This book explores the representation of women and their interests in the world of work across four trade unions in France and the UK. Drawing on case studies of the careers of 100 activists and a longitudinal study of the trade unions' struggle for equal pay in the UK, it unveils the social, organizational, and political conditions that contribute to the reproduction of gender inequalities or, on the contrary, allow the promotion of equality. Guillaume's nuanced evaluation is a call to redefine the role of trade unions in the delivering of gender equality, contributing to broader debates on the effectiveness of equality policies and the enforcement of equality legislation.

Why has democracy flourished in the Federal Republic of Germany despite that country's troubled past? Exhaustive research in German historical archives illuminates the pivotal role played by the veterans of the Christian trade unions of the Weimar Republic, the only group to participate in both of Germany's most successful political experiments after 1945, a 'Christian Democratic' party to unite Catholics and Protestants, and unified labor unions for workers of all political outlooks. They perceived that feuds between the religious confessions and competition among three rival labor federations had greatly facilitated Hitler's rise, and they resolved to bridge both chasms. Playing an influential role on the left wing of the CDU from the 1950s to the 1970s, Christian laborites alleviated class conflict through new welfare programs and laws to grant workers a powerful voice in management decisions. They took the lead in forging the distinctive 'German Model' for labor relations.

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.

The Arab Uprisings of 2010 and 2011 had a profound effect on labor politics in the region, with trade unions mobilizing to an extent never before seen. How did these formerly quiescent trade unions become militant? What linkages did they make to other social forces during and after the revolutions? And why did Tunisian unions emerge cohesive and influential while Egyptian unions were fractured and lacked influence? Following extensive interviews, Ian M. Hartshorn answers these questions and assesses how unions forged alliances, claimed independence, and cooperated with international groups. Looking at institutions both domestically and internationally, he traces the corporatist collapse and the role of global labor in offering training and new possibilities for disgruntled workers. With special attention to the relationship with rising Islamist powers, he also examines the ways in which political parties tried to use labor, and vice versa, and provides a detailed study of the role of labor in ousting the first Islamist governments.

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

The principles of trade unionism are based on working people acting together in solidarity with each other, to improve wages, working conditions, and life for themselves and all others. In its most developed forms, this extends not only to the worker next to you, but to working people all around the world, wherever they might be. Some of the foremost proponents of these principles in the United States since the 1880s has been the American Federation of Labor (AFL), then later the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), and since their merger in 1955, the AFL-CIO. However, unknown to many labor leaders and most union members in the U.S., the foreign policy leaders of the AFL and then the AFL-CIO, have been carrying out an international foreign policy that has worked against workers in a number of "developing countries." This has been done on their own, and in collaboration with the U.S. Government and its agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency, U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the U.S. State Department's Advisory Committee for Labor and Diplomacy. In the post-World War II period, this foreign policy program has led to the AFL-CIO's foreign policy leadership helping to overthrow democratically elected governments Guatemala (1954), Brazil (1964), Chile (1973); to support dictatorships in countries such as Guatemala, Brazil and Chile (after their respective military coups), as well as in countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, and South Korea; and to support efforts by reactionary labor leaders to help overthrow their democratically-elected leaders as in Venezuela in 2002. It has also included providing AFL-CIO support for U.S. Government policies around the world, including support for apartheid in South Africa. This book argues that these activities done behind the backs and without the informed knowledge of American trade unionists acts to sabotage the very principles of trade unionism that these leaders proclaim to

After suffering the hardships and horrors of the First World War, workers and soldiers faced the agony of the post-war Canadian economy. With rising inflation, unprecedented unemployment, and an increasingly repressive state, the atmosphere was ripe for revolt. The Russian Czar had been overthrown just eighteen months ago and workers had revolution on their minds. On May 15, 1919 more than 30,000 workers in Winnipeg, Manitoba walked off the job and began a general strike that would last six weeks and change the course of Canadian history. The strikers' demands began with higher wages, collective bargaining rights, and more power for working people. As sympathy strikes broke out and more workers joined the call, the Winnipeg Strike Committee became a de-facto government Like so many labour actions before and since, the strikers were met with a violent end . On "Bloody Saturday" the Royal North-West Mounted Police charged into the crowd, killing two workers and injuring dozens more. One hundred years later, the Winnipeg General Strike continues to be a poignant reminder of the power of the state and capital over workers' lives and the brutal ends governments and bosses have and will use to crush workers' movements, and an inspirational example of the possibilities of class struggle and solidarity.

'Jane Holgate is a brilliant thinker' - Jane McAlevey In Arise, Jane Holgate argues that unions must revisit their understanding of power in order to regain influence and confront capital. Drawing on two decades of research and organising experience, Holgate examines the structural inertia of today's unions from a range of perspectives: from strategic choice, leadership and union democracy to politics, tactics and the agency afforded to rank-and-file members. In the midst of a neoliberal era of economic crisis and political upheaval, the labour movement stands at a crossroads. Union membership is on the rise, but the 'turn to organising' has largely failed to translate into meaningful gains for workers. There is considerable discussion about the lack of collectivism among workers due to casualisation, gig work and precarity, yet these conditions were standard in the UK when workers built the foundations of the 19th-century trade union movement. Drawing on history and case studies of unions developing and using power effectively, this book offers strategies for moving beyond the pessimism that prevails in much of today's union movement. By placing power analysis back at the heart of workers' struggle, Holgate shows us that transformational change is not only possible, but within reach.

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.

During the last fifteen years, researchers have shown increasing interest in the exchange relationship between the employee and employer. Until now, the literatures examining the employment relationships have tended to operate either from the employer or the employee perspectives and have typically approached the topic from a single discipline be it psychology, sociology, human resource management, organizational behavior, industrial relations, law or economics. Failure to consider multiple perspectives has created a fragmented understanding of the employment relationship. This volume incorporates social exchange, economics, industrial relations, legal, and justice theory perspectives. In addition, chapters have been written by authors that reflect the full international body of research on the employment relationship and provide information about legislation, governance, and cultural differences across nations. The conceptual and empirical foundations for understanding the employment relationship from these different theoretical perspectives facilitates the establishment of the convergent and discriminant validity of the psychological contract and the investments-contributions models of the employment relationship in relation to related exchange constructs such as perceived organizational support and leader-member exchange. The interdisciplinary and international nature of the employment relationship literature reviewed and integrated in this volume provides a richness that is rarely available in studies of the workplace, and many new and provocative ideas are presented in this volume. Bringing these perspectives together provides greater comprehensiveness, clarity, synthesis and understanding of the employment relationship. This volume is designed to promote the thinking of scholars in the employment relationship area. It will also have relevance to practitioners primarily through the implications of this multi-disciplinary perspective. The volume offers implications of a holistic, multi-disciplinary, international, conceptualization of the employment relationship for theory development, empirical research and measurement, and policy.

Boston's economy has become defined by a disconcerting trend that has intensified throughout much of the United States since the 2008 recession. Economic growth now delivers remarkably few benefits to large sectors of the working class - a phenomenon that is particularly severe for immigrants, people of color, and women. Labor in 21st Century Boston explores this nation-wide phenomenon of "unshared growth" by focusing on Boston, a city that is famously liberal, relatively wealthy, and increasingly difficult for working people (who service the city's needs) to actually live in. Labor in 21st Century Boston is the only comprehensive analysis of labor and popular mobilizing in Boston today, the volume contributes to a growing body of academic and popular literature that examines urban America, racial and economic inequality, labor and immigration, and the right-wing assault on working people.

From before the dawn of the twentieth century until the arrival of the New Deal, one of the most protracted and deadly labor struggles in American history was waged in West Virginia. On one side were powerful corporations and industrialists whose millions bought political influence and armed guards for their company towns. On the other side were 50,000 mine workers, the nation's largest labor union, and the legendary "miners' angel," Mother Jones. Attempts to unionize were met with stiff resistance. Fundamental rights were bent, then broken, and the violence evolved from bloody skirmishes to open armed conflict. The fight for civil rights and unionization in West Virginia verged on civil war and stretched from the creeks and hollows to the courts and the U.S. Senate. In The Devil Is Here in These Hills, celebrated labor historian James Green tells this story like never before.

Explains the reality of labor markets and the nature and necessity of class struggle For most economists, labor is simply a commodity, bought and sold in markets like any other – and what happens after that is not their concern. Individual prospective workers offer their services to individual employers, each acting solely out of self-interest and facing each other as equals. The forces of demand and supply operate so that there is neither a shortage nor a surplus of labor, and, in theory, workers and bosses achieve their respective ends. Michael D. Yates, in Work Work Work: Labor, Alienation, and Class Struggle, offers a vastly different take on the nature of the labor market. This book reveals the raw truth: The labor market is in fact a mere veil over the exploitation of workers. Peek behind it, and we clearly see the extraction, by a small but powerful class of productive property-owning capitalists, of a surplus from a much larger and propertyless class of wage laborers. Work Work Work offers us a glimpse into the mechanisms critical to this subterfuge: In every workplace, capital implements a comprehensive set of control mechanisms to constrain those who toil from defending themselves against exploitation. These include everything from the herding of workers into factories to the extreme forms of surveillance utilized by today’s “captains of industry” like the Waltons family (of the Walmart empire) and Jeff Bezos. In these strikingly lucid and passionately written chapters, Yates explains the reality of labor markets, the nature of work in capitalist societies, and the nature and necessity of class struggle, which alone can bring exploitation – and the system of control that makes it possible – to a final end.

Efforts to build bottom-up global labor solidarity began in the late 1970s and continue today, having greater social impact than ever before. In Building Global Labor Solidarity: Lessons from the Philippines, South Africa, Northwestern Europe, and the United States Kim Scipes-who worked as a union printer in 1984 and has remained an active participant in, researcher about, and writer chronicling the efforts to build global labor solidarity ever since-compiles several articles about these efforts. Grounded in his research on the KMU Labor Center of the Philippines, Scipes joins first-hand accounts from the field with analyses and theoretical propositions to suggest that much can be learned from past efforts which, though previously ignored, have increasing relevance today. Joined with earlier works on the KMU, AFL-CIO foreign policy, and efforts to develop global labor solidarity in a time of accelerating globalization, the essays in this volume further develop contemporary understandings of this emerging global phenomenon.

This book is open access under a CC BY license. This book explores the impact that professional volunteers have on the low resource countries they choose to spend time in. Whilst individual volunteering may be of immediate benefit to individual patients, this intervention may have detrimental effects on local health systems; distorting labour markets, accentuating dependencies and creating opportunities for corruption. Improved volunteer deployment may avoid these risks and present opportunities for sustainable systems change. The empirical research presented in this book stems from a specific volunteering intervention funded by the Tropical Health Education Trust and focused on improving maternal and newborn health in Uganda. However, important opportunities exist for policy transfer to other contexts.

Based on extensive original research, this book examines the challenges confronting trade unions in the global South, by focusing on trade union struggles in Sri Lanka under neo-liberal globalisation. It centres on movement politics of unions; explains union capacities to mobilise workers as a part of broad counter movement; and specifies worker struggles in Sri Lanka. The author identifies key dimensions of variation in the approaches taken by oppositional groupings, in particular unions, other labour organisations and the labour movement, and locates those variations in a larger theoretical context. Three case studies on trade unions in tea plantations, garment factories and among the nurses show how these theoretical dimensions operate in practice, and the consequences for the sort of opposition that is (and is not) created. The book contributes to the on-going debate on social movement unionism, and it also reveals their gaps in terms of addressing how class injustices are mediated through ethno-nationalist projects reproducing ethnic and gender hierarchies. It acknowledges the diversity of experiences and forms of resistance in the global South and critically engages with issues of gender, ethnicity and labour internationalism, providing a useful contribution to studies on South Asian Politics as well as Labour and Development Studies.

In the context of the evolution of affirmative action at the national and state levels, this study offers an empirical account of the citizens' movement in California that successfully resulted in the passage of a constitutional amendment to abolish such preferences in public education, public employment, and public contracting. It describes how the concept of affirmative action was transmuted into quotas and set-asides even in those situations where there was no credible evidence of past discrimination. This process was aided by Presidential Executive Orders as well as by some Supreme Court decisions which, until the late 1980s, failed to provide clear parameters of compensatory versus preferential actions. The California movement arose to reassert the original vision of equality as contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Raza, Anderson, and Custred, who have studied the historical development of the phenomenon and have witnessed its actual operation, lift the curtain of secrecy that surrounds such preferences.

This book challenges the notion that affirmative action is a benign and temporary measure that simply provides a helping hand to those who are disadvantaged. There is ample evidence of the institutionalization of preferences that generally provide advantages to those who could otherwise compete on their own merits. Such unfair competitive advantages, provided by government agencies and public educational institutions have neither moral nor political majority support; however, they continue to exist through pressure of political interest groups, liberal political ideology, and entrenched bureaucrats who administer the system. Quite contrary to some people's thinking, the system of preferences may no longer be considered either permanent or necessary.

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.

Employment and production in the Appalachian coal industry have plummeted over recent decades. But the lethal black lung disease, once thought to be near-eliminated, affects miners at rates never before recorded. Digging Our Own Graves sets this epidemic in the context of the brutal assault, begun in the 1980s and continued since, on the United Mine Workers of America and the collective power of rank-and-file coal miners in the heart of the Appalachian coalfields. This destruction of militancy and working class power reveals the unacknowledged social and political roots of a health crisis that is still barely acknowledged by the state and coal industry. Barbara Ellen Smith's essential study, now with an updated introduction and conclusion, charts the struggles of miners and their families from the birth of the Black Lung Movement in 1968 to the present-day importance of demands for environmental justice through proposals like the Green New Deal. Through extensive interviews with participants and her own experiences as an activist, the author provides a vivid portrait of communities struggling for survival against the corporate extraction of labor, mineral wealth, and the very breath of those it sends to dig their own graves.

This book explores rising labor unrest in China as it integrates into the global political economy. The book highlights the tensions present between China's efforts to internationalize and accept claims to respect freedom of association rights, and its continuing insistence on a restrictive, and often punitive, approach to worker organizations. The author examines how the global labor movement can support the improvement of working conditions in Chinese factories. The book presents a novel multi-level approach capturing how trade unions and labor rights NGOs have mobilized along different pathways while attempting to influence labor standards in Chinese supply chains since 1989: within the ILO, within the European Union, leveraging global brands or directly supporting domestic labor rights NGOs. Based on extensive fieldwork in Europe, the US and China, the book shows that activists, by operating at multiple scales, were on some occasions able to support improvements over time. It also indicates how a politically and economically strong state such as China can affect transnational labor activism, by directly and indirectly undermining the opportunities that organized civil societies have to participate in the evolving global labor governance architecture.

From longtime labor organizer Jane McAlevey, a vital call-to-arms in favor of unions, a key force capable of defending our democracy For decades, racism, corporate greed, and a skewed political system have been eating away at the social and political fabric of the United States. Yet as McAlevey reminds us, there is one weapon whose effectiveness has been proven repeatedly throughout U.S. history: unions. In A Collective Bargain, longtime labor organizer, environmental activist, and political campaigner Jane McAlevey makes the case that unions are a key institution capable of taking effective action against today's super-rich corporate class. Since the 1930s, when unions flourished under New Deal protections, corporations have waged a stealthy and ruthless war against the labor movement. And they've been winning. Until today. Because, as McAlevey shows, unions are making a comeback. Want to reverse the nation's mounting wealth gap? Put an end to sexual harassment in the workplace? End racial disparities on the job? Negotiate climate justice? Bring back unions. As McAlevey travels from Pennsylvania hospitals, where nurses are building a new kind of patient-centered unionism, to Silicon Valley, where tech workers have turned to old-fashioned collective action, to the battle being waged by America's teachers, readers have a ringside seat at the struggles that will shape our country-and our future.

"A valuable contribution to public policy debates concerning the workplace of the future and the nature and implications of the 'information economy.'"
--Choice (of the first edition)

In this eye-opening book, Joan Greenbaum tells the story of changes in management policies, work organization, and the design of office information systems from the 1950s to the present. She describes the impact of new technologies on the organization of working life with a keen awareness of the social forces that seek to benefit from them, showing how the process is driven by the needs of capitalist profit and control over the workforce rather than the good of society or greater efficiency.

Windows on the Workplace takes as its starting-point the experience of office workers and their own accounts of it. The book includes interviews with a wide range of workers, including young people entering a workplace in which the expectation of stable, long-term employment has all but disappeared. Greenbaum's approach is to locate their experiences and expectations within broader social and economic patterns, and to show how these patterns are constantly changing.

In a field that is constantly changing, this book captures the moment and clarifies the direction in which it is moving. It exposes the myth that technological advance and free market economics are creating a better future for all, and reveals the reality behind the myth.

Tim Davenport and David Walters have extracted the essential core of Debs's life work, illustrating his intellectual journey from conservative editor of the magazine of a racially segregated railway brotherhood to his role as the public face and outstanding voice of social revolution in early twentieth-century America. Well over 1,000 Debs documents will be republished as part of this monumental project, the vast majority seeing print again for the first time since the date of their original publication. Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) was a trade unionist, magazine editor, and public orator widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of American socialism.