Labor militancy and Taiwan's export-led industrialization

This article focuses on the various patterns of labor militancy in the process of Taiwan's export-led industrialization. It elaborates the variables that contribute to the various patterns of labor militancy and the possible causal relationships between them from three crucial dimensions — economic performances of export-led industrialization, the effects of a politicized environment, and the interaction between labor activists, government and rank-and-filers. By using evidence from Taiwan, it develops a two-dimensional diagram and testifies four propositions. First, export-led industrialization is not always associated with the deterioration of living standards and increasing material hardships, neither does it inevitably give rise to anti-system labor militancy. Secondly, the rise and the intensity of labor militancy have much to do with a politicized environment. Thirdly, when a politicized setting is given, labor militancy which arises in the midst of export expansion tends to be instrumentalist, whilst that arising in export contraction is prone to be anti-system. Lastly, no matter what type of labor militancy, it is more likely that the labor rank-and filers with withdraw from the militant mobilization when their economic claims are met, while the labor activists and politicians persist until they have been granted political concessions.