Labor's Role in Newly Developing Countries

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THE struggle for economic improvement and political freedom in which enormous sections of the world are now engaged may well be the most far-reaching effort in human history. There is one aspect of this battle which has not been widely recognized, and that is the important participation in it of organizations of workers. Peoples throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America are looking more and more to labor unions as an instrument for improving their economic, social and political conditions.

It is misleading to think of these trade or labor unions in the newly developing countries as bearing any close resemblance to labor organizations in the United States; in general, they have different origins, purposes, methods and objectives. The differences have caused much confusion. Westerners have been led to ask: Of what importance can a labor union of several thousand men be in a country of many millions which is industrially underdeveloped? To answer this, we must first examine some of the general characteristics of workers organizations in the countries in question.

In the first place, these unions were not born in industrial revolution as the result of an urgent and specific need of a congested mass of factory workers for improved wages and working conditions. In their origins, they do not resemble the unions of England, the United States and Europe. Generally, labor unions in the less developed parts of the world were superimposed on a basically rural society for political or ideological reasons. They have developed as rural coöperatives, social welfare organizations, political parties, semi-fraternal groups and, in a few instances, rudimentary industrial unions, spreading to the mines, oil fields, railways and textile factories...