Ch.Tilly, M. Kennedy. 2014. Latin America’s “Third Left” Meets the U.S. Workplace: A Promising Direction for Worker Protection?, University
of California Irvine Law Review, 539.
Abstract: In Latin America over the last twenty-five years, as armed left movements have declined and left-populist electoral parties have come to flourish, a “Third Left” has also emerged, combining bottom-up decision making, autonomy from the state, and pursuit of claims on territory via direct action. Examples range from the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (MST) (Landless Workers Movement) in Brazil to workercontrolled businesses in Argentina. This approach finds U.S. parallels in housing rights movements over a similar period, and more recently in the Occupy movement. However, this approach has been little explored in the U.S. workplace, with the exception of worker ownership strategies that largely remain marginal. We consider what legal and social movement steps could facilitate the expansion of such an approach in the U.S. workplace, and the possible implications for worker protection.
