ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the issue of informality, a phenomenon that was already of fundamental importance by the 1970s. The latter was reinforced by the crisis for two reasons, namely: the crisis affected urban employment and this type of employment constituted the labor markets' main adjustment mechanism. The crisis in the 1980s presented the trade union movement with two major challenges. On the one hand was its reaction to the recession and the adjustment policies that were beginning to be applied in each of the countries. On the other hand was its relation with the state arid the political system within the context of intensified conflict, which in several countries manifested in the form of war. The clearest and also most conflictive examples of the relation between trade unions and the political system were presented by the countries experiencing armed conflicts. The chapter ends with an analysis of the economic and political effects the crisis had on the trade union movement.
