ORGANIZED LABOR AND RESTRUCTURING:

We conduct a case study of organized labor in the restructuring experience of two coal mining regions, Ostrava in the Czech Republic and Jiu Valley in Romania, in the 1990’s. Under the similar external circumstances, the Ostrava region undertook a gradual restruc-turing from early on whereas in Jiu Valley there was no restructuring until 1997, followed by a massive layoff over two years. Our quantitative exercise shows that the delay in restructuring in Jiu Valley was grossly inefficient in view of the region’s overall restructur-ing path and in comparision to the Ostravian path. The proximate reason for the delay was the Jiu Valley miners ’ action against restructuring. Essential for its success was the alliance with the conservative faction of the goverment; the alliance itself was ultimately arbitered by the Romanian electorate. We interpret the Jiu Valley miners ’ militancy as a behavioral pattern rather than as a rational strategy, which accords to their historical militancy in contrast to its absence among Ostravian miners. * We are grateful to the funding from the Global Development Network. We thank seminar participant