This is the third volume on the history of the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU), covering the period 1945 to 1960, and starting with an extraordinary moment in its history. There were such high hopes with the election of Attlee’s Labour government, committed to a series of radical reforms, establishing the Welfare State and nationalising key sectors of the economy. These reforms seemed to offer unique opportunities to move forwards towards what Nye Bevan, the main architect of the NHS, saw as a ‘new world both at home and abroad’. Or did it? This volume explores the challenges as well as the opportunities for radical reform, as these played out between 1945 and 1960. There was renewed industrial unrest, with disputes in the docks and transport industries, despite the best efforts of the Labour Government to contain them. Much remained to be achieved in terms of equalities, and there were challenges when it came to calls for international solidarity in the Cold War context. But still, there had been major developments in terms of trade union education. The T&G had become a much more democratic organisation, and, overall, was a more powerful, progressive force by the end of this period. This volume explores issues with continuing relevance for the trade union and labour movement.

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The story of the great 1934 general strike in San Francisco. A classic of working-class journalism.

'Free trade' strategies have increasingly become a problem for the international labour movement. While trade unions in the North especially in manufacturing have supported free trade agreements to secure export markets for their companies, trade unions in the Global South oppose these agreements, since they often imply deindustrialisation. Especially the expansion of the free trade agenda into services, public procurement, investment, intellectual property rights as well as investor to state dispute settlement provisions are considered to be problematic. The purpose of this volume is to understand better these dynamics underlying 'free trade' policy-making in order to explore possibilities for transnational labour solidarity. Bringing together labour academics with trade union researchers and social movement activists, this volume moves from conceptual reflections about the impact of 'free trade' via the analysis of struggles around free trade agreements to considerations of concrete alternatives. This book was published as a special issue of Globalizations.

Growing interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) has focused attention on the relationship between businesses and key stakeholders, such as NGOs and local communities. Curiously, however, commentators on CSR rarely discuss the role of trade unions, while commentators on employment relations seldom engage with CSR. This situation is all the more remarkable since unions are a critically important social actor and have traditionally played a prominent role in defending the interests of one key stakeholder in the company, the employee.

Written by dedicated experts in their field, this book addresses a key gap in the literature on both CSR and employment relations, namely trade union policies towards CSR, as well as union engagement with particular CSR initiatives and the challenges they face in doing so. The research covers eleven European countries which, when taken together, constitute a representative sample of industrial relations structures across the continent.

This book will be essential reading for scholars, students and practitioners of international business, employment relations, public policy and CSR. Its foreword is written by Philippe Pochet and Maria Jepsen, Directors of the European Trade Union Institute in Brussels.

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'Early in my research, a friend with excellent knowledge of the United Auto Workers internal operations told me, "Don't give up. They are hiding something"...' It's 1990, and US labour is being outsourced to Mexico. Rumours of a violent confrontation at the Mexican Ford Assembly plant on January 8 reach the United Auto Workers (UAW) union in the US: nine employees had been shot by a group of drunken thugs and gangsters, in an act of political repression which changed the course of Mexican and US workers' rights forever. Rob McKenzie was working at the Ford Twin Cities Assembly plant in Minnesota when he heard of the attack. He didn't believe the official story, and began a years-long investigation to uncover the truth. His findings took him further than he expected - all the way to the doors of the CIA. Virtually unknown outside of Mexico, the full story of 'El Golpe', or 'The Coup', is a dark tale of political intrigue that still resonates today.

First published in 1968, the main purpose of this study is to present an account of the Russian Labour Movement, based mainly on original Russian sources. The Labour Movement differed greatly from those of the chief European countries from its inception to the final stage. This text investigates the main trends of the m; to analyse the origins and nature of soviets; and to describe the scope and character of the Russian Labour organization.

In the last decade, nonunion employee representation (NER) has become a much discussed topic in the fields of human resource management, employment relations, and employment/labor law. This book examines the purpose, structure, and performance of various types of employee representation bodies created by companies in non-union settings to promote collective forums for voice and involvement at the workplace. This unique volume presents the first longitudinal evidence on the performance, success, and failure of NER plans over an extended time period. Consisting of twelve detailed, in-depth case studies of actual NER plans in operation across four countries, this volume provides unparalleled evidence on such matters as: the motives behind the initial establishment of NER, different organizational forms of NER in industry, key success and failure factors over the long-term, pro and con evaluations for employers and employees, and more. Voice and Involvement at Work captures an unequalled international and comparative perspective through a wide cross-section of different NER forms.

Decades have passed since black lung disease was recognized as a national disgrace and Congress was pushed to take legislative action. Since then, however, not much has changed. Big coal companies-along with their allies in the legal and medical professions-have continually flouted the law and exposed miners to deadly amounts of coal dust, while also systematically denying benefits to miners who suffer and die because of their jobs. Indeed, these men and their families, with little access to education, legal resources, and other employment options, have long been fighting to wrench even modest compensation and medical costs from our nation's biggest mining interests-all to combat a disease that could have been eradicated years ago. Tracing their heroic stories back to the very beginning, Chris Hamby, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on this issue, gives us a deeply troubling yet ultimately triumphant work that promises to do for Black Lung what Beth Macy did for the opioid epidemic. From corporate offices and mine shafts, to hospital beds and rural clinics, Soul Full of Coal Dust becomes a legal and medical thriller that brilliantly traces how a powerless band of laborers-alongside a small group of lawyers and doctors, often working out of their homes or in rural clinics and tiny offices-challenged one of the world's most powerful forces, Big Coal, and won. Full of the rich and complex atmosphere of Appalachia and packed with tales of those who have toiled in the mines of West Virginia, Soul Full of Coal Dust Sis a necessary and timely book about injustice and resistance.

In Marx After Marx, Harry Harootunian questions the claims of Western Marxism and its presumption of the final completion of capitalism. If this shift in Marxism reflected the recognition that the expected revolutions were not forthcoming in the years before World War II, its Cold War afterlife helped to both unify the West in its struggle with the Soviet Union and bolster the belief that capitalism remained dominant in the contest over progress. This book deprovincializes Marx and the West's cultural turn by returning to the theorist's earlier explanations of capital's origins and development, which followed a trajectory beyond Euro-America to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Marx's expansive view shows how local circumstances, time, and culture intervened to reshape capital's system of production in these regions. His outline of a diversified global capitalism was much more robust than was his sketch of the English experience in Capital and helps explain the disparate routes that evolved during the twentieth century. Engaging with the texts of Lenin, Luxemburg, Gramsci, and other pivotal theorists, Harootunian strips contemporary Marxism of its cultural preoccupation by reasserting the deep relevance of history.

The Japanese way of work is notoriously 'different'. But is it Japan or Britain which is the odd man out? When originally published this was the first book to explore the real differences, through a point-by-point comparison of two Japanese factories with two British ones making similar products. In the first half of the book this comparison is pursued in systematic detail and clear illustration of the attitudes and assumptions which underlie what the author calls the 'market-oriented' system of Britain and the 'organization-oriented' system of Japan. One chapter shows how the employment institutions of the two countries fit into their political, family and educational institutions - an exercise in functionalist sociology which dominates t he later chapters and makes a major contribution to the discussion of development and of the 'convergence' of different systems.

Modern capitalism and political freedom rest on concepts of conscience and morality, and abhor concentrations of unbridled power. In America, that economic and political system developed mechanisms designed to check and balance such power. Despite those mechanisms, corporate America developed too many imperial chief executives who abused their power by engaging in a fraudulent and self-serving pursuit of wealth and perquisites. This edition deals with how this happened, how the system responded, and actions that could minimize the danger of its recurrence. The text analyzes those who either support or keep quiet for miscreant chief executives, and how these participants became involved in corporate fraud. The investigation is completed by a look at the results of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the law enacted as the corrective response to corporate corruption, and the increasingly intense pressure to ease the expense and other burdens associated with its vigorous enforcement. Hopefully, the insights gained by the analysis will contribute to a revived confidence in the integrity of corporate accounts, and thereby sustain the vitality of America's capital markets, which are essential to our future economic well-being.

James 'Dongaree' Baird, a boilermaker in Harland and Wolff's shipyard, was one of hundreds of 'rotten Prods', and thousands of Catholics, driven from their place of work by loyalists in 1920. The expulsions marked the end of Belfast's 'two red years', distinguished by the massive engineering strike in 1919 and the municipal elections in 1920, in which Baird was elected to Belfast Corporation. Baird's case offers a rare insight into the city's brief radicalisation, the mentality of Protestant workers who opposed the partition of Ireland, and the reasons why loyalists targeted Labour as their most insidious enemy. As a leader of the expelled workers, Baird spoke to the Irish and British TUCs, but Irish Labour had no practical policy on the North and British trade unions feared that confronting loyalists would lose them members. Subsequently, Baird worked for the National Sailors' and Firemen's Union and the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, when he led the farm labourers of Waterford in an epic strike against wage cuts and was nearly elected to Dail Eireann. In 1927 he and his family emigrated to Brisbane, Queensland, where his daughters Nora and Helene were decorated by the Australian government for services to music in schools. A compelling account of a rotten Prod and a Labour hero.

How the European Union handles posted workers is a growing issue for a region with borders that really are just lines on a map. A 2008 story, dissected in Ines Wagner's Workers without Borders, about the troubling working conditions of migrant meat and construction workers, exposed a distressing dichotomy: how could a country with such strong employers' associations and trade unions allow for the establishment and maintenance of such a precarious labor market segment? Wagner introduces an overlooked piece of the puzzle: re-regulatory politics at the workplace level. She interrogates the position of the posted worker in contemporary European labour markets and the implications of and regulations for this position in industrial relations, social policy and justice in Europe. Workers without Borders concentrates on how local actors implement European rules and opportunities to analyze the balance of power induced by the EU around policy issues. Wagner examines the particularities of posted worker dynamics at the workplace level, in German meatpacking facilities and on construction sites, to reveal the problems and promises of European Union governance as regulating social justice. Using a bottom-up approach through in-depth interviews with posted migrant workers and administrators involved in the posting process, Workers without Borders shows that strong labor-market regulation via independent collective bargaining institutions at the workplace level is crucial to effective labor rights in marginal workplaces. Wagner identifies structures of access and denial to labor rights for temporary intra-EU migrant workers and the problems contained within this system for the EU more broadly.

This volume seeks to re-energise the paradigm of the New International Labour Studies by detailing how struggles over the construction, reproduction, utilisation and restructuring of labour forces are the contested social foundations upon which the global economy stands. Through a combination of theoretical works and a series of case studies, the volume highlights the cutting edge of international labour studies. Its expands on three pivotal areas of study within the discipline:1) the social construction of new labour forces across an expanding international division of labour; 2) the self-organising potential of workers, particularly within non-traditional sectors; and 3) the possibilities for transborder labour movements to help address the asymmetrical power relationships between globalised capital and localised labour. In addressing these themes, the volume helps explain not only how the contemporary international division of labour is produced and reproduced, but also the strengths and limits to current attempts to overcome its unequal and divisive nature. This book was published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

On September 10, 1897, a group of 400 striking coal miners--workers of Polish, Slovak, and Lithuanian descent or origin--marched on Lattimer, Pennsylvania. There, law enforcement officers fired without warning into the protesters, killing nineteen miners and wounding thirty-eight others. The bloody day quickly faded into history. Paul A. Shackel confronts the legacies and lessons of the Lattimer event. Beginning with a dramatic retelling of the incident, Shackel traces how the violence, and the acquittal of the deputies who perpetrated it, spurred membership in the United Mine Workers. By blending archival and archaeological research with interviews, he weighs how the people living in the region remember--and forget--what happened. Now in positions of power, the descendants of the slain miners have themselves become rabidly anti-union and anti-immigrant as Dominicans and other Latinos change the community. Shackel shows how the social, economic, and political circumstances surrounding historic Lattimer connect in profound ways to the riven communities of today. Compelling and timely, Remembering Lattimer restores an American tragedy to our public memory.

Seit das "Ende des Kommunismus" auf 1990 festgeschrieben und der "Unrechtsstaat DDR" der Justiz ubergeben wurde, inszenieren neue Institutionen, Stiftungen und Behoerden auf Bundesebene den oekonomischen, kulturellen und moralischen Erfolg des Rechtsstaates. Dabei wird die Mehrheit der Neuburger mit Schockereignissen des krassen sozialen Wandels und der gesellschaftlichen Stigmatisierung konfrontiert. Konzepte wie "Transformation", "Modernisierung" und "Demokratisierung" treten als Euphemismen auf, die uber eine neoliberale Annexion der "Neulander" hinwegtauschen. Das Investmentprojekt "Aufschwung Ost" ist ein Laborfall der Globalisierung. UEber eine Aufarbeitung der DDR im Totalitarismus- und Diktaturenvergleich hinaus ist eine politische Soziologie der Landnahme, des Gesellschaftsumbaus und des strukturellen Kolonialismus in Ostdeutschland langst uberfallig. Das Forschungsprogramm "Entkoppelte Gesellschaft. Liberalisierung und Widerstand in Ostdeutschland seit 1989/90. Ein soziologisches Laboratorium" will im dreissigsten Jahr der "Einheit" diesem Thema mit einer mehrbandigen Publikation Rechnung tragen. Der Band "Exil" belegt den Zusammenhang zwischen der Annexions-, Vertreibungs- und Assimilationspolitik der Bundesregierung im Beitrittsgebiet und dem rapiden Anstieg von Krankheit, Sterblichkeit, Substanzkonsum, Suizid, Abwanderung oder Kinderlosigkeit. Die Entkopplung der DDR-Bevoelkerung aus soziokulturellen Gefugen und die institutionelle Diskriminierung ihrer Herkunft haben einen intergenerativen Ost-West-Kulturkonflikt und das Exil im eigenen Land zur Folge.

Bajo el gobierno del MAS el movimiento indigena boliviano logro emanciparse politicamente, penetrando las estructuras del poder estatal, pero al mismo tiempo paso por su crisis, desmovilizandose paulatinamente. El objetivo del libro es explorar la relacion entre la institucionalizacion del movimiento y su siguiente desmovilizacion. Aplicando el metodo "process tracing", el libro infiere primero que el impacto de la institucionalizacion en la dinamica del movimiento es condicionado por su caracter, asi el movimiento se pacifica cuando goza de la politica favorable y representacion gubernamental mas bien que parlamentaria; segundo, una vez el movimiento sea la parte de la maquinaria estatal, su disidencia potencial causa dilemas estrategicos para el gobierno que reacciona con estrategias para suprimirlo.

Higher education is the site of an ongoing conflict. At the heart of this struggle are the precariously employed faculty 'contingents' who work without basic job security, living wages or benefits. Yet they have the incentive and, if organized, the power to shape the future of higher education. Power Despite Precarity is part history, part handbook and a wholly indispensable resource in this fight. Joe Berry and Helena Worthen outline the four historical periods that led to major transitions in the worklives of faculty of this sector. They then take a deep dive into the 30-year-long struggle by California State University lecturers to negotiate what is recognized as the best contract for contingents in the US. The authors ask: what is the role of universities in society? Whose interests should they serve? What are the necessary conditions for the exercise of academic freedom? Providing strategic insight for activists at every organizing level, they also tackle 'troublesome questions' around legality, union politics, academic freedom and how to recognize friends (and foes) in the struggle.

The stagnation of the Japanese economy and the ageing of Japanese society has led to major changes in the labour market in Japan. This comprehensive study looks at how the Japanese employment system is adapting to its new economic environment. Using the latest statistical evidence, the book focusses on the growing use of part-time and other forms of atypical employment relationships and illustrates how this is expressed in several different parts of the labour market. Particular attention is given to the changing situation of women, the decline of the family enterprise, the problems faced by older workers and the poor prospects for recent high school graduates. The recent rise in unemployment, including hidden unemployment is analysed. Relations between management and employees in Japanese corporations are also becoming more individualistic with the introduction of performance-related pay and the declining importance of enterprise unions. As a result of these changes, the future may see rising levels of income inequality. The Japanese labour force is declining with the ageing of the population and Japan's ability to cope is examined with special attention given to immigration policy. This book will be of interest to anyone interested in what is happening today in Japan and what the possibilities are for the future.

Labor at the turn of the Century; Open-shop drive; National Civic Federation; The church and labor; business unionism; Craft vs industrial unions; Women, Black and immigrant workers; AFL political policies; the Socialists; Western Federation of Miners; the American Labor Union, more.

This book gives a comprehensive survey of the field of Industrial Relations, focusing on general principles and problems. Illustrations are drawn from the practices adopted in many parts of the world such as Australia, France, Germany and the USA. Contents include chapters on the following: * Personnel Management * Training * Methods of Wage Payment * Job Evaluation * Profit-Sharing and Co-partnership * Trade Unionism * Employers' Organizations * Collective Bargaining * Wage Bases * Equal Opportunities * Conciliation and Arbitration

Teachers and Teacher Unions in a Globalised World asks a series of pressing questions of teacher educators, teachers and teacher unions worldwide in this era of global capitalism. As governments around the world support austerity politics in the face of financial meltdowns, social inequalities, terrorist threats, climate catastrophe, wars and mass migrations, the book questions whether practitioners in teaching and teacher education are succumbing to pressures to dismantle their nation-state systems of education. The authors present a clearly argued case in Ireland for teachers and teacher educators organising to realise their moral and social responsibilities of free and fair schooling for all when it is most needed, as well as insisting on policy debates about a free publicly funded school system. At a time when teachers are feeling overwhelmed with workload and frustrated by the visible turning of events away from the historical record, the book emphasises the importance of practitioner research in informing decisions about a strategic and democratic way forward for education around the globe. Teachers and Teacher Unions in a Globalised World will be of great interest to academics and researchers in the field of education, as well as teacher educators, practitioners and policymakers.

Strikes have been part of American labor relations from colonial days to the present, reflecting the widespread class conflict that has run throughout the nation's history. Against employers and their goons, against the police, the National Guard, local, state, and national officials, against racist vigilantes, against their union leaders, and against each other, American workers have walked off the job for higher wages, better benefits, bargaining rights, legislation, job control, and just plain dignity. At times, their actions have motivated groundbreaking legislation, defining new rights for all citizens; at other times they have led to loss of workers' lives. This comprehensive encyclopedia is the first detailed collection of historical research on strikes in America. To provide the analytical tools for understanding strikes, the volume includes two types of essays - those focused on an industry or economic sector, and those focused on a theme. Each industry essay introduces a group of workers and their employers and places them in their economic, political, and community contexts. The essay then describes the industry's various strikes, including the main issues involved and outcomes achieved, and assesses the impact of the strikes on the industry over time. Thematic essays address questions that can only be answered by looking at a variety of strikes across industries, groups of workers, and time, such as, why the number of strikes has declined since the 1970s, or why there was a strike wave in 1946. The contributors include historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers, as well as current and past activists from unions and other social movement organizations. Photos, a Topic Finder, a bibliography, and name and subject indexes add to the works appeal.

This book examines the status of trade unions in contemporary China, exploring the degree to which trade unions have been reformed as China is increasingly integrated into the global economy, and discussing the key question of how autonomous China's trade unions are. Based on an extensive, grass-roots survey of local trade union chairpersons, the book reveals that although trade unions in foreign owned firms and in firms dealing with foreign firms are beginning to resemble trade unions in the West, in the majority of firms a state corporatist model of trade unions continues, with chairmen appointed by the party, with many of them occupying simultaneously party and trade union positions, and thinking it right to do so, and having power bases and networks in both the party and the trade union, with initiatives for protecting workers? interests coming from the top down, rather than the bottom up, and with collective negotiation and democratic participation in union affairs continuing to be a mere formality. The book shows how the state - wishing to maintain political stability - continues to regard itself, legitimated by the concepts of "socialism" and "proletarian dictatorship," as the sole arbiter of and protector of workers? rights, with no place for workers protecting their own interests themselves in the harsh environment of the new market economy. The book concludes, however, that because the different model of industrial relations which prevails in foreign owned firms is formally part of the government system, there is the possibility that this new more Western model will in time spread more widely.