Building Power from Below analyzes the success of Walmart workers in Chile. Retail and warehouse workers have achieved the seemingly unachievable. They have organized Walmart. How do we explain workers’ success in Chile, the cradle of neoliberalism, in challenging the world’s largest and most antiunion corporation? Chilean workers have spent years building grass roots organizations committed to principles of union democracy. While both retail and warehouse workers have successful unions, they have built different organizations due to their industry, workforce, and political histories. The inde ... More

Building Power from Below analyzes the success of Walmart workers in Chile. Retail and warehouse workers have achieved the seemingly unachievable. They have organized Walmart. How do we explain workers’ success in Chile, the cradle of neoliberalism, in challenging the world’s largest and most antiunion corporation? Chilean workers have spent years building grass roots organizations committed to principles of union democracy. While both retail and warehouse workers have successful unions, they have built different organizations due to their industry, workforce, and political histories. The independent retail worker unions are best characterized by what I call flexible militancy. These unions have less structural power, but have significant associational and symbolic power. While they have made notable bread and butter gains, their most notable successes have been in fighting for respect and dignity on the job. Warehouse workers by contrast have significant structural power. Their unions are best characterized by what I call strategic democracy. Their structural power has offered them the opportunity to “map production” and build strategic capacity. They have been especially successful in economic gains. While the model in Chile cannot necessarily be reproduced in different countries, we can certainly gain insights from their approaches, tactics, and strategies.