Labor History Research Articles

Annual General Meeting of the Canadian Committee on Labour History, 25 June 2024, Convened virtually from locations across Turtle Island

Annual General Meeting of the Canadian Committee on Labour History, 25 June 2024, Convened virtually from locations across Turtle Island

On (And Off) the Waterfront: The International Longshore and Warehouse Union and Its Place in Labor History

Abstract Labor historians, particularly in the United States, have given unique attention to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). Emerging out of a series of tumultuous strikes on the West Coast during the early Depression years, the ILWU won trend-setting employment contracts, survived Second Red Scare-era persecution despite keeping avowedly leftwing leadership, and maintained its presence on the docks even after containerization dramatically reshaped the longshore industry. This review examines multiple recent works on the ILWU, noting new interventions—both in ILWU history and labor history, more broadly. All three reviewed works offer invaluable insight for how contemporary unions can adapt to technological changes in the workplace, foster internal democracy, and build labor power while fighting for social justice. The review concludes by offering potential avenues for further scholarly research, particularly on the nature of leftwing unionism and labor-generated alternatives to deindustrialization and workforce displacement.

(Re)Sources: Historical Inquiry and Labour History Archives: The 18th Biennial Conference of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, Canberra, 23–25 November 2023

(Re)Sources: Historical Inquiry and Labour History Archives: The 18th Biennial Conference of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, Canberra, 23–25 November 2023

The City, the Neighborhood, and the Street: Toward a Global Urban Labor History?

Abstract Labor scholars have increasingly recognized the need to look beyond the workplace and explore where and how workers lived, socialized, shopped, or protested. The six books reviewed in this essay contribute to understanding how modern cities shaped the process of working-class formation as well as workers’ identity, experiences, and economic and material conditions. From different standpoints, these urban and labor histories of Paris, Mexico City, Miami, Port Said, Montevideo, and Santiago, Chile, demonstrate the impact of urban modernization, industrial capitalism, and migration on working families. By bringing together books from different regions and historiographical traditions, this essay also reflects on the possibilities and challenges of writing a global labor urban history.

Profile of Nausea and Vomiting After Sectio Caesarea Surgery with Spinal Anesthesia at ST. Teresa Marampa Hospital

Postoperative nausea and vomiting is a condition that can occur within 24 hours after surgery, and can impact patient harm and cause complications. This study aims to identify the incidence of nausea and vomiting in post-cesarean section patients with spinal anesthesia. This type of research is quantitative with descriptive retrospective research design. Researchers analyzed patient medical records at ST. Teresa Marampa Hospital from January to December 2023, with a sample of 80 respondents using the total sampling technique. The data collection tool used was an observation sheet. Of the 80 respondents, general characteristics based on age showed that most respondents were aged 26-35 years (45 people, 56.3%). Based on labor history, the majority were multiparous (43 people, 53.8%), and 100% of respondents had a history of at term pregnancy. Most respondents did not experience nausea and vomiting (62 people, 77.5%). The profile of nausea and vomiting after cesarean section with spinal anesthesia at ST Hospital. Teresa Marampa Hospital showed that 77.5% of respondents did not experience nausea and vomiting. This finding has important clinical implications, as these results may help in clinical decision making regarding postoperative management. By understanding the profile of nausea and vomiting, medical personnel can design more effective prevention strategies, improve patient comfort, and reduce the risk of complications.

The Presidency of Bill Clinton after Thirty Years: A Review Article

Abstract Did Bill Clinton destroy the U.S. economy? In a recent book, Nelson Lichtenstein and Judith Stein offer a scathing new critique. In this account, Clinton not only ravaged the United States in his own time but is largely to blame for America's subsequent economic inequality, monopolistic corporations, the Great Financial Crisis, the rise of China, and the advent of Trumpism. And yet, the economic data speak well of the Clinton presidency. He fares poorly on the trade deficit and economic inequality but otherwise delivered a balanced economic boom, far better than most administrations of the past fifty years. How do we square the withering criticisms of Lichtenstein and Stein with Clinton's economic achievements? It is correct that globalization and technological change tend to hurt blue-collar workers. And because Clinton embraced these forces and sought to place the United States at their headwaters, he may, indeed, be a “fabulous failure” from Lichtenstein and Stein's perspective. But the authors, each a labor historian and advocate, willfully dismiss the benefits that the nation as a whole, including workers and their children, enjoyed under Clinton. They also ignore the financial and military crises that Clinton averted. Overall, the Clinton administration created a wealthier and more competitive economy, albeit at the expense of those workers most vulnerable and least able to change. That is, Clinton helped transform the U.S. economy, just not along the lines that Lichtenstein and Stein prefer.

Going Underground: The Author’s Body and the Mining Workplace in the Writing about Miners in Modern China

Abstract This article highlights the author’s body and its physical experience in labor history, by a focus on their historical implication for the emergence of writings about miners in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth century China. Miners and their workplace entered Chinese textual and pictorial representations at the turn of the twentieth century, as a result of the growing importance of the mining industry, the dissemination of new mining knowledge, and the formation of new social groups. Later in the 1920s, literary movements tied up with the revolutionary agenda under the influence of Marxism brought new conceptualizations of miners’ position in society and their relationship with intellectuals. When authors turned to write about miners in the late 1920s and early 1930s, they chose to legitimize their writing by descending into mine shafts to acquire the experience in the underground mining workplace and to incorporate the bodily experience into their writings. The mining lamp in texts and images from this period provides a prime example to illustrate how the author’s experience in the underground mine was embodied in the author’s and the miner’s corporeal visions and contributed a new way of seeing and representing miners. Drawing upon materials about miners of various genres, this article reveals the formulation of Chinese visual modernity within Chinese social interactions and brings the author’s body into labor history by calling attention to both its material presence in the workplace and its agentic power to inscribe workers.

노동인권교육의 재구조화와 수업 전략들

Labor brings big effect on human life. Therefore, if we hope people live with human dignity, the whole human rights must be applied to labor. But, in now, the whole human rights is not applied to the current labor related human rights education. For example, in the current labor related human rights education, human rights in labor is limited to article 23, 24 of universal declaration of human rights, and political rights is not applied to labor. And the current labor related human rights education focus on civil rights rather than human rights, and the content of the current labor related human rights education is a little abstract. Therefore, the current labor related human rights education need to be reconstructed in perspective of the whole human rights. The Alternative labor related human rights education have to make contributions for students to has well being (eudaimonia) based on human rights, and to examine labor history critically in perspective of the whole human rights, and to examine the structure of labor in the contemporary society critically in perspective of the whole human rights and to make labor to be human rights friendly. And The Alternative labor related human rights education must teaches laborer’s political rights as well as labor’s three primary rights. And The Alternative labor related human rights education must make much efforts for youth’s labor and labor in future to be well-being(eudaimonia) based on human rights and make much efforts for the whole human rights to be applied to labor. Labor must not be performed only for economic logic. It must be performed for all people’s well-being and human dignity.

Productivity, the humanization of work, and the future of labor: insights from industrial psychology in late socialist Yugoslavia and Romania

ABSTRACT Industrial psychology in socialist Yugoslavia and Romania is a relevant source for both labor history and the history of science/intellectual history. In this paper, we lay down the intellectual and institutional foundations of the discipline in the two contexts, including the envisaged roles for industrial psychologists working in factories and plans for expanding the profession. We argue that industrial psychologists defined the pursuit of labor productivity on the shopfloor as not just a matter of economic calculation, but also as a matter of workers’ self-realization. Their perspective on workers went beyond the measurement of their abilities and skills, taking into consideration personality features as well as inter-personal relations. In research conducted to support creativity and battle monotony at work, industrial psychologists also broadened the understanding of labor efficiency to encompass the pursuit of workers’ satisfaction. We show that research in industrial psychology was part of a broader drive to theorize work and the future of labor under socialism. Discussions of issues such as the scientific-technological revolution, the second industrial revolution, AI, cybernetization, automation, and narcomania, which we analyze in the final part of the paper, represent a rich source of Marxist intellectual reflection on the topic of labor in late socialist Eastern Europe.

Polish Forced Labourers in the Klaipėda Region during World War II

This paper examines the plight of Polish forced labourers in the Klaipėda region during World War II, shedding light on a lesser-known aspect of Nazi occupation policies. Drawing on a database maintained by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, the author collected data on nearly 2,000 Polish individuals subjected to forced labour in Klaipėda. Through archival research and analysis of personal testimonies, the study explores the demographics, origins, working conditions, and treatment of these labourers. The occupation of Klaipada by Nazi Germany resulted in the displacement of local populations and the influx of foreign workers to meet wartime labour demands. Polish labourers, predominantly young and from economically disadvantaged regions like Ciechanów, were among those forcibly mobilized. They were subjected to harsh treatment, discriminatory laws, and often found themselves in precarious working and living conditions. The paper highlights the experiences of Polish labourers in various industries, including construction and agriculture, and examines the motivations behind their escapes from forced labour. It also addresses the sensitive issue of sexual violence against female Polish workers, which remains largely overlooked in historiography. The liberation of Klaipėda by Soviet forces in 1945 brought an end to forced labour in the region, but many labourers faced further hardships, including mistreatment by Soviet authorities. The paper concludes with reflections on the post-war reparations process and calls for further research and cross-border cooperation to fully understand the history of forced labour in the Klaipėda region and its lasting impact on affected communities.

Old Wine in New Bottles, or Novel Challenges? A Labour History Perspective on Digital Labour

Abstract A growing body of literature is challenging techno-fetishistic perspectives on digital capitalism, as well as claims of the start of a new era characterized by total automation. This article contributes to the ongoing debate on the implications of digital technology for the future of labour by reading Moritz Altenried's The Digital Factory (2022) through the lens of labour history. The use of digital factory and digital Taylorism as integrative tools significantly improves empirical evaluations of different digital labour environments. However, because of their high degree of abstraction, there are a number of limitations when applying these concepts to describe wildly disparate work environments. To illustrate these limits, I use examples from twentieth-century debates on technology and work autonomy, and (1) argue that a labour history perspective warns us against overgeneralizing the effects of technology on labour control and worker autonomy, and (2) broaden the discussion to larger issues of labour control before and during digitalization, incorporating new theoretical questions such as our understanding of classical Taylorism and, by extension, capitalism.

Introduction to the Review Dossier on The Digital Factory: Continuing a Long-Standing Debate

Abstract Theories about the impact of digital technology on society and the development of capitalism and debates about the influence of digital information technologies on the future of work have been abundant since the end of the twentieth century. Most of the academic debate has taken place outside labour history, leaving the actual effects of digital technologies on human work and labour relations often overlooked. Moritz Altenried's The Digital Factory: The Human Labor of Automation focuses precisely on these effects, and as such provides a good opportunity to engage with these debates from a labour history perspective. This Review Dossier includes four comments on Altenried's book, by Bridget Kenny, Nico Pizzolato, Görkem Akgöz, and Greg Downey, to which the author responds. The contributors focus on different aspects of The Digital Factory depending on their own perspective on recent developments in the digital economy in the larger context of global capitalism.

The Irish and the Preston Lock-Out, 1853–1854

The Irish have long featured as a central element in British social and labour history, but an idea still prevails that it was as strike breakers rather than strike makers that they influenced British industrial relations. The great Preston strike of 1853–1854 appears to have had a crucial role in cementing that idea and the role of Irish ‘knobsticks’ became a central, as well as a very visual component, of that dispute. The story of the ‘half alive and half dead’ impoverished Irish who arrived in Preston in March 1854 seems ideally suited to the famous images produced of the lock-out and knobstick figures, but they obscure as much as they illustrate. This paper examines the role of the Irish in broader perspective between the years of the Lune Street massacre of 1842 and the close of the strike in 1854 as a series of disputes in which people from Ireland featured on both sides, and where attitudes towards the strike, strikers and strike breakers were complex, dynamic and left enduring legacies. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/

Producing Human Life or Protecting Wildlife?

A series of biodiversity conservation campaign since 1980s and the establishment of Siberut National Park on Siberut Island (West Sumatra, Indonesia) have seriously unsettled the relationship between the Mentawai and forest as well as between the Mentawai with powerful external agencies. For the Mentawai, forest and nature should be managed and utilized. Claiming and contesting forests have been part of the Mentawai social fabric and histories, while cultivating and transforming them into social spaces (agroforest, sago garden, settlements) and extracting uncultivated animals and plants are valued human activities and important criteria in the construction of Mentawai personhood. The park has tried to persuade people keeping the forest intact and not using and transforming it. The establishment of the park also implies that the state claims the land and the forest. This paper argues that establishing a national park and protecting forests contradicts the value of productive activities and the history of human labour attached and spent on the land and forest. The resistance over forest protection offers vital clues in understanding how producing nature is inseparable from producing humans and discusses how people can coexist with forests and nonhuman entities, not just by conserving it, but by transforming it. Understanding the mutual production and transformation of human nature is crucial to the future of biodiversity conservation activities on the island.

Safety of labor, Valsalva maneuver, and neuraxial anesthesia for pregnant women after decompressive craniectomy: Case series and review of the literature.

Decompressive craniectomies are a neurosurgical operation aimed at normalizing intracranial pressure (ICP). Occasionally, there is delayed replacement of the skull resulting in an acquired skull defect. When managing laboring patients with an acquired skull defect there is often fear associated with traditional labor involving the Valsalva maneuver and with neuraxial anesthesia. These fears typically stem from potential ICP changes and risk of herniation. In reviewing the literature, only 15 cases are described detailing labor management after decompressive craniectomy (DC), mostly with incomplete labor histories. We aim to expand that literature by reporting two cases of safe labor with epidural anesthesia in patients with large skull defects. The first described patient underwent a cranioplasty during pregnancy because of trauma. Later, because of concerns for pre-eclampsia, induction of labor was initiated and she received neuraxial anesthesia via epidural. The patient ultimately underwent cesarean delivery 48 h after induction began due to nonreassuring fetal heart tones. The second patient underwent a cranioplasty because of infection prior to pregnancy. Once in labor, she was cleared by neurosurgery and the anesthesia team placed her epidural. She later underwent an uncomplicated standard vaginal delivery. The existing literature on labor following DC is sparse. Retrospective review of case reports can advance discussion and standardization regarding care for laboring women with a history of DC. We advocate that the Valsalva maneuver and epidural anesthesia is safe for pregnant women who are neurologically asymptomatic.

The Asian American Contract: On Useful Labor and Social Reproduction in Severance and Minari

This article examines the central role that the work contract plays in the production and reproduction of Asian diasporic worlds. In light of the history of Asian indentured contract labor in the Americas, the article proposes that the “Asian American contract” emerges as an affirmation of the exchange of useful labor for a sense of belonging and world for the Asian American subject—even when this exchange comes at the expense of life. Through readings of Ling Ma’s novel Severance (2018) and director Lee Isaac Chung’s film Minari (2020), the article demonstrates how the contract ultimately transforms Asian Americans’ reproductive labor—their childbearing and child-rearing—into their social reproduction as a racialized class of useful, compliant workers.

Long haul unionism: southern labor history and the struggle to organize Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tennessee

ABSTRACT In April 2024, workers at Volkswagen’s huge plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted overwhelmingly to join the United Auto Workers. The victory was highly-significant; the union had organized the first foreign-owned automaker in the South after decades of trying. A breakthrough in a sector responsible for half of North American auto production, this “seismic victory” was widely-reported. This article probes the reasons for the union’s victory, advancing the concept of “long haul unionism” to understand it. While media accounts stressed short-term factors – including the UAW’s recent revival and a wider post-pandemic labor upsurge – I argue that it also occurred because of the union’s long haul strategy. The UAW had been trying to organize the plant since 2010, losing elections in 2014 and 2019. Undeterred, it stayed on the ground, gradually overcoming its “outsider” label. It also focused effectively on workers’ demands for a stronger voice in the plant. The victory illustrated how southern organizing often required sustained effort over many years, something highlighted by previous union fights, including Operation Dixie in the 1940s and the J.P. Stevens campaign of the 1970s. As such, the win needs to be understood in the context of history – not just contemporary conditions.

Masculinity's (mis)fortune: Historicizing affect as extractivist infrastructure in Bolivian sodalite mining

AbstractHow is alienability produced as a mode of relation? Is capital a (racialized) affect? This article examines clashing expectations about minerals, specifically sodalite, at the Cerro Sapo mine in Ayopaya Bolivia. It describes how Cerro Sapo's current owner, a white Kenyan, engaged in narrative and bodily practices that sought to detach him from earlier labor histories and Indigenous demands for redistributive aid. Through a life history approach, the analysis centers one figure to provide insight into what capitalism looks like on the ground. This case sharpens scholarly understanding of the affective workings of extraction, highlighting the need to historicize feelings of trust and accountability by dis‐aggregating the figure of “the mine” and “the firm.” By illuminating Cerro Sapo's continuities with, and revisions to, colonial structures of racial violence and exchange, the article aims to advance studies of racial capitalism and add a new layer to public debates about colonial debts and reparations for slavery.

The Long Red Summer on the Railroads: Labor, Race, and Exclusion in Appalachia

Abstract This essay examines the relationship between race, work, and exclusion during the Long Red Summer of 1919. I focus on several “transportation towns” of railroad employees in Appalachia to argue for the combined importance of labor history and racial ideology in attempts to understand wartime violence. Academic and federal government investigations inform my analysis, as does the robust body of scholarship on railroad labor. After examining racism embedded in railroad work, unions, and community life, the essay then turns to the Wilson administration’s nationalization of the roads during the war. Wartime changes resulted in higher wages for Black workers and many perceived threats to the racialized labor hierarchy. What was once white railroaders’ effort to exclude African Americans from certain jobs became one to expel them from the industry entirely. In several transportation towns that experienced wartime migration, however, this impulse transformed into a campaign to remove Black people from their communities once and for all. I cite testimony from a grand jury trial of an expulsion, railroad union journals, and newspaper accounts of mob violence that made it clear that the transportation towns belonged to white labor at the end of the Long Red Summer.

Gender Conflicts on the Shopfloor: Barcelona Women at Chocolates Amatller, 1890–1914

AbstractThe cry of “Get married women out of the factories!” echoed across the Spanish industrial landscape at the turn of the twentieth century, driven by two intertwined factors. From a societal perspective, women's place was at home, not in factories. On an economic note, concerns arose over women's lower wages displacing men from jobs. This research delves into a case study of a workers’ claim aimed against women. It aims to illuminate the interplay of social demands and gender dynamics in labour history and business operations. Using as a case study a strike among male workers at the Amatller chocolate factory in May 1890, it seeks insights into gender complexities and women's challenges when joining the workforce. Male factory workers sought better conditions but directed their frustrations at women, influenced by prevailing social discourse. Women joined the factory, but portraying them as victors would be an oversimplification. Their presence was restricted, confined to manual tasks, with few opportunities for advancement.