Workers’ Organizations and Transitional Justice in a Changing World Order: From the Center to the Periphery?

The design and implementation of transitional justice mechanisms have increasingly become key factors in both peacebuilding initiatives and post-authoritarian transitions. From Argentina and Spain to Poland and Ukraine, organized labor has often been persecuted and victimized by authoritarian regimes, security forces, and warlords. Moreover, trade unions have played a decisive role in human rights mobilizations and democratization processes, given the significant membership base and societal status of these organizations in many of these contexts. Yet the literature on their role in transitional settings is fragmentary and surprisingly limited. Accordingly, this paper explores how and to what extent labor unions have been involved in the legal, socio-economic, and political processes undertaken in transitional justice experiences. Have workers’ organizations been represented in peace negotiations, truth commissions, and government coalitions? Have workers had any role in the design of transitional justice mechanisms? How has their role evolved over time? How workers’ organizations interacted with their condition of victims? How have they adapted to policies and discourses concerning (neo)liberal and democratic regimes that emerged in the aftermath of the Cold War? The paper thus focuses on post-authoritarian and post-conflict cases and the evolution of the role organized labor since the 1980s, which will be juxtaposed onto contemporary dynamics in Colombia and Tunisia.