Workers of the world, unite (and cooperate): changing coordination strategies of organized labor in post-socialist settings

ABSTRACT This study inspects the changing capacity of organized labor to build alliances within (intra-sectoral) and outside (cross-sectoral) its organizational milieu. It applies relational approach to the study of collective action and analyzes its transformations in changing political and economic contexts. Applying social network analysis of protest event data on economic contention in the post-socialist Czech Republic (1989–2021), the study shows that coordination strategies are not subject to uniform and linear change. Instead, it demonstrates how various combinations of political conflict types, political opportunities, and economic threats produce different levels of coordination of organized labor within its organized labor milieu, or with other civil society collective actors. Most importantly, organized labor increased internal coordination during periods of open political opportunities or high economic threats (the main conflict being the economy). Second, cross-sectoral coalitions between labor and civil society organizations became highly probable when a systemic political transformation was on the way or in times of severe austerity policies.