Labour history

Having for long been a field of study reserved for political scientists and international relations specialists, international organisations are now attracting growing interest among historians. 1 This increased interest can be explained by the movement to " globalise " the discipline both in terms of its themes and its practices. While no single, accepted definition of global history exists, the majority of authors agree that a " universal " definition of the global should be rejected 2 and instead global history should be seen as an invitation to explore the connections, circulations, and cross-fertilisations that have so often been neglected within the framework of national case studies. 3 International organisations and associations are particularly fertile areas of study in this regard: they represent spaces in which one can reveal the existence of networks of relationships and systems of circulation (régimes circulatoires) and explore the

The Gouzenko Affair is referred to as the event that started the Cold War. This article draws on recently declassified documents that shed new light on Britain’s role in this affair, particularly that of the Foreign Office and the British High Commissioner to Canada. The documents reveal how the British had a major part in directing the response to Igor Gouzenko’s defection in 1945. This event revealed the need for increased counterespionage security, but it also became a spectacle that directed the public’s attention away from the British connection: specifically, the role of Alan Nunn May, a British nuclear scientist who had provided the Soviets with classified information. Instead, the public’s interest was centred on Soviet spies, communism as a subversive force, and the brewing Soviet-US conflict. These newly declassified sources demonstrate how it was the British intelligence services and the British government that went to great lengths to help focus the public’s attention in this direction. They took great pains to direct Canadian policy making, which included working to discourage Canada’s prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King from handling the affair privately with the Soviet ambassador, and were likely behind the infamous press leak to US reporter Drew Pearson that forced King to call a Royal Commission and publicize the affair. With the help of the British government and intelligence services, the Cold War began.

Eighteenth-century Britain saw the emergence of a new poetic genre, the “work” poem which took various forms of labor as its subject and was often written by laborers themselves. Several of these working class poets found their lives transformed due to the success of their verse (Stephen Duck most famously), but most faded into literary obscurity. However, a substantial body of “work” poems was produced by a diverse group of poets throughout the century, each manifesting divergent concerns and attitudes about the experience of work. This chapter assesses the formal connections uniting this poetic genre, particularly the frequent use of such literary devices as ironic distancing, litotes, and mock-georgic description. Instead of solely classifying “work” poems on the basis of their subject matter, this chapter demonstrates that such poetry (indeed the genre itself) lends itself to sophisticated literary techniques often associated with other poetic genres. In this fashion the full measure of eighteenth-century working class poetry can be evaluated more fairly, particularly by analyzing the formation of a new genre designed expressly by the poets themselves. The chapter ultimately seeks to demonstrate the connectedness, rather than the alienation, of working class poetry to the eighteenth-century British poetic tradition.

This book offers an in-depth overview of Turkish history and politics essential for understanding contemporary Turkey. It presents an analysis on a number of key issues from gender inequality to Islamism to urban regeneration. Based on interviews with leading intellectuals and academics from Turkey, the book’s theme follows the dramatic transformations that have occurred from the 1980 military coup to the coup attempt of 2016 and its aftermath. It further draws attention to the global flows of capital, goods, ideas, and technologies that continue to influence both mainstream and dissident politics. By doing so, the book tries to unsettle the assumption that Erdoğan and his Islamic ideology are the sole actors in contemporary Turkey. This book provides unusual insight into the Turkish society bringing various topics together, and increases the dialogue for people interested in democratic struggles in 21st century under neoliberal authoritarian regimes in general

This article looks at the shifts and continuities in labor relations in Zimbabwe from c. 1900–2000. It does so by looking at three cross sections (1904, 1951, and 2002) to examine the changes that have taken place. By exploring the continuities (subsistence agriculture) and shifts (limited industrialization and urbanization) of labor relations over this period, it is hoped that the article provides a comprehensive account of the rapid and radical changes Zimbabwe underwent during the twentieth century and the impacts these have had on the peoples and economies within the
southern African nation.

1960’ların sonrası, 12 Eylül’ün öncesi, kimilerine göre yitik ve karanlık bir “ara dönem”… Türkiye’nin 1970’li yıllarını merak edenler için detaylı ve aydınlatıcı bir başucu kitabı.

•12 Mart Muhtırası, Anayasa değişikliği, hürriyet gömleğinin daralması, radikalleşme…

•Ecevit, Kıbrıs Bunalımı, TÜSİAD, 24 Ocak kararlarına giden yol…

•Süleyman Demirel, Milliyetçi Cephe Hükümetleri, anti-komünist şahlanış, Aydınlar Ocağı…

•Alparslan Türkeş, Ülkücü Hareket, komünizme karşı paramiliter mücadele…

•Necmettin Erbakan, Millî Nizam, Millî Selamet, Akıncılar, mücahitler…

•15-16 Haziran, Kanlı 1 Mayıs, Maraş Katliamı, “darağacında üç fidan”…

•DİSK, İlerici Kadınlar Derneği, emek ve kitle örgütleri…

•Müzik, sinema, edebiyat; sanat ve siyaset ilişkisi, plaklı propaganda…

Mete Kaan Kaynar’ın hazırladığı derlemeye Sevgi Adak, Emel Akal, Pınar Akarçay, İsmet Akça, Mehmet Ö. Alkan, Murat Arslan, Sernaz Arslan, Şükrü Aslan, Gökhan Atılgan, İlker Aytürk, Tanıl Bora, Funda Şenol-Cantek, Yalçın Çakmak, Aziz Çelik, Kadir Dede, Veysel Dinler, Selçuk Duran, Evren Eken, Arda Ercan, Çağdaş Görücü, Veysel Ergüç, Çimen Günay-Erkol, Bora Gürdaş, Kerem Hocaoğlu, Süleyman İlaslan, Mete Kaan Kaynar, Nurettin Kalkan, Nuray Keskin, Bayram Koca, Selçuk Koca, Bilsay Kuruç, Murat Meriç, Levent Odabaşı, Asım Öz, Gencer Özcan, Celal Oral Özdemir, Hüseyin Özel, Güven Gürkan Öztan, Selman Saç, Ayşem Sezer-Şanlı, Burcu Sümer, Tuncay Şur, Anıl Varel, Kerem Yavaşça, Yavuz Yıldırım, Mete Yıldız, Mehmet Yüce ve Yelda Yürekli yazılarıyla katkıda bulundu.

The 1960s were unique and sui generis years for the labour movement in Turkey. This decade not only witnessed the emergence of industrial capitalism, but also was a critical and intense period of class struggle in which the formation of the country's working class accelerated. As the working class gained momentum, it proved itself to be a new social class after being dismissed in previous decades. At the beginning of the period, trade unions gained constitutional guarantees, thereby increasing the momentum of the labour movement, even as traditional trade unionism eroded somewhat following a period of dominance in the previous two decades. Ultimately, class-based and independent unionism grew in strength in the 1960s, while the decade also represents a critical moment in the process of working-class politicisation.

The paper investigates the management practices in place and the labour market outcomes experienced by workers in the Traffic Branch of the Victorian Railways over the period 1864–
1921. Using longitudinal panel data drawn from several publicly available sources and employing methods similar to those used by Baker et al. (1994a, 1994b), Seltzer and Merrett (1996), Hamilton and MacKinnon (1996) and Maloney and Whatley (1995), the careers of workers permanently employed in the Traffic Branch are examined. An analysis of the ports of entry, career structure, tenure and remuneration patterns indicates that the organisation operated as a well defined yet flexible internal labour market that included both blue- and white-collar positions.

The focus on wages, prices and the living standards has led the discussions around the great divergence, resulting in varied perspectives. This paper builds a new set of relationships between these variables. This chapter describes the welfare levels of construction workers and their way of managing living standards in the expansive economy during the 1860s. It contends that the existing thesis – that real wages and living standards grew in both Britain and India in the modernisation 19th-century- needs to be reassessed. Additionally, it juxtaposes workers’ gains in wage income and bargaining power with their painful struggles at coming to terms with the unfavourable living standards. Consequently, the paper qualifies the growth in real wages of construction workers in the Deccan by laying out the following: The subsistence ratio of manual workers, however, mostly remained below the unity of one: their earning fell short of the cost of family subsistence. The living standards of workers in India were lower in comparison with their counterparts in Britain. The labouring poor secured the essential family consumption by increasing the supply of family labour on the labour market and agitating for wage revision. Here, women and boy coolies were far from receiving a wage rise comparable to their male counterparts. The labouring poor adopted strategies to come to terms with the meagre ratio of family subsistence. They calibrated the budget of household, thus maintaining the low levels of comfort itself. To meet the pressure of depressed living and deprivation, they entered in the labour dependency grounded on the payment of advance and loan in return of the continuous supply of labour efforts to employers. This kind of economic transaction and attendant labour institution cast an adverse impact on mobility and welfare outcome available to working peoples. It is equally noticeable in this study that the working families who collectively earned more than their subsistence wage, kept themselves from the vicious cycle of attached labour, indebtedness and low welfare levels. Thus, wokers frequently took loans and advance; as soon as possible they sought to get rid of such dependencies that limited their mobility in the labour market and their liberty at large.

The aim of this article is to reconstruct child labour force partici- pation rate in the first decade of the twenty century in two textile Catalan towns in the Cuenca del Ter: Manlleu and Torelló. Local statistics on child labour show that the massive incorporation of children to the labour market occurred after the age of then. School leaving records support this finding. The incorpo- ration of boys and girls to the labour market was sharply affected by the differ- ent gender organization of labour in the textile spinning manufactures in these two municipalities, especially within the range of then to fourteen years old. Occupations and labour conditions of both boys and girls were also very differ- ent. Our analysis includes supply and demand as well as institutional factors.

American labour historians have long considered the Order of the Knights of Labor to be one of the most important labour organisations of the late nineteenth century. Yet they have tended to view the Knights as an exclusively American, and perhaps also a Canadian, Order. This article argues that the Knights of Labor must be considered as an international and not merely North American institution. This also has implications for the history of international labour organisations, a subject which is almost
exclusively concerned with European bodies. In view of the Knights and their activities outside North America this history must must be altered, if not necessarily overturned, if we place the Knights back in. This article firstly integrates the Knights within the chronological narrative of international labour organisation. It secondly compares the Order with other international labour institutions of the nineteenth century. In the process, it argues that the Knights of Labor should be considered as the most significant international labour body active between the famed First and Second Internationals, and for this reason that Order deserves to be recognized as the First and a Half International.

In this paper, the concept of national preference demands is used in order to describe the antagonism expressed by the early unions against the Greek refugees from the Ottoman Empire in the 1910s Athens and Piraeus. In seeking the reasons that permitted the exclusion of the refugees from the national and class solidarities, we focus on developments in Greek nationalism and politics; changes in the way 'foreign' workers were treated from 1830 to 1920; the monopolistic practices of workers' collectivities in labour markets; the role played by the ethno-local communities of immigrants in the lives of workers. Yet, the workers' particularisms did not fully contradict class formation, but were entangled in a dialectical relationship with it.

Nelle scienze economico-sociali una messe crescente di studi ha tematizzato negli ultimi decenni cause e conseguenze della recente diffusione del lavoro precario, analizzando il fenomeno come intrinsecamente legato alla natura della società post-fordista e all’evoluzione del sistema capitalistico nell’ultimo trentennio. Adottando una prospettiva storica e di genere, la precarietà del lavoro costituisce tuttavia un fenomeno di lungo periodo, che ha contraddistinto, pur in forme e dimensioni differenti, tutte le fasi del capitalismo industriale, compreso il periodo fordista, e per certi aspetti persino l’età preindustriale. Il lavoro femminile costituisce un osservatorio privilegiato per comprendere come l’instabilità e la precarietà del lavoro abbiano caratterizzato tutta la storia del capitalismo industriale, compreso il ciclo di grande espansione economico-industriale degli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta considerato come l’epoca della stabilità per eccellenza. La parte iniziale di quest...

The temporary employment of Yugoslav citizens in Western countries was one of the most important migration phenomena in socialist Yugoslavia. In the early 1970s, one in every four Yugoslavs employed outside of agriculture and craft work was a Gastarbeiter. Yet, while the study of the Yugoslav Gastarbeiter emigration has received much scholarly attention, the overall numbers and dynamics of Gastarbeiter return migration have remained under-researched.
This book offers a major contribution to fill this gap. It draws on fresh political documents from the archives, the press, statistical data, contemporary sociological research, audio-visual materials, novels, and oral history interviews. It shows that the impact of the Gastarbeiter return migration on development policies, social change, and narratives of identity was much more extensive than what has been recognised so far. In particular, analysing changes in migration patterns and policies in the period 1965-1991, this book argues that the return and reintegration of Gastarbeiter generated political divisions and social tensions on a much larger scale than had their employment abroad. It maintains that, during the crisis period of the 1980s, the increase of return migration put strains on the domestic labour market, contributing to the crisis of the federal system, and the ‘ethnicisation’ of migration policies

Karl Marx had to deal with a situation that bears an uncanny resemblance with the current predicament of trade unions regarding immigrant workers. The First International faced the threat of an internal division along ethnic and national lines around the Irish question, and more specifically around the role played by Irish migrants in England. I will first argue that Marx’s late work on Ireland, and especially his change of opinion on its tactical importance, cannot be isolated from his vigorous maneuvering within the International to prevent an internal rift over the question of migrant workers. Secondly, I will contend that Marx’s theoretical contribution on the Irish question fails to consider that class politics are not only international in nature, but also transnational. Consequently, Marx overlooks the tactical importance of migrant workers who could play a pivotal role in challenging exploitative and oppressive ties on the international scene.

n the period between the 1760s and the 1850s boatmen were the most important transport workers in early colonial eastern India, at least numerically. Unfortunately, they have received little scholarly attention so far. By looking at the regime of work, which surprisingly had strong bases in the notion of contract from as early as the 1770s, this article explores the nature of work, work organization, and resistance by boatmen. It argues that although work was structured according to the wage or hire-based (thika) contract regime, the social, political, and ecological conditions in which contract operated were equally crucial. The centrality of contract was premised upon how effectively it was enforceable and, in fact, historically enforced. Boatmen being one of the most important “native” groups with which the British were left on their often long journeys, this article suggests that contract helps to understand the formal “structure of work”, and the minute details of the journey help to understand the “world of work”, of which clandestine trade, weather, wind, rain, torrents, tracking, mooring, internal squabbling, and, not least, preparing food were some of the main components.

Der Aufsatz vergleicht die Strahlenschutzregime im Uranbergbau der DDR und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg bis in die achtziger Jahre. In beiden Systemen stellte sich das Problem, den Schutz der Beschäftigten mit einer möglichst effizienten Förderung von Uranerz im Kontext des Kalten Krieges zu vereinbaren. Unterschiede existierten im gesellschaftlichen und politischen Kontext des Bergbaus, weniger in der verwendeten Technik und in den zugrunde gelegten Strahlenschutznormen. Hinsichtlich letzterer orientierten sich die Ende der fünfziger Jahre einsetzenden Strahlenschutzmaßnahmen an Empfehlungen der Internationalen Strahlenschutzkommission (ICRP). Allerdings zeichnete sich der sächsisch-thüringische Uranbergbau nicht nur durch sein größeres Ausmaß (und entsprechend größeres Gefährdungspotential) aus, sondern auch durch quasi-militärische Geheimhaltung.

This article examines the impact of the Continental Blockade upon a local fishing and agricultural economy in the Mediterranean by focusing on the illicit trades that flourished on Stromboli. The island became a strategic location for smuggling between the warring kingdoms of British allied Naples and French ruled Sicily. This paper argues that the Blockade allowed Stromboli to join the network of maritime traffic that had been dominated by the two biggest islands in the archipelago. Although equally integrated into agriculture and fishing, women participated in the fraudulent sale of prize goods but were excluded from large-scale smuggling operations.

The paper focuses on the (re)emergence in the late twentieth century of a specific form of cross-border labour migration--viz. guest-work or circular/managed migration--that is designed to keep migrants from settling in receiving countries. The paper is part of a larger project that situates this form of transnational work-mobility regimes within the larger historical debates over the slippery line between free labour and forced labour. Specifically, it traces the genealogy of guest-work, and makes some preliminary observations about the specificity of contemporary circular / managed migration as it becomes incrementally normalized as a desirable policy tool across the world.

En la Argentina de principios de siglo XX, los accidentes de trabajo se multiplicaban al ritmo del crecimiento industrial convirtiéndose en objeto de atención de las clases gobernantes, así como de distintas organizaciones, gremios y partidos políticos. En este trabajo me propongo indagar en la problemática que los accidentes de trabajo implicaron para los trabajadores agremiados en La Fraternidad, que nucleaba a los maquinistas y fogoneros de los ferrocarriles. Para ello, prestaré especial atención a las fotografías que entre 1907 y 1915 aparecieron publicadas en el periódico gremial junto a las noticias que informaban sobre accidentes en el ferrocarril. El desafío propuesto implica considerar a las fotografías como fuentes para el análisis histórico, y no como meras ilustraciones que no plantean nuevas cuestiones o respuestas a la investigación. Esto exige tener en cuenta una serie de consideraciones sobre las imágenes, que ayude a reflexionar sobre su producción, destinatarios, usos, circulación y la cultura visual del contexto histórico en el que fueron producidas. A su vez, implica la necesidad de cuestionar algunas características atribuidas generalmente a las fotografías, tales como su presunto realismo, veracidad y objetividad.

Bengal in the first half of the eighteenth century was a prosperous and flourishing province, noted for its wealth and manufactures. It was this affluence which induced the contemporaries to describe Bengal in such terms as 'Paradise of Nations', 'the Paradise of India', or 'the realm of Paradise'. It was the same lure of wealth which also brought to the shores of Bengal a host of foreign merchants from far and wide, including a great many Europeans of diverse nationalities. Their travel accounts and descriptions were no less copious in glorifying the land which had 'a hundred open gates to enter...and not one to come away again'.

The wealth of this nation was created of course by the bounteous soil of the region which produced a wide variety of agricultural commodities like rice, wheat and other grains, sugarcane, cotton, opium, indigo, oils of different kinds and vegetables. Other economic products found in abundance were lacca, wax, long pepper, salt and saltpetre. But more than anything else Bengal was then the general storehouse of a wide variety of cotton and silk products not only for Hindustan of the Empire of the Great Mughal, but also for the Kingdom and for Europe itself. The goods so manufactured were not only known for their exquisite fineness and delicacy of workmanship but were also relatively cheap. Bengal's industrial economy during the pre-colonial period compared thus very favourably with that of any nation on earth.

In this chapter, an attempt will be made to study the state of the major indigenous industries during the colonial period. An attempt will also be made to explain the causes of their ultimate collapse. In this connection, the role of the state which could stimulate or inhibit industrial development would be looked into to ascertain the real motive of British rule. Did they create an appropriate climate for promoting and encouraging indigenous industrial enterprises? Was the destruction due to natural causes or was it deliberate? The economic policies of the colonial state in relation to industries need, therefore, also to be looked into to ascertain the total effect of such policies on the domestic manufacturing industries.

A pdf of a local history study of the General Strike of May 1926 as it was experienced in Aberdeen, North-east Scotland.
The work was published by Aberdeen People's Press as a 33 page pamphlet in May 1977.
Co-authored by Liz Kibblewhite and Andy Rigby

Spanning five central decades of the mid-twentieth century
(1934–1974), Walkabout was one of Australia’s best-loved illustrated
weeklies. Photography played a crucial role in the magazine’s
attempt to represent the vast Australian continent and its neighboring
countries. While historians and critics have regarded the
magazine as an example of boosterish nationalism and middle-brow
anti-intellectualism, I argue that the periodical should be considered
as an amalgam of reactionary and progressive ideals: Walkabout was
a paradoxical combination of high-modernism and romantic anti-capitalism,
conservative nationalism and left populism. Although it
glossed over many of the problems facing the country, the editors’
emphasis on “factual photography” was indicative of a democratic
impulse. I offer an examination of the magazine’s coverage of
extractive projects as an example of Walkabout’s ideological contradictions.
In particular, I look at Laurence Le Guay and Robert
Emerson Curtis’s 1947 photo-essay about the mining town of
Mount Isa to show how the periodical attempted to reconcile two
antagonistic gazes: that of the corporate engineer and that of
the miner.