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.

Keywords: Complementarity, Inter-Actor Relations, Israel, Labor Relations, New Labor Actors, Sociology of Work, Trade Unions