This book examines international and European protection of the right to strike. In particular, it focuses on the extent to which the International Labour Organisation, the Council of Europe and the European Union have set standards designed to protect those who organise or participate in industrial action.

In a time of controversy over the relevance and utility of industrial action, this book outlines the case for protection of a right to strike. It argues that such a right can be viewed as civil, political and socio-economic in nature, depending upon one's conception of 'good governance' and 'democratic participation' at the national level. This has consequences for what is perceived to be the appropriate scope of the right and the extent of any legitimate exceptions.

This thoroughly revised and updated second edition of When Health Care Employees Strike is an essential survival guide for health care administrators who must plan for and cope with the inevitable labor dispute. Written by Kenneth Kruger and Norman Metzger— two experts in the field of health care labor relations— this much-needed resource includes the critical information and useful strategies health care executives must have in order to be properly prepared. The authors provide detailed information on labor law, an analysis of the different types of disputes, advice on how to use mediation effectively, suggestions for assessing manpower needs before a strike occurs, and ideas for preparing contingency plans. In addition to presenting information on ways to prevent strikes, the book also contains a comprehensive step-by-step manual to ensure health care organizations can continue operation during a labor dispute.

First published in 1998, this book, through a combination of theoretical and empirical research, tries to advance beyond the available literature to an understanding of the links between strike activity and the political process. Although its primary focus is upon the long-term impact of the 1984/85 Miners' Strike, it discusses other industrial settings and 'political' disputes. By linking the political socialisation process with strike activity in a refreshing and thought-provoking manner, this book provides an insight into why some people are more interested and involved in political activity in comparison with the population at large.

Chicano history, from the early decades of the twentieth century up to the present, cannot be explained without reference to the determined interventions of the Mexican government, asserts Gilbert G. Gonzalez. In this pathfinding study, he offers convincing evidence that Mexico aimed at nothing less than developing a loyal and politically dependent emigrant community among Mexican Americans, which would serve and replicate Mexico's political and economic subordination to the United States.

Gonzalez centers his study around four major agricultural workers' strikes in Depression-era California. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, he documents how Mexican consuls worked with U.S. growers to break the strikes, undermining militants within union ranks and, in one case, successfully setting up a grower-approved union. Moreover, Gonzalez demonstrates that the Mexican government's intervention in the Chicano community did not end after the New Deal; rather, it continued as the Bracero Program of the 1940s and 1950s, as a patron of Chicano civil rights causes in the 1960s and 1970s, and as a prominent voice in the debates over NAFTA in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Worker Activism After Successful Union Organizing shows how different levels of worker participation during an organizing campaign influence the perceptions and actions of those same workers after a campaign ends and, thereby, the long-term effectiveness and success of the organizing effort. Drawing on historical and current examples, Markowitz analyzes the political and economic contexts within which today's unions are organizing, and she proves that the act of organizing is a long-term process that continues far beyond an actual campaign. And, in today's anti-union business climate, this book sends a clear message that the key to the future vitality of labor is to involve all workers more fully in the organizing process.

Shows how different levels of worker participation during a union organizing campaign influence the perceptions and actions of those same workers after the campaign ends, and, thereby, the long-term effectiveness and success of the organizing effort. Drawing on historical and current examples, the author analyzes the political and economic contexts within which today's unions are organizing, including a detailed examination of the impact of the Wagner Act.

"We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by LABOR in this country, a move which will lead-NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!" With these words echoing throughout the city, on February 6, 1919, 65,000 Seattle workers began one of the most important general strikes in US history. For six tense yet nonviolent days, the Central Labor Council negotiated with federal and local authorities on behalf of the shipyard workers whose grievances initiated the citywide walkout. Meanwhile, strikers organized to provide essential services such as delivering supplies to hospitals and markets, as well as feeding thousands at union-run dining facilities. Robert L. Friedheim's classic account of the dramatic events of 1919, first published in 1964 and now enhanced with a new introduction, afterword, and photo essay by James N. Gregory, vividly details what happened and why. Overturning conventional understandings of the American Federation of Labor as a conservative labor organization devoted to pure and simple unionism, Friedheim shows the influence of socialists and the IWW in the city's labor movement. While Seattle's strike ended in disappointment, it led to massive strikes across the country that determined the direction of labor, capital, and government for decades. The Seattle General Strike is an exciting portrait of a Seattle long gone and of events that shaped the city's reputation for left-leaning activism into the twenty-first century.

First published in 1986, this book challenges the notion that the miners' strike of 1984-5 was 'Scargill's Strike'. It shows some of the ways in which the strike, though nominally directed from above, was determined from below by multitudinous and often contradictory pressures - the lodge, the village and the home. The focus is essentially logical and gives particular attention to family economy, kin networks and intergenerational solidarity. At the same time it is concerned with the mentality of the strike - its ruling fears and passions. The first-hand testimonies that comprise the book attest to the attachment to 'traditional ways' as well as the potency of the influences corroding them.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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

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.

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.

In the midst of the freezing winter of 1978-79, more than 2,000 strikes, infamously coined the "Winter of Discontent," erupted across Britain as workers rejected the then Labour Government's attempts to curtail wage increases with an incomes policy. Labour's subsequent electoral defeat at the hands of the Conservative Party under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher ushered in an era of unprecedented political, economic, and social change for Britain. A potent social myth also quickly developed around the Winter of Discontent, one where "bloody-minded" and "greedy" workers brought down a sympathetic government and supposedly invited the ravages of Thatcherism upon the British labour movement. 'The Winter of Discontent' provides a re-examination of this crucial series of events in British history by charting the construction of the myth of the Winter of Discontent. Highlighting key strikes and bringing forward the previously-ignored experiences of female, black, and Asian rank-and-file workers along-side local trade union leaders, the author places their experiences within a broader constellation of trade union, Labour Party, and Conservative Party changes in the 1970s, showing how striking workers' motivations become much more textured and complex than the "bloody-minded" or "greedy" labels imply. The author further illustrates that participants' memories represent a powerful force of "counter-memory," which for some participants, frame the Winter of Discontent as a positive and transformative series of events, especially for the growing number of female activists. Overall, this fascinating book illuminates the nuanced contours of myth, memory, and history of the Winter of Discontent.

This book analyses the rhetorical background and strategies of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) and those of Ronald Reagan in reference to the 1981 strike. Was firing 11,000 federal employees the only option, or the best option available?

"...A Serf's Journal is a powerful and much-needed overdue call for solidarity today." Alfie Bown, Hong Kong Review of Books Recalling the JeffBoat incident of 2001, A Serf's Journal is Terry Tapp's formidable first-hand account of American workers as they fight a multinational company and their corrupt union to stage the longest wildcat strike in US history.

The Assault on Labor details the 1986 Independent Federation of Flight Attendants (IFFA) strike against Trans World Airlines (TWA), one of the most dramatic instances of the heightened labor conflict in the 1980s. Using extensive court, union, and company documents, The Assault on Labor shows how the expanded use of permanent replacements in labor disputes has fundamentally altered workers' legal right to strike. Set within one of the biggest corporate raids of the time, it was a strike of a predominantly female labor force that garnered respect throughout the labor movement for its solidarity and determination. Faced with the permanent replacement of over 5000 strikers, IFFA waged a three year struggle to return all workers to the line, mobilizing political, economic, and legal actions to secure their jobs and survive as a union. Despite critical successes in the courts in the aftermath of the strike, the Supreme Court would render a decision that further strengthened permanent replacements. Since the 1980s, labor's major form of protest, the right to strike, has all but disappeared.

Forewords by Mike Jackson and Sian James MP The film Pride has reignited interest in the struggles of the miners in the South Wales valleys in the strike of 1984-5. A new chapter in this re-issued book shows why the Welsh miners were in a unique position to forge an alliance with Lesbian and Gays Support the Miners Group. Hywel Francis, MP for Aberavon, as a historian and active participant in the strike, had a unique insight into the way in which the struggles for jobs and communities broadened out to become a powerful national movement in Wales, involving trade unions, political parties, churches, the Welsh Language Society, and community, peace and women's support groups, as well as their lesbian and gay supporters. This very personal history, which explains why the South Wales valleys were the strongest and most loyal of all the British coalfields, is based on the author's personal diaries, and his articles and essays in a number of Welsh and British journals. It tells the story of the individual and collective courage and pain of Welsh miners, their families and their communities - and is an important contribution to our understanding of a defining moment in modern Welsh history.

In 1938, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) sent communist union organizer Arthur "Slim" Evans to the smelter city of Trail, British Columbia, to establish Local 480 of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers. Six years later the local was recognized as the legal representative of more than 5,000 workers at a smelter owned by the powerful Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada. But the union's fight for survival had only just begun. Smelter Wars unfolds that historic struggle, offering glimpses into the political, social, and cultural life of the semi-rural, single-industry community. Hindered by economic depression, two World Wars, and Cold War intolerance, Local 480 faced fierce corporate, media, and religious opposition at home. Ron Verzuh draws upon archival and periodical sources, including the mainstream and labour press, secret police records, and oral histories, to explore the CIO's complicated legacy in Trail as it battled a wide range of antagonists: a powerful employer, a company union, local conservative citizens, and Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) leadership. More than the history of a union, Smelter Wars is a cultural study of a community shaped by the dominance of a world-leading industrial juggernaut set on keeping the union drive at bay.

They did so in the midst of the 1984 miners' strike - the most bitter and divisive dispute for more than half a century, and in one of the most turbulent periods in modern British history. In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher's hardcore social and fiscal policies devastated Britain's traditional industries, and at the same time, AIDS began to claim lives across the nation. At the very height of this perfect storm, as the government and police battled 'the enemy within' in communities across the land and newspapers whipped up fear of the gay 'perverts' who were supposedly responsible for inflicting this lethal new pestilence upon the entire population, two groups who ostensibly had nothing in common - miners and homosexuals - unexpectedly made a stand together and forged a lasting friendship. It was an alliance which helped keep an entire valley clothed and fed during the darkest months of the strike. And it led directly to a long-overdue acceptance by trades unions and the Labour Party that homosexual equality was a cause to be championed. Pride tells the inspiring true story of how two very different communities - each struggling to overcome its own bitter internal arguments and long established fault lines, as well as facing the power of a hostile government and press - found common cause against overwhelming odds. And how this one simple but unlikely act of friendship would, in time, help change life in Britain - forever.

Spoiled Silk is the story of two immigrants from the Rhineland, William Brueckmann and his wife Katherine, who started a new life in America's first industrial city, Paterson NJ, nourishing a vision of their adopted country that was never to be. Committed to a socialist dream, they struggled to improve the lot of their follow immigrants and, at the same time, to raise a family in the midst of the turbulence that surrounded them. Their efforts contributed in the long run to improved working conditions in American mills, but their dream of a socialist America was never to be realized. It was in 1913 that the workers in the Paterson textile mills, having learned that a new kind of loom would put many of them out of work went on strike against the mill owners. In desperation, they called in Big Bill Haywood and the Wobblies of the I.W.W. to help them. The Paterson authorities moved quickly to crush the strike by forbidding the strikers to hold public meetings. Alone among elected local officials, William Brueckmann, Mayor of the neighboring town of Haledon, defied the Paterson authorities and their police department and upheld the constitutional rights of the strikers by giving them a safe haven in his town. His action marked the beginning of a long and bitter struggle that brought thousands of workers to the open fields of Haledon and forced the city of Paterson to its knees.The strike is an important chapter in the history of the American labor movement. For William and Katherine Brueckmann it did not however, mark the end of their struggles. Spoiled Silk also chronicles the prejudice they had to face during the First World War and the pressures that eventually drove them to compromise with post-war America and its Good Times. It was a compromise that would bring with it a different kind of tragedy and sorrow, the death of an only son and their own drawing apart from one another. The recent interest in immigrants to America has almost overlooked the largest group of immigrants, the German Americans. Spoiled Silk is a moving story about two of them. Vividly told, Spoiled Silk brings to life the experiences of these valiant people in the early decades of the century just past.

This analysis of strikes is concerned mainly with the sociology of industrial conflict in Britain but including some international comparisons. The author has focused on the causes of industrial disputes and their meanings for those involved, aiming to present the views and theories of others rather than original views of his own.;In this 4th edition, the main text has been left largely unaltered, beyond updating the statistical tables and commentaries on trends, while the concluding chapter seeks to bring the argument up to date and gives some attention to issues of theory and interpretation which are raised in the body of the book. The guide to further reading has also been updated.;Richard Hyman is also author of "Industrial Relations - A Marxist Introduction", "The New Working Class?" (co-editor) and "The Political Economy of Industrial Relations".

Closing Sysco presents a history of deindustrialization and working-class resistance in the Cape Breton steel industry between 1945 and 2001. The Sydney Steel Works is at the heart of this story, having existed in tandem with Cape Breton's larger coal operations since the early twentieth century. The book explores the multifaceted nature of deindustrialization; the internal politics of the steelworkers' union; the successful efforts to nationalize the mill in 1967; the years in transition under public ownership; and the confrontations over health, safety, and environmental degradation in the 1990s and 2000s. Closing Sysco moves beyond the moment of closure to trace the cultural, historical, and political ramifications of deindustrialization that continue to play out in post-industrial Cape Breton Island. A significant intervention into the international literature on deindustrialization, this study pushes scholarship beyond the bounds of political economy and cultural change to begin tackling issues of bodily health, environment, and historical memory in post-industrial places. The experiences of the men and women who were displaced by the decline and closure of Sydney Steel are central to this book. Featuring interviews with former steelworkers, office employees, managers, politicians, and community activists, these one-on-one conversations reveal both the human cost of industrial closure and the lingering after-effects of deindustrialization.

In 2009, cabin crew in the BASSA union embarked on a historic, two-year battle against British Airways which was seeking to impose reduced crew levels and to transform working conditions. In the face of employer hostility, legal obstruction, government opposition and adverse media coverage, this workforce, diverse in terms of gender, sexuality, race and nationality undertook determined resistance against this offensive. Notably, their action included twenty-two days of strike action that saw mass participation in rallies and on picket lines. The dispute cost British Airways 150 million in lost revenue and its main outcome was the cabin crew's successful defence of their union and core conditions. Here, in their own words, Cabin Crew Conflict tells the strikers' story, focusing on cabin crew responses, perceptions of events, and their lived experiences of taking industrial action in a hostile climate. Foregrounding questions of class, gender and identity, and how these were manifest in the course of the dispute, the authors highlight the strike's significance for contemporary employment relations in and beyond the aviation industry. Lively and insightful, Cabin Crew Conflict explores the organisational and ideological role of the trade union, and shows how a 'non-traditional' workforce can organise and take effective action.

Closing Sysco presents a history of deindustrialization and working-class resistance in the Cape Breton steel industry between 1945 and 2001. The Sydney Steel Works is at the heart of this story, having existed in tandem with Cape Breton's larger coal operations since the early twentieth century. The book explores the multifaceted nature of deindustrialization; the internal politics of the steelworkers' union; the successful efforts to nationalize the mill in 1967; the years in transition under public ownership; and the confrontations over health, safety, and environmental degradation in the 1990s and 2000s. Closing Sysco moves beyond the moment of closure to trace the cultural, historical, and political ramifications of deindustrialization that continue to play out in post-industrial Cape Breton Island. A significant intervention into the international literature on deindustrialization, this study pushes scholarship beyond the bounds of political economy and cultural change to begin tackling issues of bodily health, environment, and historical memory in post-industrial places. The experiences of the men and women who were displaced by the decline and closure of Sydney Steel are central to this book. Featuring interviews with former steelworkers, office employees, managers, politicians, and community activists, these one-on-one conversations reveal both the human cost of industrial closure and the lingering after-effects of deindustrialization.