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The cycles of conflicts and struggles and the forms of workers´ collective resistance registered in the last few decades in Latin America reveal the heterogeneous and uneven ways in which the working classes are made and remade. Place-specific socio-political contexts and their effects on employment relations ( McGrath-Champ, Herod, and Rannie, 2010), the organizational power of workers within the structure of the labour process and capitalist production (Hyman, 2006; Darlington, 2014), and the role of thestate in mediating between different class interests (Panitch and Albo, 2014 ,Panitch and Chibber 2013) are all factors that highly influence the dynamics of conflict and the emergence of labour movements.This notwithstanding, in the country-specific analysis presented in the following pages we have followed Silver´s (2003, 2014) comparative historical analysis of world labour unrest as a general frame of reference to explain the making and remaking of labour movements. The vantage point in Silver´s approach rests on establishing transhistorical and transnational connections between patterns of labour movement struggles and the historical development of the capitalist mode of production. While Marxist scholars argue that the internal contradictions of capital force capitalists to identify new strategies for improving profitability and reducing costs when they face crises of over accumulation (Harvey, 1982, 2014), Silver argues that we should also consider the dynamics of the continuous tensions between the capitalist drive for profitability and workers´ resistance within the workplace. In so doing, she identifies four main strategies deployed bycapitalists. The first involves the spatial relocation of productive activities to low-wage countries, a process that has given rise to globalized production chains (Mezzadri, 2016). The second strategy seeks to reduce the dependence of capital on living labour by introducing new labour saving technology, such as automation or by outsourcing digitalized work processes ( Woodcock, 2018 ).The third and fourth strategies are derived from the first two and are typical of companies in core economies: shifting production to services and new industrial (more value-added) sectors, and moving from industrial production to financial speculation.For our purposes, Silver´s approach is important intwo senses: (a) the continuous existence of labour unrest is rooted in structural dynamics ofdevelopment common to different countries and producing similar patterns in terms oforganizational forms and types of conflict; and (b) both workplace and social movements strugglesrepresent forms of class resistance. In Latin America, this has been theorizedas the relationship between state-defined development trajectories and different types of working-classpolitics ( Collier and Handlin, 2009 : 48). The incorporation of the labour movement into thepolitical system of middle-income countries in Latin America occurred in the first half of the 20thcentury during the first phase of import substitution industrialization (ISI). In this period, working-classpolitics were channelled through strong unions and labour based parties ( Collier andCollier, 1991 ), which remained at the centre of the political arena until the final crisis of thesecond ISI phase in the 1970s and 1980s.In the final decades of the 20th century, theimplementation of neoliberal policies has represented the most importantsystemic factor shaping the social reality of Latin America. The liberalizationof labour markets and labour relations reforms, processes of privatization,deregulation, the reduction of welfare programmes, in the context of thetransnationalization and financialization of the economy, have createdwidespread poverty, unemployment, and informality, further increasing classdivides (Portes and Hoffman, 2003). Social opposition and mobilization againstthese policies have moved away from the strong union-labour party link,producing in many countries the growth of new community-based organizationsrepresenting the interests of the poorest workers (for instance cocaleros in Bolivia, Sem Terra in Brazil, Piqueteros in Argentina) and new political alliances andmovements openly opposing neoliberal policies ( Collier and Handlin, 2009 ).The anti-neoliberal struggles of the 1990s and early 2000s prepared the groundfor the political turn of many Latin American governments to a populistcentre-left, with anti-imperialist tones, what has been called the Pink Tide(see for instance Chodor, 2014; Grigera, 2017 ; Enríquez and Page, this volume). The context of commodities boom and economic growth in which thesereformist governments emerged, favoured redistributive policies, the creationof employment, the improvement of state social provisions, the extension ofbasic labour rights, and the reduction of poverty. In various cases, this favourable context also helped to revitalize trade unions in the formal sectorand led to the emergence of new grassroots workplace-based organizations andthe consolidation of welfare social programmes. Despite these positive changes, the structural conditions inherited from previous decades and the continuous dependenceof Latin American economies on an extractive export-oriented model, havelimited the consolidation of reformism in the region, giving rise to a newconservative turn which is accompanied by pro-market reforms and anti-labour policies in countries like Chile, Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. This new cycle represents for the working classes a regressive change that remains to beanalyzed.Changes in economic models and political systems, and transformations of production and distribution processes have cyclicall yappeared in the development of capital as ways to restore accumulation. However, we can also expect that "new agencies and sites of struggle emerge alongwith new demands and forms of struggle, reflecting the shifting terrain onwhich labour-capital relations develop" ( Silver, 2003 : 19).In the following pages we aim to briefly sketch howthese broad range of transformations have impacted on working conditions and onthe agencies of workers in contexts with different political trajectories:stable neoliberalism (Mexico and Chile); stable popular reformism (Ecuador, Bolivia,and Venezuela); conservative shift (Argentina and Brazil).

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