Since Chile returned to democracy in 1990, centre-left governments have tried to reform the provisions on collective bargaining, strikes and unions established by the Pinochet dictatorship. Between 2015 and 2016 President Michelle Bachelet made the latest attempt to reform them. Despite favourable conditions, the changes were modest. This article explains why this is so. Drawing upon the notion of ‘associational power’ and through comparisons with labour reforms in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, this article suggests that the imbalance between workers’ and employers’ collective power is key for explaining why pro-labour reforms fail.

At a general level of neoliberal repudiation or expansion of social policies, most post-neoliberal Latin American governments in the 2000s have exhibited similarities. However, coalitions with popular actors have displayed a lot of variation. In order to compare popular-sector coalitions the article constructs a framework with two central dimensions: electoral and organisational/interest; in post-import substitution industrialisation (ISI) Latin America the latter is composed of both unions and territorial social movements (TSMs). It contends that the region witnessed four types of popular coalitions: electoral (Ecuador and Chile), TSM-based (i.e. made up of informal sector-based organisations, Venezuela and Bolivia), dual (i.e. composed of both unions and TSMs, Argentina and Brazil) and union/party-based (Uruguay). The study argues that government–union coalitions are largely accounted for by the relative size of the formal economy, and by the institutional legacies of labour based-parties. Coalitions with informal sector-based organisations are rooted in the political activation of these TSMs during the anti-neoliberal struggles of the 1990s and early 2000s.