History Of Labor Movement Research Articles

Reaching into the Community to Interpret Labor History

Reaching into the Community to Interpret Labor History

Minority Nationalism and Socialism

What has been the relationship between nationalism and socialism in the history of the Finnish social democratic labour movement? This article explores this question by focusing on the Swedish-speaking socialist politician Karl H. Wiik (1883–1946), who was a central figure both in the Swedish-speaking and in the national Finnish labour movement.
 By examining Wiik’s role as a political and ideological foreground figure of the Swedish-speaking labour movement in Finland, the article discusses the relationship between national issues, class and socialism in the history of the Finnish social democratic labour movement. The article asks how language was connected to ethnic identity. Also, the article examines how both nationalism and ethnic identity was connected to social democracy as well as to socialist politics.
 On a more general level, the article contributes to the study of nationalism and especially to the study of the engagement of ethnic or linguistic minorities in the history of the labour movement. By focusing on the minorities in the labour movement, it is possible to problematise the historical narratives of the majority. The article links the multinational history of the Finnish labour movement to that of the international labour movement, where the questions about socialism and nationalism have been high on the political agenda.

Co-operative schools: democratic values, networks and leadership

ABSTRACTFor over a decade, co-operative schools have struck a note of discord within the highly orchestrated context of English education policy. They encapsulate an old set of ideas but re-articulate them for new times by engaging with educational frameworks which are locked into the so-called global education reform movement (GERM) based upon on standards, standardisation, a mixture of centralised and devolved accountabilities, leadership, testing and accountability. Yet co-operative schools ostensibly aim to embed a set of wide-ranging values and principles: equality, equity, democracy, self-help, self-responsibility and solidarity as well as the principles of education, democratic control and community ownership, all of which echo the history of labour movements. The co-operative legal model not only adheres to co-operative values and principles but necessitates stakeholder involvement in the governance of schools: pupils, staff, parents, community and, potentially, alumni are all expected to play a role. These are compared to David Hargreaves’ ideas about a ‘self-improving school system’. I analyse the emergence of the co-operative network and the reasons for its dramatic growth alongside the complex problems it faced. In turn, these help us to understand the possibilities and contradictions inherent in attempts to build inclusive and democratic educational networks.

“Your Paper Saved Seattle”: E. W. Scripps and the Star’s Role in the General Strike of 1919

ABSTRACTThis article examines the role of E. W. Scripps and one of his pillar newspapers, the Seattle Star, in the General Strike of 1919, the first citywide, multi-union labor action to receive a “general strike” designation in the United States. It profiles a prominent figure in American journalism, as well as his daily newspaper’s coverage of a pivotal event in American labor movement history, analyzing Scripps’s response to one of his editors breaking from his business model and turning against the working class during a time of civic turmoil. While Scripps eschewed the spotlight and built his business on selling affordable newspapers to the working class, in his business dealings, Scripps was an ardent capitalist. Illustrating these contradictions, this article explores the ways Scripps responded to the labor strike when its deployment hurt his business interests, citing his personal essays, disquisitions, letters, and newspaper coverage from the Seattle Star.

“Black Oppressed People All over the World Are One”: The British Black Panthers’ Grassroots Internationalism, 1969–73

Abstract This article examines the grassroots Black internationalist organizing of the British Black Panther Movement (BBPM). The BBPM, which was inspired, although not founded, by the U.S. Black Panthers, was a London-based antiracist movement composed mainly of Afro-Caribbean and South Asian immigrants to the United Kingdom. The British Panthers led hundreds of campaigns for housing, education, health, legal aid, employment and against police brutality from 1969 to 1973. These pages reconstruct the day-to-day organizing efforts of the BBPM, revealing a highly active movement that focused on bridging local people’s experiences of racism with the movement’s membership in diasporic networks. Analysis of oral histories and forty-four issues of movement newspapers collated from across six archives demonstrates that the BBPM also raised awareness of British institutional racism and police brutality in the absence of public recognition of these issues. In so doing, this article introduces significant new evidence about the nature and extent of anti-Black racist violence in Britain in the late 1960s and early 1970s and opens up novel perspectives on the forms of Black political mobilization in Britain. Among the UK’s Black Power organizations, the BBPM was the most militant and secretive. Members rigorously studied Black history and literature and labor movement history inside communal spaces that the movement occupied in London. The BBPM also acted as an umbrella organization, facilitating a network of Black Power movements across the United Kingdom. While increasingly internationalist in its outlook, the movement splintered over time, with former members founding Black organizations dedicated to working-class people’s concerns, intellectual life, and women’s issues.

Union Strategy to Revitalize Weakening Worker Representation in South Korea

The rapid growth of South Korea s labor unions after 1987 Great Labor Offensive has been considered as one of the highest achievements in labor movement history. Yet now the social influence of labor unions in South Korea has been starkly reduced. For example, wage gaps between regular and non-regular workers and between workers at large and small companies have expanded, and union density as well as the application rate for collective agreements has fallen to about 10%. Rapid and dramatic changes in industrial structure and employment types coupled with regulatory limitations to collective agreement protections and application have reduced the appeal of union membership for many. And Korean unions have not seemed to adapt: although union membership is markedly industry-level, collective agreements are applied and managed within a traditional company-level IR framework. Unionism in South Korea needs urgent revitalization. The authors recommend this revitalization should proceed through institutional changes for improving workers representation and through more also active organizing activity, but primarily it should happen through restoring a sense of solidarity among workers in the most basic sense.

In Defiance of Boundaries: Anarchism in Latin American History ed. by Geoffroy de Laforcade and Kirwin Shaffer

<i>In Defiance of Boundaries: Anarchism in Latin American History</i> ed. by Geoffroy de Laforcade and Kirwin Shaffer

Social media and the transnationalization of mass activism: Twitter and the labour movement

This paper explores the labour movement organization LabourStart, a digital initiative that, by various means such as e-mail campaigns and social media use, seeks to promote workers’ rights and to strengthen the labour movement on a global scale. The main aim of this study is to analyse a) how LabourStart employs Twitter for communication and organisation and b) how the Twitter-sphere that LabourStart constitutes — and is constituted by — is geographically structured. Our dataset consisted of all tweets containing the word “labourstart” and all tweets coming from or addressing any LabourStart–related account during the period 2008–2015. As theoretical points of departure, the notions of transnationalization/translocalism were used, in part together with the concept of connective action, to conceptualise the research. In terms of methodology, network analysis was the main approach employed to obtain and visualise the findings. Our results indicate that LabourStart’s Twitter use does not seem to have had any effects in terms of creating a decentralised transnational movement with translocal traits, thus suggesting that LabourStart has failed to fully make use of the connective features of Twitter and to establish a decentralized, transnational union movement. This, we suggest, is to some extent caused by LabourStart’s centralized organizational — and thus communicational — structure. In the concluding section, we interpret our findings in broader terms relating to the context and history of labour movements, and we discuss LabourStart’s work in relation to local and global worker issues.

Portuguese

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14244/198271991174 This article aims to analyze the history of labor movement in education during the period of neoliberalism rise in Alagoas (Brazil), between the years 1985 and 2010. This historical period was traced by means of official documents, minutes, photographs, scientific conference proceedings, newsletters, flyers, notes, newspapers and semi-structured interviews. Topics such as neoliberalism, trade union movement, career plans, and democratic management, are discussed in the article. It is a work of qualitative nature, which moves between the need to preserve the memory and the assessment of the education professionals’ working conditions, also evaluating effects on quality of the educational system from the context investigated. Methodologically it was resorted to the content analysis to interpretation of research data. Theoretically we have considered the analysis undertaken mainly by Antunes (1982; 1986; 1995), Boito (2005; 2009), Bruno (1990), Giannotti (2007), Vieira (2009), Carvalho (2008) and Meszaros (2002). The final considerations, based on the analysis of the survey data, indicate the influence of the neoliberal model and political and economic conditions on the direction of union movement, specifically on educational branch. Keywords : Trade union movement, Education, Neoliberalism. Normal 0 21 false false false PT-BR X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:Tabela normal; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Times New Roman; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Times New Roman; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

The Historical Birth of the First Historical–Critical Edition of Marx–Engels-Gesamtausgabe. Part 2

With the great efforts of Ryazanov and the scientific correspondents throughout Europe, the Marx–Engels Institute acquired not only the precious Marx/Engels literary legacy, that is, the works, manuscripts, letters and notebooks, etc., of Marx and Engels, but also materials concerning the history of socialism, history of labour movements, political economy and philosophy. As the MEGA project officially started in 1924, the Marx–Engels Institute with its huge collections became the solid organisational and material foundation for this great undertaking.

History of Labor Movement In Iraq

History of Labor Movement In Iraq

Bibliography of periodicals of 'The Independent State of Croatia' (1941-1945)

The author presents the Bibliography of Periodicals of 'The Independent State of Croatia' (ISC) 1941 -1945, which was compiled in the former Archive for the History of Labour Movement in Zagreb and whose one copy is kept in The Museum of Srem in Sremska Mitrovica (Historical Section, Collection of Documents, reg. no 1615/62). The authors of the Bibliography particularly underlined that it includes 'all periodical journals and publications published in the territory of ISC', and that the material 'was for internal use only'. The majority of the listed periodical publications is kept in the University Library in Zagreb (237), and the remaining ones (44) in different libraries in the Republic of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Most of these publications are printed in the Croatian language, and a smaller number in German and Italian languages. One publication was published in the Hungarian language. All publications were printed in the Latin script and none of them in the Cyrillic script, even though the Serbs, whose primary script it was, at the beginning made half of the population of 'The Independent State of Croatia'. In the Ustashas' ISC the Cyrillic script was forbidden, and the Serbs underwent a genocide. This Bibliography - which does not include a single publication with the adjective 'Serbian' - testifies about that. .

복수노조하에서의 교섭창구단일화 방안에 대한 고찰

The matters of Multi Union in Korea labor legislation history and labor movement history was delayed again during three years under tripartite consent among the representatives of the labor unions, management and the government except the Korean confederation of trade unions. As the matter of Multi Union and the payment for an officer in its exclusive duty were treated together the matter of workers that have definited period and part time workers, a policy of labor protection of government was necessary to review whether understood essentially the above matters or not. The matter of Multi Union was converted into a matter of unification of bargaining tables beyond its recognition. With the disagreement between the federation of Korean trade unions and the Korean confideration of trade unions, the delayment of multi-unions meant that the most workers' fundamental right was violated. Up to now, a Korea tripartite committee discussed the matters of how to operate them under the one unificated bargaining table. That is, it doesn't have greater part about individual bargaining pattern like Japan and Deutch. They put great weight on the exclusive bargaining representatives such as in America and Canada, and establishment of Institution was also proceeded by its foundation. Through the discussion, all of tripatite representatives has recognized that bargaining representatives have the right representing their group and also the duty of fair representatives. Once an opinion that we should accept was proposed check-off in Canada, but the employers opposed because it would cause strengthening of Union. Allowing multi Union allowance in enterprise unit was again delayed, it meant from the starting point its matter that we should review. It is necessary to draw agreement of tripartite representatives whether it approach matter of table unification or it solve through individual control bargaining in the matter of Multi Union. Agreement in details without solving any fundamental problems can cause the delay again, tripartite representation must establish a bridgehead for a consent through comprehension and concession one another.

Public-Sector Workers. A New Vanguard?

The meaning of union political work has varied over the labor movement's history. Even during the high point of labor's political influence, the New Deal of the 1930s, simply electing labor-backed candidates did not alone provide an adequate vehicle for establishing working-class reforms.

The Occupation of the Factories: Paris 1936, Flint 1937

The highest stage in the history of the labor movement came with the unionization of the Fordist-Taylorist factory system. The concept of the “Fordist-Taylorist factory system,” first developed in Antonio Gramsci, “Americanism and Fordism,” in Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 277–318, was popularized in the 1970s by France's “regulation economists” (Boyer, Aglietta, Lipietz, Coriat). It refers to those mass-production metal-fabrication plants based on the assembly-line techniques devised by Henry Ford and managed according to the “scientific” principles worked out by Frederick Winslow Taylor. The U.S. auto industry of the 1920s and 1930s best exemplifies this form of production. Neither before nor since has labor achieved a comparable influence. In the United States and France, this stage was reached in the same period and through roughly similar means. In June 1936, a massive wave of factory occupations swept across the Paris metal industry, forcing employers to introduce one of the world's most progressive systems of industrial relations. Six months later, sit-in strikes in Flint, Michigan, defeated the open shop at the General Motors Corporation, opening the way to the subsequent unionization of America's mass-production sector. These two events, the dominant peaks in the history of the modern labor movement, have rarely been viewed in the same light, yet they were part of a unique set of circumstances affecting not merely the fate of unionism, but that of industrial society. Most accounts of the French and American occupations make reference to the other national case, but the only actual attempt to compare them is to be found in Sidney Fine, Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936–1937 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969), 125–8. Notwithstanding his definitive study of the Flint occupations, Fine's treatment of the Paris strikes, based on a few English language sources, examines only their general contours, not the structural and contingent factors linking them with the Flint movement. Cf. Val R. Lorwin, “Reflections on the History of the French and American Labor Movements,” The Journal of Economic History , 17 (March 1957).

Wobblies and Mexican Workers in Mining and Petroleum, 1905–1924

SummaryThe Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), or “Wobblies”, represented a transitional stage in Mexican labor movement history. The Wobblies enjoyed support from workers because their philosophy corresponded to the Mexican labor movement's deeply-rooted anarchosyndicalist traditions. While cooperating with Mexican radical labor organizations, the IWW advocated workers' control, better pay, conditions, and union recognition. In mining and petroleum, the IWW built upon the earlier organizational efforts of mutual and gremial organizations. And, although the Wobblies failed to establish a permanent foothold inside Mexico, their efforts resulted in the eventual organization of industry-wide unions.

Organization of American Historians

Finally, B?rgertum, Borgare, Bourgeoisie: the Concept of the Middle Class in Europe and America considered several distinct representations of the middle class. Madeleine Hurd (Harvard University) compared the German and Swedish middle classes, calling for a much more complex understanding of the lack of liberal success in nineteenth-century Germany. Fred McKitrick (Columbia University) concluded that the integration of German artisans into a modern industrial economy and into the broad middle class after 1945 was not brought about by a free marketplace. Rather, it was accomplished under the direction of corporate forms of organization which are generally assumed to be economically inflexible and politi cally illiberal. The effort succeeded because a strong sense of artisanal identity and tradition had been preserved within a corporate context that was high pragmatic. Although the conference was not organized around a central theme, several conclusions emerged which are relevant to the work of social and labor historians. Many agreed on the need for more East-West comparisons in European studies, and the need for greater emphasis on Europe's relations with other regions of the world. Continuing attention should be paid to the contributions of poststructuralist social and cultural theory in understanding the lives of working-class men and women and the history of labor movements.

A quantitative approach to socio-political tension in Russia 1895-1913

The paper is an attempt to study socio-politi cal conflict in czarist Russia using the combined tech niques of static and dynamic analyses under certain eco nomic and political parameters. The study used multip le variables to measure SPT (Socio-Political Tension) for the period from 1895 to 1913, both for the empire as a whole and for the 49 Governements West of the Urals. In our study, a model of SPT was constructed that has the potential for giving us more precise ideas about the causes of political stability. Chronological cluster ana lysis was shown to be useful in generating a typology of different periods of revolutionary movement in Russia and also permitted the mapping of variables at the re gional level. A database was gathered that can be used for further analysis. Some correlations were revealed that were previously unknown to scholars of revolutio nary movements in Russia. Quantitative studies of interior socio-political conflict began not very long ago. These studies became possible as a result of recent theoretical work. (1) Specific studies have appeared that deal with concrete problems in agrarian (2) and industrial (3) developments, as well as the history of labor movements (4). The appearance of these studies in the USSR is connected with studies of internal socio-political tension (SPT) in other parts of the world, particularly American studies of socio-economic and socio-political processes. Several methodological approaches have been tried, and a wide spectrum of topics have been explored, such as: work on the comparative analysis of revolutions (5), on scales of intensity of conflicts (6), inter relation of domestic and international conflicts (7), different static models of internal conflict in specific countries (8). Nevertheless, some American historians hold the opinion that there are problems which have yet to be explored. One of the leading historians in * Address all communications to: Boris I. Grekov, K. F. Shatsillo, Insti tute of General History, Moscow 117036, Ul. Dm. Uljanova, USSR.

Book Reviews : THE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT AND AUSTRALIA: AN HISTORICAL OUTLINE— 1890s TO 1980s By W. J. Brown. Australian Labor Movement History Publications, Sydney, 1986, xvi + 336 pp., $14.95 (paperback)

Book Reviews : THE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT AND AUSTRALIA: AN HISTORICAL OUTLINE— 1890s TO 1980s By W. J. Brown. Australian Labor Movement History Publications, Sydney, 1986, xvi + 336 pp., $14.95 (paperback)

Measuring the Evolution of Strike Movements

Strike activity is clearly the least studied aspect of the history of labor movements, yet it may be the most revealing index of the situation and outlook of actual workers. Moreover strike activity has an important history of its own, related to but not described by the history of organized labor. Strikes have evolved. Various groups of workers developed an ability to mount new kinds of strikes at different times. In order to grasp this evolution we need some clear means of measurement. What follows is an effort to suggest some criteria, many of them obvious enough. The essay results from an ongoing study of workers in France, Belgium, Germany and Britain in the two decades before World War I. But while examples are chosen primarily from this area and period, the effort is meant to be quite open-ended. There is no need to expect uniform patterns of strike activity in a given stage of industrialization; but there is every reason to hope that sufficiently general standards of measurement can be developed to measure key differences and to specify problems that require deeper study in terms of fundamental causation.