For one week in late July of 1877, America shook with anger and fear as a variety of urban residents, mostly working class, attacked railroad property in dozens of towns and cities. The Great Strike of 1877 was one of the largest and most violent urban uprisings in American history.
Whereas most historians treat the event solely as a massive labor strike that targeted the railroads, David O. Stowell examines America's predicament more broadly to uncover the roots of this rebellion. He studies the urban origins of the Strike in three upstate New York cities--Buffalo, Albany, and Syracuse. He finds that locomotives rumbled through crowded urban spaces, sending panicked horses and their wagons careening through streets. Hundreds of people were killed and injured with appalling regularity. The trains also disrupted street traffic and obstructed certain forms of commerce. For these reasons, Stowell argues, The Great Strike was not simply an uprising fueled by disgruntled workers. Rather, it was a grave reflection of one of the most direct and damaging ways many people experienced the Industrial Revolution.
"Through meticulously crafted case studies . . . the author advances the thesis that the strike had urban roots, that in substantial part it represented a community uprising. . . .A particular strength of the book is Stowell's description of the horrendous accidents, the toll in human life, and the continual disruption of craft, business, and ordinary movement engendered by building railroads into the heart of cities."--Charles N. Glaab, "American Historical Review"

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Kath Williams, who emerges as a feisty and quietly determined woman, was the major force behind the struggle for equal pay for women. She was elected as a delegate to attend conferences overseas and maintained her persistence for the cause with sheer hard -- almost unpaid -- work. With the increasing ignorance about history of any kind, history of this type is invaluable as it reaches back and pulls the protagonists forward into our time and helps us to understand that there is a long tradition of fighting for justice in Australia. Kath Williams will take her place as one of Australia's most important women. This book is clearly written and includes documentation and photographs from the period.

Much of the received wisdom about the world of work emphasizes the marketization of the employment relationship; the decline of class-based forms of inequality, and the individualization of employment relations. Non-standard forms of employment, the delayering of organizational hierarchies, and the use of individual performance-based payment systems are all held up as examples of a new neo-liberal order in which employers and employees no longer feel a sense of obligation to each other.
Drawing on a range of employee and employer surveys, including the authors own Working in Britain 2000 survey, this ambitious study presents a comprehensive examination of the conditions, attitudes, and experiences of British employees from the mid-1980s to the early years of this century. The authors' analyses provides a compelling critique of the received wisdom, while also providing an original, alternative account of recent developments in work and labour markets. Along the way, the book covers such topical issues as the changing nature of trade union membership, the consequences of Britain's 'long hours' culture', and the apparent inability of women to ask for pay rises. Significantly, the authors seek to reposition debates about the future of work by restoring the concepts of contracts and social class to the analysis of the employment relationship.
Based on the ESRC funded Future of Work research programme this book is destined to shape our understanding of employment in Britain for the foreseeable future.

Images of striking COSATU workers, singing, marching and toyi-toying are a familiar sight for most South Africans and external observers of the country’s politics. Similarly, COSATU’s feisty general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi has become a household name, commanding respect and admiration among millions and loathing and fear among his enemies and those who are on the receiving end of his fiery political oratory.

But how much do we know about what COSATU workers think about their workplaces, their unions, politics and the economy? What influences COSATU members’ decisions to vote for a particular political party? Why has COSATU women members’ support for the ANC declined? Why do some union members think there may be good reasons to assault non-strikers and scabs during strikes? What do unionised workers think of service delivery and what role did they play in the recent spate of service delivery protests? These and many other questions are examined in this volume which is based on the fourth run of the COSATU Workers’ Survey conducted a few months before the 2009 elections.

Contrary to stereotypes reproduced in the media and other public platforms which portray trade union members as a herd led by all-powerful ‘union bosses’, COSATU’s Contested Legacy deftly presents a picture of a multifaceted organisation whose members are steeped in the traditions of internal democracy, leadership accountability and mandated decision-making. But these traditions are not static. They are fiercely contested among different groups and categories of union members – women and men; migrant and urban workers; skilled and unskilled workers; blue collar and white collar and professional workers; permanent and part-time and casual workers.

Taking as its starting point the authors' earlier work on Labour Legislation and Public Policy, this book provides a detailed account and critical analysis of British labour legislation and labour market regulation since the early 1990s. Referring back to the earlier history, and filling in the gaps in the early and mid-1990s, the work concentrates mainly on the legislation and policy measures in the employment sphere of the New Labour governments which have been in power since 1997, placing those developments in the context of the relevant aspects of European Community law. The work argues for an understanding of this body of legislation and regulatory activity as being directed towards the realisation of a flexible labour market, and shows how this objective has been pursued in three intersecting areas, those of regulating personal or individual employment relations, regulating collective representation, and promoting work. It explores the methods of regulation which have been used, developing a taxonomy of regulation and a notion of 'light regulation' to characterise some recent legislative interventions. It considers how far the administration of Prime Minister Tony Blair has fulfilled its promises or claims of 'fairness at work', 'welfare to work' and 'success at work'. It is intended to be of interest to those concerned with the study of British and European labour or employment law, employee relations or human resource management, labour market economics, and contemporary politics.

At a minimum our goal is to develop a better understanding of Japanese labor market practices and work organization and in so doing develop a more enlightened vision of American practices. We will greatly enhance our ability to achieve both these goals by arriving at a better understanding of the comparative experience of the two nations over time. We can no longer afford the delusion that what exists in the United States reflects the characteristics of industrial society in its most advanced form. Yet to follow current fashion in simply denying that the United States is the very model of a modern society, while advocating that we imitate the Japanese, is to take a course filled with its own pitfalls. Perhaps it is time we accepted the fact that the social scientist's intense commitment to generalization cannot be allowed to obscure the fundamental observation that nations develop along their own paths, based on their own political, cultural, economic and social histories. As nations industrialize there is undoubtedly convergence in important institutional spheres, such as the expansion of education, the adoption of common technologies and determinants of labor mobility. Certainly nations can learn from one another, and indeed some nations impose their will on other nations. Yet there are also unique solutions to common problems. -From the Introduction This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1979.

Telling the powerful story of the West Virginia coal mining rebellions of the early 20th century, this book collects material from the leaders, the miners, and the journalists sent to report on the 1912 and 1921 West Virginia mine wars--explosive examples of strikes and union battles. Featured in the text are articles, speeches, and discussions between union leaders such as Samuel Gompers, Frank Keeney, Fred Mooney, Bill Blizzard, and Mother Jones. Also included are U.S. Senate committee testimonies from miners and their family members describing life and work in the coal camps and explaining their participation in the violence. These facts clearly portray the human cost of industry and present the hard choices of a rebellious and often politically radical populace who refuses to be beleaguered under any circumstances.

In 1946, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) undertook Operation Dixie, an initiative to recruit industrial workers in the American South. Elizabeth and Ken Fones-Wolf plumb rarely used archival sources and rich oral histories to explore the CIO's fraught encounter with the evangelical Protestantism and religious culture of southern whites. The authors' nuanced look at working class religion reveals how laborers across the surprisingly wide evangelical spectrum interpreted their lives through their faith. Factors like conscience, community need, and lived experience led individual preachers to become union activists and mill villagers to defy the foreman and minister alike to listen to organizers. As the authors show, however, all sides enlisted belief in the battle. In the end, the inability of northern organizers to overcome the suspicion with which many evangelicals viewed modernity played a key role in Operation Dixie's failure, with repercussions for labor and liberalism that are still being felt today. Identifying the role of the sacred in the struggle for southern economic justice, and placing class as a central aspect in southern religion, Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South provides new understandings of how whites in the region wrestled with the options available to them during a crucial period of change and possibility.

Wit, wisdom, adventure, and revelations from sixty years on the road. They say that only truck drivers experience the true grandeur and landscape of America: the winding mountainsides at sunrise, the first frosts of winter descending on apple orchards, the call of the rising roosters. In A Trucker's Tale, Ed Miller gives an inside look at the allure of the work and the colorful characters who haul our goods on the open road. He shares what it was like to grow up in a boisterous trucking family, his experience as an equipment officer in Vietnam, the wide range of vehicles he's mounted, and the daily trials, tribulations, risks, and exploits that define life as a trucker. Ed's vibrant, no-holds-barred tales are hilarious and heartwarming, sometimes cringeworthy or unbelievable—recollections of heroic feats as well as the “fishing stories� that have stretched and shifted from CB radio to CB radio. Many are the results of what he calls “just plain stupidity.� Others bring to light the small acts of kindness and grand gestures that these Knights of the Highway perform each day, as well as the safety risks and continual danger that these essential workers endure. Together they paint a compelling portrait of one of the most important but least-known industries and reveal why Ed, and so many like him, just kept on truckin’.

In reviewing major issues concerning the history of British trade unions in the last two-thirds of the twentieth century, this book discusses many controversial aspects of trade unions. It includes their economic impact (a cause of higher unemployment and lower productivity?) and their influence on government (unelected partners?). The book provides students with an accessible introduction to the recent history of British trade unionism.

Using an interdisciplinary lens, this book innovatively explores the conflicts and shifting boundaries in organisational, professional, legal and economic structures, caused by the rise of the gig economy. The dynamic structural model of the gig economy is introduced to interrogate the inner workings of the amorphous gig economy at the Macro, Meso and Micro levels of analysis. Conflict and Shifting Boundaries in the Gig Economy examines a range of tensions and issues, including; The future of trade unions in the gig economy Employment status and contractual arrangements Talent management in the gig economy Employee voice and whistleblowing Career choices and organisational attractiveness Trajectory and impact at macro economic levels. Organisational examples and a focus on the perspective of those engaged in gig work introduce new insights and research questions on the current and future challenges posed by the gig economy, alongside using the structural dynamic model as a tool to understand actors and organisational experiences and build appropriate interventions.

Workplace compensation has become an industry unto itself. What are its relations of production and role in contemporary capitalism? In Lost-Time Injury Rates Rodrigo Finkelstein examines the information-intensive operations of recording and processing work-related accidents, diseases and fatalities carried out by Workers' Compensation Systems. Situated within the field of political economy of information, this critique contributes to the understanding of how injury rates service a specific sector of the economy by constructing lost labour power for sale. Finkelstein convincingly argues that injury rates must be seen as grounded in the capitalist mode of production, and that they constitute a historical social relation that, by taking the semblance of inductive indicators, conceal specific capitalist relations that bring about the exchange and distribution of lost labour power among capitalists and wage labourers.

In the struggles for democratisation that emerged in the late 1980s and 1990s in Africa, labour movements often played a central role in the development of opposition politics. This book examines the emergence of labour as a strong organisational and political force in the struggles against an increasingly authoritarian state in Zimbabwe. Written by specialists in the labour movement from a variety of different perspectives, the chapters discuss the political, economic, global, organisational, legal, gender and sectoral challenges faced by the Zimbabwean labour movement in its move from the margins of liberation movement politics to a pivotal role in the post-colonial struggle for a more responsible and accountable civil society and government.

Chartered in 1921, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is a worldwide organization that represents more than two million workers in occupations from healthcare and government service to custodians and taxi drivers. Women form more than half the membership while people in minority groups make up approximately forty percent. Luís LM Aguiar and Joseph A. McCartin edit essays on one of contemporary labor’s bedrock organizations. The contributors explore key episodes, themes, and features in the union’s recent history and evaluate SEIU as a union with global aspirations and impact. The first section traces the SEIU’s growth in the last and current centuries. The second section offers in-depth studies of key campaigns in the United States, including the Justice for Janitors and Fight for $15 movements. The third section focuses on the SEIU’s work representing low-wage workers in Canada, Australia, Europe, and Brazil. An interview with Justice for Janitors architect Stephen Lerner rounds out the volume. Contributors: Luís LM Aguiar, Adrienne E. Eaton, Janice Fine, Euan Gibb, Laurence Hamel-Roy, Tashlin Lakhani, Joseph A. McCartin, Yanick Noiseux, Benjamin L. Peterson, Allison Porter, Alyssa May Kuchinski, Maite Tapia, Veronica Terriquez, and Kyoung-Hee Yu

Mineral wealth from the Americas underwrote and undergirded European colonization of the New World; American gold and silver enriched Spain, funded the slave trade, and spurred Spain's northern European competitors to become Atlantic powers. Building upon works that have narrated this global history of American mining in economic and labor terms, Mining Language is the first book-length study of the technical and scientific vocabularies that miners developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as they engaged with metallic materials. This language-centric focus enables Allison Bigelow to document the crucial intellectual contributions Indigenous and African miners made to the very engine of European colonialism. By carefully parsing the writings of well-known figures such as Cristobal Colon and Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes and lesser-known writers such Alvaro Alonso Barba, a Spanish priest who spent most of his life in the Andes, Bigelow uncovers the ways in which Indigenous and African metallurgists aided or resisted imperial mining endeavors, shaped critical scientific practices, and offered imaginative visions of metalwork. Her creative linguistic and visual analyses of archival fragments, images, and texts in languages as diverse as Spanish and Quechua also allow her to reconstruct the processes that led to the silencing of these voices in European print culture.

For up to twenty years after the Second World War both in Britain and the US boasted `mature' industrial relations systems supported by their governments and, allowing for some differences in degree, by most employers. Since the early 1980s, these systems have been critically weakened. This comparative industrial relations text explains this development primarily through the withdrawal of public policy support and, mainly in Britain's case, its replacement by government hostility. An important consequence of this is the erosion of the effective defence and representation of employee interests as the managerial prerogative has been allowed, even encouraged, to extend its authority in the workplace. The `representation gap' has grown so that six out of seven US employees, and two out of three British, are not represented at work, at the same time as there has been increasing discussion of `team' working etc. This could be a serious negative development for economic performance. A growing body of research is indicating that employers who bargain with trade unions, or enter into partnerships with them, are likely to be more productive than their non-union competitors. More importantly, the size of the representation gap presents a clear denial of the democratic rights of citizens, in their role as employees, with potentially serious implications for social stability both within and beyond the workplace.

This book presents a broad-ranging survey of contemporary writing about work and employment. It identifies three broad traditions of research and commentary on work - the unitary perspective, the pluralist perspective and the critical perspective - and describes the contemporary output of these traditions; i.e. it surveys current research and argument found within these traditions. The book also surveys debate between these traditions, and the second part of the book presents a detailed account of debate over four current issues. These issues are employee participation, customer culture, equality and diversity and the impact of the global financial crisis. The source material for the book comes from the UK, USA and other countries and the arguments contained within it have international relevance. The book provides an overview of recent work on the employment relationship and the debate and controversy that can be seen in this area of study. Framing Work will be of interest to academics researching and writing about employment and to advanced students in Industrial Relations, Human Resource Management, Organization Studies, and Sociology.

One of the enduring legacies of the United States Civil War is that democracy in the workforce is an essential part of societal democracy. But the past century has seen a marked decline in the number of unionized employees, a trend that has increased with the rise of the internet and low-paying, gig-economy jobs that lack union protection. William B. Gould IV takes stock of this history and finds that unions, frequently providing inadequate energy and resources in organizing the unorganized, have a mixed record in dealing with many public-policy issues, particularly involving race. But Gould argues that unions, notwithstanding these failures, are still the best means to protect essential workers in health, groceries, food processing, agriculture, and the meatpacking industry, and that the law, when properly deployed, can be a remedy not only for trade union-employer relationships, but also for the ailments of democracy itself.

One of the enduring legacies of the United States Civil War is that democracy in the workforce is an essential part of societal democracy. But the past century has seen a marked decline in the number of unionized employees, a trend that has increased with the rise of the internet and low-paying, gig-economy jobs that lack union protection. William B. Gould IV takes stock of this history and finds that unions, frequently providing inadequate energy and resources in organizing the unorganized, have a mixed record in dealing with many public-policy issues, particularly involving race. But Gould argues that unions, notwithstanding these failures, are still the best means to protect essential workers in health, groceries, food processing, agriculture, and the meatpacking industry, and that the law, when properly deployed, can be a remedy not only for trade union-employer relationships, but also for the ailments of democracy itself.

Thirteen months after Trump allegedly captured the allegiance of "the white working class," a strike wave-the first in over four decades-rocked the United States. Inspired by the wildcat victory in West Virginia, teachers in Oklahoma, Arizona, and across the country walked off their jobs and shut down their schools to demand better pay for educators, more funding for students, and an end to years of austerity. Confounding all expectations, these working-class rebellions erupted in regions with Republican electorates, weak unions, and bans on public sector strikes. By mobilizing to take their destinies into their own hands, red state school workers posed a clear alternative to politics-as-usual. And with similar actions now gaining steam in Los Angeles, Oakland, Denver, and Virginia, there is no sign that this upsurge will be short-lived. Red State Revolt is a compelling analysis of the emergence and development of this historic strike wave, with an eye to extracting its main strategic lessons for educators, labor organizers, and radicals across the country. A former high school teacher and longtime activist, Eric Blanc embedded himself into the rank-and-file leaderships of the walkouts, where he was given access to internal organizing meetings and secret Facebook groups inaccessible to most journalists. The result is one of the richest portraits of the labor movement to date, a story populated with the voices of school workers who are winning the fight for the soul of public education-and redrawing the political map of the country at large.

Dieses Buch kommt dem Konservativen auf die Spur. Mit Darstellungen aus Politik und Forschung wird zunachst das widerspruchliche Konservatismusverstandnis aufgezeigt. Wahrend der Konservatismus nicht selten als ruckwartsgewandt oder gar reaktionar bewertet wird, sehen seine Vertreter sich selbst als notwendiges Korrektiv am Progressiven und Liberalen. Der irische Politiker und Stammvater des Konservatismus, Edmund Burke, offenbart sich als der ideale Bezugspunkt fur eine Untersuchung dieser umstrittenen Thematik. Seine Werke uberraschen mit der Aktualitat seiner Aussagen. Der Autor ruckt die politische Kultur und den gesellschaftlichen Diskurs in ein neues Licht. Es wird deutlich, wo die Schwachpunkte heutiger Politikdiskurse liegen - nicht nur in Deutschland.

In some western European countries trade unions and employers' organizations share responsibility with government for maintaining order and efficiency in the labour market as a matter of course. in others such a role is seen as an unacceptable interference with either the free market or the prerogatives of the state, or both. How can we explain these differences? How enduring are they? Do they matter? In the 1970s there seemed to be a growing popularity for the first approach, leading to the explosion of interest in neo-corporatism; did all that evaporate during the ostensibly neo-liberal 1980s? Colin Crouch tries to answer these questions with reference to fifteen western European nations. Using a combination of rational choice theory and historical analysis he traces the development of industrial relations systems in these countries from the 1870s to the present. He ends by seeking explanations for differences further back in time, showing that longer-term historical explanations of contemporary institutions are more necessary than most exercises in policy analysis prefer to accept. 'an outstanding example of the fusion of theoretical economic analysis with historical perspective. Recommended at all levels' Choice 'It is difficult to do justice to this oustanding book in a short review or at a single reading. Colin Crouch's ambitious comparative survey of states and industrial relations provides both an abstract framework for comparative study . . . and a framework for comparing the level and form of corporatism in industrial relations.' Political Studies