Labor unions and autocracy/totalitarianism

I only know of some literature on Egyptian trade unions. If you're interested, I can try to dig up a few sources (at least a book).

Can't think of any literature that fits your request but, if it's ok to discuss, it's pretty clear labor unions themselves have almost totally become bureaucratic tools of the bourgeoisie and are now closely integrated into the state at an almost unanimous level worldwide.

*commence flame war*

Considering most modern states are just corporate regimes that represent the interests of big money and not the working person, there's a lot of overlap between OP's original reading request and what happens today.

I don't know if Peronist Argentina qualifies as a "totalitarian/autocratic" but that unions there were basically entirely integrated into the State apparatus - corporatism par excellence.

I believe that, in theory, China has like 98% trade union representation or something like. Obviously that's meaningless, but it might be another good direction to go in.

Tunisia may be an interesting example with the UGTT being officially state-controlled during the Bourgiba-/Ben Ali-era but never completely subdued, sometimes acting like a kind of "official opposition" and in some parts rebellious ... but don't know any scholarly publications on it

I don't know about fascist corporatism (though there must be academic industrial relations type studies, and probably Marxist analyses too). On China, there's the book Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt.

It seems as though the general trend, though this is a bit of a simplification, is a shift from organized, interruptions of the labor process as the bargaining shio, toward a Reliance upon a sypathetic state. In the US this tool the form of Mao tenance of membership clauses, dues checkoff, and a state mediated election, contract negotioation, and arbitration regime.

Doing a quick library search, I found this, which might be of use (looks like it's mainly on Spain, but does a comparative analysis):

‘The labour market under the iron fist of the state’: the Franco dictatorship in the mirror of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin - Margarita Vilar-Rodrígueza.

The dictatorships of Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini allowed us to analyse the effects of the iron fist of the state on the labour market, focusing on the main characteristics and the results. For these countries, pressure on the labour market was the means used to subordinate workers to the state's great strategic objectives. It appears evident that the workers were the ones sacrificed: they lost labour and civil rights, suffered the pressure of discipline and coercion, were compelled to work more and be more productive with hardly any wage incentives. However, as far as labour issues were concerned, the authorities did not achieve the expected success either in terms of collaboration, as workers did not identify themselves with the policies of their respective regimes, or in terms of productivity, as there were hardly any incentives.

we had this thread on a related topic: https://libcom.org/forums/history/clandestine-syndicalism-10052013

Some random notes:

1. I think you should have a look at some of the literature on the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront), i.e. the Nazi organization that basically replaced unions. The German Wikipedia entry has literature that looks interesting. There may be something in English as well.

2. Other stuff you might find interesting:

CARSTEN, F.L.: The German workers and the Nazis. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995.
SCHOENBAUM, David: Hitler's social revolution: class and status in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939. New York: Norton, 1980.

and on Italy:

SARTI, Roland: Fascism and the industrial leadership in Italy, 1919-1940 : a study in the expansion of private power under fascism. Berkeley: Univ. of California Pr., 1971.

3. Specifically on trade unions in Nazi Germany, see Wolfgang Abendroth's Die deutschen Gewerkschaften. I haven't read it, but it's a history of German trade unions that also covers that period. Also see: Hans Gerd Schumann, Nationalsozialismus und Gewerkschaftsbewegung (Hannover 1958) and Klaus Tenfelde, Klaus Schönhoven, Michael Schneider, Detlev Peukert: Geschichte der deutschen Gewerkschaften. Von den Anfängen bis 1945. Bund Verlag, Köln 1987.

4. On the economy of Nazi Germany, see The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. You can get that here. See also this, this, this and this.

5. You probably already know about this, this, this, this, this and this but just in case.

6. Veľa zdaru ;)

Also, I think it'd be useful to distinguish "autocracy" from "totalitarianism". I think the dynamics of trade union development in e.g. Tzarist Russia (the definition of "autocracy") were very different from what went on under Fascism, Nazism and Stalinism.

I recommend you read This Angry Workers World text on struggles in South Delhi, India. In which they compare the 2010 China strike wave with recent struggles in India, looking at the relationship the proles have with the union. Here is an excerpt

China we can see how management and GDFTU (regional trade union federation branch) reacted to the wildcat strikes in 2010: they collected ‘concrete demands’ from workers through union surveys, they tried to involve workers’ representatives in the negotiation process without handing over control, they established a type of regional ‘collective bargaining’ in the affected industrial areas (“Guangdong Provincial Regulations on Collective Contracts in Enterprises” (GPRCC)) in order to curb the spreading of unrest from individual company to company etc., meaning, they actually implemented a lot of the mechanisms which are generally seen as features of ‘democratic industrial bargaining’. The ‘collective bargaining’ basically brought about a more systematic communication and collaboration between union representatives from various companies, local authorities and an emerging association of management in various supply-chain companies