ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes organized labor's adaptation and resistance in democratic transitions under policies of free market economic adjustment in the cases of Nigeria and South Africa. It examines the impact of structural adjustment on labor taken as a set of formal organizations and as a social movement capable of relating with broader processes of identity construction and social mobilization. In the context of neoliberalism, an influence tends to leave space for labor's subaltern institutionalization and growing separation from grassroots constituencies and processes. The impact of structural adjustment programs on labor is characterized by the relative importance of labor movements and organizations vis-a-vis other sectors of the "civil society" in various countries during phases of transition and cannot be assumed to be static and ahistorical. The views find resonance in the neoliberal emphasis on the expansion of civil society as reduction of state intervention and of the alleged "privileges" of urban-based working-class "elites".
