2024 Labor Strike Insights: Rising Extra-Legal Interruptions and Emerging Workplace Demands

The 2024 Labor Strike Brief by the OHL reveals a rise in extra-legal interruptions in regions along with significant changes in the structure of labor conflict in Chile, updating over a decade of data and trends.

The Citizen

03/12/2025 5:15pm

Original article: Radiografía 2024: las remuneraciones siguen al mando y emergen nuevas demandas laborales

The Labor Strike Observatory (OHL), part of the Conflict and Social Cohesion Studies Center (COES) in collaboration with Alberto Hurtado University, has released the 2024 Labor Strike Brief, providing the latest information on labor conflict in the country.

Since 2015, the OHL has focused on recording, analyzing, and researching the dynamics of labor strikes in Chile to offer a reliable and high-quality overview of labor disputes.

Annually, the team compiles a Strike Database that aggregates data since 2010 and encodes over 80 variables using Protest Event Analysis Methodology. This database is informed by daily reports from the Directorate of Labor and a fixed sample from 15 national and regional media outlets.

Since its inception, the Observatory has been publishing an Annual Report on Labor Conflict in Chile, and starting in 2024, it has introduced the Labor Strike Brief to consolidate and update the most significant data and graphics from over a decade of research, focusing on the trends observed in the latest available year.

The 2024 Brief showed a slight rise in interruptions within the private sector and a decrease in the public sector. Additionally, it outlined indicators on the evolution of strikes from 2010 to 2024, the number of workers involved, lost Work-Person-Days, predominant economic sectors, and the regional distribution of demands, among other dimensions.

Through this publication, the Observatory aims to provide a rigorous and consistent analysis of labor conflict in Chile.

The report highlighted that extra-legal strikes are the most common form of protest in regions, historically generating significant economic impact. In the private sector, DPTP rates peaked over 20,000 for every 100,000 workers during years like 2003-2004 and 2014, reflecting the high volatility of strikes occurring outside regulated collective bargaining.

Extra-Legal Strikes Predominate in the Private Sector

The document identified key trends in strikes throughout the country. Historically, the public sector has seen the majority of interruptions compared to the private sector, with notable peaks in 1987, 1993, 2002, and 2016.

However, this trend becomes more complex when examining legality in the private sector. Within this sector, extra-legal strikes (conducted outside the framework of collective bargaining) are more frequent than legal ones, with extra-legal events peaking at over 200 strikes in years such as 2015, 2016, and 2019.

Although total interruptions have generally decreased since the peak in 2016, the report confirms that conflict within the private sector continues to be characterized by the predominance of actions outside regulated frameworks.

As for the number of workers involved in strikes, this has fluctuated cyclically, hitting a historic peak of over 2 million around 2017. Furthermore, it was found that the majority of participating workers came from extra-legal strikes.

Education, Health, and Public Administration Lead Strike Activity

Education, Public Administration, and Health accounted for the highest number of strikes. In the public sphere, activity is heavily concentrated in essential social services, particularly driven by the Ministries of Health and Education.

Conversely, it was noted that legal strikes are predominant in Mining and Education, while Public Administration, Agriculture, and Commerce see a prevalence of extra-legal strikes.

The document also indicates that conflict is a predominantly regional phenomenon. The Metropolitan area is the primary hub, accounting for around 40% of total strikes.

Concerning legality, in 2024, 83.9% of strikes in the Metropolitan Region were legal, while in the Northern zone, 71.8% were extra-legal, a figure similar to the Southern zone, where 72.7% were also classified as extra-legal, reflecting the predominance of unregulated conflict.

Wages Remain the Key Driver of Labor Conflict

Regarding the motives and tactics behind strikes, it was found that the dominant reason is remunerations, which remains the leading issue in both the private sector (close to 60% in 2023-2024) and across all regions (typically above 60% during the 2010-2024 period).

New approaches have emerged, with a trend towards diversification and an increase in demands for working conditions, which constitute around 20% of recent years. This diversification is particularly pronounced in regions like Antofagasta, Los Lagos, and Valparaíso.

The analysis also revealed that legal strikes tend to last longer, averaging approximately 9 days, while extra-legal strikes are shorter, averaging 3 days in 2024.

In terms of tactics, the most common is picketing or peaceful protests outside of the workplace (over 1,200 occurrences), followed by street blockades (689 occurrences) and marches (634 occurrences).

The OHL analysis portrays a dual labor conflict in Chile: formal and prolonged in the capital, versus extra-legal and of shorter duration in the regions, with a historically anchored base of demands focusing on wages that is beginning to expand towards working conditions and organization.