Featuring Laura Boudreau, associate professor of business at Columbia Business School Labor Unions and Pro-Democracy Resistance with Rocco Macchiavello, Virginia Minni, Mari Tanaka, and Francesca Trento How do civil-society organizations shape democratic resilience? We study whether and how labor unions contribute to pro-democracy resistance in the context of Myanmar’s 2021 coup. The two largest union federations' Facebook communications shifted from workplace concerns to political resistance and grew more confrontational after the coup. Combining a pre-coup survey of 1,104 garment workers with political-prisoner records and township-level data on unions, protests, and armed conflict, we find that townships with higher pre-coup union presence saw more civilian collective action after the coup and, with a lag, more state repression. At the individual level, arrest--our main measure of costly participation--falls disproportionately on union presidents, though leadership traits explain almost none of whom is arrested. Pre-coup organizational capacity instead predicts arrest, conditional on individual traits and leader quality; leader arrests also spill over to coworkers, including non-union members. A simple model rationalizes these patterns as leaders investing in their organization’s coordination or credibility. Unions' organizational infrastructure, built during ordinary workplace bargaining, can become a resource for resisting repression.

Take 30 minutes to pause and reset with Let’s Meditate! Join Tanya Kingsley, LMSW, for a guided mindfulness meditation at Ives Hall! This beginner-friendly session is open to all. Let’s Meditate is a free, guided mindfulness meditation series, sponsored by Cornell Health in collaboration with numerous campus partners. Learn more at health.cornell.edu/meditate.