ABSTRACT

This chapter pays a particular attention to the following issues: formation and differentiation of the grape sector and its labour force; the diversity of rural labour relations, forms of payment, and employment security; the place and role of women workers and migrant labour and fundamentally, how workers collective action co-constitute aspects. The chapter explains the trade unions that actively pursue their members interests, sometimes through militant collective action, can contribute to positive developmental processes and outcomes through enhancing their members pay, working conditions, and ease of social reproduction. It provides a historical overview of the emergence of the valley's grape sector, its new labour force, and the latter's success in winning concessions from employers. And also illustrates how the valley's employers have responded to these gains by purposefully attempting to structure the rural labour market in order to simultaneously limit the influence of the valley's rural workers union and increase workers productivity.