In December 2014, Chile’s Socialist president Michelle Bachelet announced a proposal for labor law reform intended to repeal the main aspects of the probusiness labor laws imposed in 1979 by Augusto Pinochet’s neoliberal dictatorship (197
In December 2014, Chile’s Socialist president Michelle Bachelet announced a proposal for labor law reform intended to repeal the main aspects of the probusiness labor laws imposed in 1979 by Augusto Pinochet’s neoliberal dictatorship (1973 – 1990).
Pinochet’s laws were designed to restrict collective bargaining to the firm level, to allow employers to hire replacement workers during strikes, and to weaken union activity by promoting the coexistence of multiple unions within firms and the formation of firm-level “bargaining groups.”
Bargaining groups are formed solely to sign collective agreements, regardless of whether the firm has a union, without the right to strike or legal protections for the workers who joined them. For these reasons, employers have spent decades promoting the formation of these groups to discourage union membership.
The Bachelet Labor Reform (2015 – 2016)
The Bachelet bill was not the first attempt to reform the 1979 labor laws. Since the return to dem