The Trade Union Regime in Post-State Corporatism Period－The Change of Confederation of Trade Unions in Organization and Function
Date Issued
2011
Date
2011
Author(s)
Zhang, Ti-Hao
Abstract
In order to demobilize the working class during the martial law period, the KMT government established trade unions to preempt the system and formed a unitary, hierarchically ordered institutional frame for unions with corporate shape. From the perspective of KMT government, the organization of unions was not for working class to express their interests but a tool to safeguard its own authority. As a result, before the martial law was lifted, the unions belonged to a corporate regime without function of mediating interests. After the abolition of martial law and as democratization began, activists tried to challenge the party state’s control in trade unions and formed autonomous unions of their own. These autonomous unions gathered during 1990s and established alliances on the county/city level; finally they formed a national alliance in 2000, Taiwan Confederation of Trade Unions, which was a blow for party state’s trade union system. Since then, Taiwan''s trade union regime entered the next period: post-state corporatism.
However, how the trade union regime has been evolving in the post-state corporatism era is still unclear. This project thus lays out four questions: has the institutional design of Taiwan’s trade union regime ever evolved toward the ideal of social corporatism? Which path has been taken? How the organization of Taiwan’s trade union regime works and what are their functions now in 2010? What factors have made the present form? This project set out from historical institutional perspectives, inquiring into the changing trajectory of Confederation of Trade Unions during the post-state corporatism period.
This paper points out that 90s is the critical juncture. Some agents made influential choice which leaded to the follow-up institutional path. First, the movement that aimed to the establishment of Confederation of trade unions conforms to the definition of social corporatism, integrating interests “from bottom to up.” Nevertheless, in order to secure resources, some agents let the unions of state-owned enterprises become direct member of Taiwan’s Confederation of Trade Unions. The result was that the confederation of trade unions on national level represented workers of different interests from those on county/city level. Since the organization failed to intermediate all the workers’ interests, “difference” among the workers easily turned into “conflict,” which promoted institutional change. After that, the organization “discretized”, and finally “separated” into two mobilization systems, the Solidarity and Taiwan Confederation of Trade Unions.
Subjects
TRADE UNION
CONFEDERATION OF TRADE UNIONS
TRADE UNION REGIME
CORPORATISM
HISTORICAL INSTITUTIONALISM
PATH DEPENDENCE
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