as a fixed model shaped solely by industrial relations and the historical experiences of the global North. Instead, labor unions are understood as a type of social, economic, and political organization that is variably shaped by working classes in different contexts. This means that unions are by no means organizations exclusively formed and represented by wage laborers in formal and relatively stable job relationships.

In the global North, labor unions and research about them are frequently, and rightly so, considered to be in decline, as the rise of informal work and precarious employment in global industrial centers has reduced the number of “classic” union supporters. The reality is that most people in the global South (and probably in many places in the North as well) are not employed in formal, relatively secure wage labor. They are farmers, artisans, miners, etc., engaged in “informal” activities like petty trade, transportation, agriculture, care work, and other sectors. About 85% of African workers are employed in what is known as the informal economy. Even in South Africa, the “most advanced” industrial economy on the continent, over 40% of total employment is precarious. The fact that many people are employed in formal and relatively secure jobs is a historical exception rather than a norm in global capitalism. Informal, precarious, unfree, and unpaid work has always been a key component of capitalism. Therefore, the “image we have of capitalism—whether as a system of global accumulation or more narrowly as a set of spatial and temporal relations of production—is never complete without considering these forms of labor.” If precarious and informal work is on the rise, it does not necessarily mean that we are witnessing the “end of unions as we know them.”

Prominent authors have addressed the issue of the precarious and unstable working class. For instance, Guy Standing believes that unions cannot defend the rights of the “precariat” or work to improve their living and working conditions. Indeed, informal workers are only marginally represented in unions but are involved in a range of other organizations, both progressive and neoliberal: workers’ associations, women’s associations, cooperatives, civil society organizations, advocacy groups, and other entities, from local, scattered groups to semi-organized or fully organized transnational networks.

In some cases, informal workers’ self-organizations resemble unions in terms of organizational forms and methods, but they do not identify themselves as unions. In Africa, numerous case studies focus on organizing informal sector workers, mainly in urban environments like transportation, private services, dock workers, and street vendors.

Of course, labor unions are highly institutionalized actors in industrial relations in the global North. However, their institutionalized status is also a strength: they have access to resources and decision-making arenas and are granted specific rights and opportunities. Given their history and experiences, unions possess social-organizational knowledge and even transnational networks that other working-class organizations may lack. However, this does not mean that unions are the only or best organizations for representing the working class and defending workers’ rights. Nonetheless, they remain important and unique collective actors operating globally in most contexts and across all scales. With this view, we must study unions within their empirical contexts, not as a model formed in the history of industrial relations in the North. Therefore, we need to study unions in a temporal and spatial context, especially those located in the global South, with a perspective that goes beyond “romanticizing the form and structure of unions.”

Studying unions allows us to examine their diverse forms, organized by working classes, including farmers, miners, informal workers, and the self-employed, rather than fixing a particular model or structure. Unions are by no means a homogeneous or reducible category of actors. Thus, we can view unions as a type of organization and a tool for mobilization and organizing without ascribing predetermined forms, roles, and functions to them.

We must now ask how unions, as social-political organizations, are formed and appropriated in different times and places, particularly in the global South. How do organizations that identify themselves as unions evolve under restrictive conditions such as authoritarian regimes and dictatorships that suppress labor rights? How do unions survive despite issues like resource shortages (limited membership dues, lack of access to stable financial resources, and absence of permanent staff)?

The Need to Study Unions in Their Specific Historical and Social Contexts
To understand and assess the role that labor unions play in a society, they must be studied within their relevant historical and social framework. This includes examining their relationships with other organizations, political parties, social movements, and the ruling system. According to this view, studying unions also involves examining the “actual processes of struggle and organizing that exist outside the form of the union and parallel to it.”

“Social Movement Unionism” has been promoted as the close link between unions and other unorganized or unorganizable working-class movements. These classes include small producers, domestic workers, farmers, homemakers, technicians, and democratic movements such as student movements, women’s movements, human rights, and others. Of course, it should be noted that unions and social movements are not inherently more radical, authentic, or legitimate than other forms of organizing and do not have superiority over one another. The extent to which unions use their resources to advance the interests and demands of the working class, which interests and demands they represent, and how radical their struggles are remain unanswered.

In fact, studying industrial relations in the neoliberal era as an academic field must examine unions and other workers’ organizations, as well as anti-capitalist political mobilizations, in a symbiotic relationship with capital accumulation. However, this issue may be somewhat different for the global South, particularly because labor organizing in many of these countries is seen as a continuation of the struggle against colonialism and apartheid (which, of course, are closely linked to capital accumulation) for national liberation and democratization.

Conclusion
The study of labor unions in the neoliberal era requires a deep understanding of the structural changes and capitalist globalization that have transformed labor relations and worker organizing. Neoliberalism, by promoting precarious self-employment and reducing formal, secure jobs, has posed fundamental challenges for unions. However, contrary to claims that unions are facing their end under these conditions, evidence shows that labor unions continue to play an important role in mobilizing workers and defending their rights, even if their forms and methods of organization are varied and adapted to different geographical and historical contexts.

Unions must be studied within their social and historical contexts to better understand how they respond to neoliberalism. They are no longer solely representatives of formal workers in stable job relationships, but operate in various forms in both the global South and global North. Furthermore, the rise of new organizations such as cooperatives, workers’ associations, and social movements shows that informal and self-employed workers also participate in organizing processes.

Ultimately, it is essential to view unions not as passive actors in the face of neoliberalism, but as institutions that can challenge the policies of this system. A comparative examination of unions in the global North and South can show how these institutions confront neoliberal structural changes and what strategies they adopt to survive and defend workers’ rights.

Footnotes:

1. The term “Uberization” refers to the process in which business models similar to those used by companies like Uber are applied in other industries and sectors. These models usually involve precarious employment, self-employment, and freelance work (informal), where workers are engaged on a temporary and flexible basis instead of in a stable organizational environment.
2. Bernards, N. (2019). Placing African labour in global capitalism: The politics of irregular work. Review of African Political Economy, 46(160), 294–303. https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2019.1639496
3. Standing, G. (2011). The precariat: The new dangerous class. Bloomsbury Academic.
4. Webster, E. (2015). Labour after globalization: Old and new sources of power (ISER Working Paper 2015/1). Institute of Social and Economic Research, Rhodes University.
5. Harvey, D. (2019). Spaces of neoliberalization: Towards a theory of uneven geographical development (2nd ed.). Franz Steiner.