Arthur Horner (1894-1968) was a miners' leader from the 1926 general strike to his retirement as general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers in 1959. During his life, he played a crucial role in the fight for a national mineworkers union, and in the development of the National Coal Board; he was a champion of the Republicans in Spain; he was imprisoned several times for his views; and, he was in constant demand as a speaker. But it was his warmth, good humour and enthusiasm which made 'little Arthur', as he was affectionately known by his union colleagues, really memorable.

One of the major intentions of the Conservative governments of the 1980s was to redraw the landscape and map of industrial relations. They aimed to achieve this by means of a combination of measures: political initiatives and campaigning; a changed economic and social environment; and most directly a programme of industrial relations legislation that increasingly curtailed the role and influence of trade unions. This book examines the policies and associated legislation directly intended to change union behaviour. It considers origins, purpose, and impact on union behaviour and structures, focusing in particular on the role of ballots as the central mechanism chosen for changing union decision-making. The changes that occurred as a consequence of this legislation are placed in the wider union context and the relative influence of the balloting legislation is assessed against other developments affecting union behaviour, including the strategies adopted by the unions' leaders. It finds the results were not always as intended by the Conservative governments. In a concluding chapter the authors ask whether the framework created in the UK will be an exemplar or exceptional case when compared with developments in other European countries. The book is the result of research carried out over almost a decade by a highly experienced and respected team who base their analysis on interviews, detailed analysis of legislation and union rule books, and a series of indepth case studies. This richly detailed and authoritative book will be essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand how the changing framework of labour relations affected changes in union behaviour. The book will thus appeal tostudents and academics working in industrial relations, human resource management, labour law, labour economics, and politics. Employee relations practitioners and policy makers - managers and trade unionists - will also find it useful for increasing their understanding of the purpose and effect of the legislation.

This book examines social, political, and cultural conflicts opened by the abolition of slavery and the fashioning of wage relations in the era of the American Civil War. It offers a new, close look at the origins, goals, and tactics of popular political clubs created by emancipated workers in the countryside of one of the Deep South's oldest plantation states. The Work of Reconstruction draws on a rich documentary record that allowed ex-slaves to express in their own words and behavior the aspirations and goals that underlay their efforts. Not satisfied to render freed men and women as objects of theoretical inquiry, this book vividly recovers the concrete practices and language in which ex-slaves achieved freedom and the expectations that they had of liberty.

During the 1980's, British trade unionism confronted its greatest challenge, and suffered its greatest reverses, since the inter-war period. After a decade of rapid growth, the unions experienced a steep decline in membership, and a virtual marginalization in national political affairs. By 1990, a united, self-confident, social movement as well as a powerful industrial bargainer, often seemed more closely akin to a demoralized collection of special interest groupings. This book addresses a number of fundamental questions raised by the record of these years. It examines the reasons for membership loss and the implications for trade union influence in the workplace. It looks at the steps the unions took in reaction to the membership problem and the difficulties they confronted doing so. It also looks at whether this period can be seen as making a fundamental break with the past, resulting in irretrievable loss by British trade unionism of its former important position in British society and the British workplace, or whether the past decade has been but a temporary recession and the future can still see revived movement. This book is intended for scholars, postgraduates, and 3rd year

The Australian Workers Union (AWU) has been one of the most influential unions in Australia's political and industrial history. From its beginnings as a sheep shearers union, it became known as a champion of compulsory arbitration, fighting for improvements in wages and conditions through the industrial courts. In the first part of the 20th century it expanded by amalgamating with other unions, its aim being the creation of one big union. Indeed the AWU became Australia's largest union, operating in all Australian states and across a wide range of industries. The book shows that the union has been a player in key events and crises in Australian history, including the great strikes of the 1890s, the 1916-17 conscription crisis, Labor's splits in the 1950s and the 1956 shearers' strike. The book features vivid portraits of the unique individuals who matched these great issues.

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in Australia are better known for the stories told about them than for any document historical significance. Renowned for their audacity and hooliganism the 'Wobblies' were particularly notorious for their active opposition to World War I. This landmark book conveys the vitality and drama of Wobbly activity, and also assesses the impact of the IWW on Australian political and labour history. Drawing from an impressive range of sources, Verity Burgmann writes with vigour and passion about Wobbly culture, and describes their doctrines, methods and organisation. The book highlights the unique nature of the IWW in Australia, and traces Wobbly influence in much post-war activity. Now, with the widespread collapse of communism and the inadequacies of labour parties, the IWW, as an alternative form of revolutionary working-class politics, merits renewed investigation.

This book analyses the crucial features of unionised labour markets. The models in the book refer to labour contracts between unions and management, but the method of analysis is also applicable to non-union labour markets where workers have some market power. In this book, Alison Booth, a researcher in the field, emphasises the connection between theoretical and empirical approaches to studying unionised labour markets. She also highlights the importance of taking into account institutional differences between countries and sectors when constructing models of the unionised labour market. While the focus of the book is on the US and British unionised labour markets, the models and analytical methods are applicable to other industrialised countries with appropriate modifications.

This book is a study of the relationship between full-time union officials and shop stewards across the whole of British industry (public and private, manufacturing and services) in 1986-91. It is the first major study of union officials for 20 years, and one of the most detailed studies of workplace collective bargaining and union organisation following the recession of the early 1980s. In the wake of recession, union decline, industrial restructuring, anti-union legislation, and changes in union policies (towards a new realism), Britain is said by some commentators to be entering a new era of industrial relations. This book provides a unique body of evidence that throws new light on this claim, and casts serious doubt on its validity. It combines survey, interview, questionnaire and observation data and thus overcomes the well known limitations of both large-scale surveys and individual case studies.

Labor Pains is an insider's account of the struggle to rebuild a vibrant and powerful trade union movement in the United States. It takes as its starting point the daily experience of a union organizer, and brings that experience to life. It enables us to grasp how the conflicting demands of race, class, and gender are lived in the new union movement.

The role of the unions is defined mainly by larger economic and political agendas. While keeping these agendas clearly in sight, Erem focuses primarily on aspects of the life of the union which often remain hidden. The personal crises of union members become entangled in the work of the union. The energies of the union are focused not only on winning gains from bosses but also on maintaining internal cohesion and morale among workers. Barriers of race, age and gender are constantly negotiated and overcome, and conflicts flare up across them at moments of tension. And union life goes on not only when the workers have made their point, or won a victory, but after defeat as well. The personalities and ambitions of union organizers converge at times and become a source of tension at others. Each individual within the larger collective has their own task of finding a viable balance between public and private selves.

These intersecting lines of force are imaginatively recreated in this book. Erem writes as a woman in a union movement which is dominated by men; as the child of immigrants in a movement whose members are increasingly immigrants themselves; as one who finds herself in the racial no man's land between black and white. While never underestimating the obstacles in the way of the union movement, she makes a powerful and passionate case for organizing the disorganized and empowering the powerless.

It is fashionable to speak of trades unions in the UK as organisations in decline. However, it is their organisation and, in particular, their financial status, which ultimately dictates unions' ability to survive, recruit, and influence employers. This book provides the first systematic picture of union financial status for thirty years, and reveals a dramatic picture. Though, overall, unions have become financially less healthy in the post-war period, many unions experienced an improved financial position during the membership contraction of the Thatcher years. It also shows that the long term financial decline of unions has been more affected by competition between unions for membership than by the effects of traumatic industrial disputes.

Higher education has long been contested terrain. From student movements to staff unions, the fight for accessible, critical and quality public education has turned university campuses globally into sites of struggle. Whether calling for the decommodification or the decolonisation of education, many of these struggles have attempted to draw on (and in turn, resonate with) longer histories of popular resistance, broader social movements and radical visions of a fairer world. In this critical collection, Aziz Choudry, Salim Vally and a host of international contributors bring grounded, analytical accounts of diverse struggles relating to higher education into conversation with each other. Featuring contributions written by students and staff members on the frontline of struggles from 12 different countries, including Canada, Chile, France, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Occupied Palestine, the Philippines, South Africa, Turkey, the UK and the USA, the book asks what can be learned from these movements' strategies, demands and visions.

"From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement" is the most comprehensive history ever written on the meteoric rise and precipitous decline of the United Farm Workers, the most successful farm labor union in United States history. Based on little-known sources and one-of-a-kind oral histories with many veterans of the farm worker movement, this book revises much of what we know about the UFW. Matt Garcia's gripping account of the expansion of the union's grape boycott reveals how the boycott, which UFW leader Cesar Chavez initially resisted, became the defining feature of the movement and drove the growers to sign labor contracts in 1970. Garcia vividly relates how, as the union expanded and the boycott spread across the United States, Canada, and Europe, Chavez found it more difficult to organize workers and fend off rival unions. Ultimately, the union was a victim of its own success and Chavez's growing instability.
"From the Jaws of Victory "delves deeply into Chavez's attitudes and beliefs, and how they changed over time. Garcia also presents in-depth studies of other leaders in the UFW, including Gilbert Padilla, Marshall Ganz, Dolores Huerta, and Jerry Cohen. He introduces figures such as the co-coordinator of the boycott, Jerry Brown; the undisputed leader of the international boycott, Elaine Elinson; and Harry Kubo, the Japanese American farmer who led a successful campaign against the UFW in the mid-1970s.

The essential argument of this book is that the current crisis of US unions ought to be considered in terms of the local context of labor-management relations; that is, the communities in which men and women live and work. Whether by design or necessity, the structure of New Deal national labor legislation has sustained, and maintained, distinctive local labor-management practices. As the economies of American communities (and the world) have become highly interdependent, reflecting the evolution of corporate structure and trade between economies, unions movement can be traced to unions' dependence upon inter-community solidarity, a fragile democratic ideal which is often overwhelmed by economic imperatives operating at higher scales in other places. An important objective of Professor Clark in this work is to demonstrate the significance of the intersection between communities, unions, and institutions, in understanding the prospects for American unionism.

This book examines the working lives of musicians over the past 120 years via the history of the Musicians' Union. The union has been at the centre of all major agreements covering the employment of musicians across the UK's music industries for this period and its role to date has largely been ignored by historians of the music profession, the music industries and trade unions. This book remedies that oversight, providing fresh insight to musicians' working lives, the industries in which they work and wider British social life. It explores a history of confrontation, coercion and compromise played out across the nation's studios, performance spaces and airwaves. -- .

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Longshoremen stand at the nexus of the global economy, handling nearly every cargo container that enters or leaves any country. Even in the face of cargo acontainerizationa in the 70s and 80s, a development that decimated longshore unions, they have managed to win contracts that provide health benefits and high wages.

On the Global Waterfront tells the story of how longshoremen in South Carolina confronted attempts to wipe out the stateas most powerful black organization. When a Danish shipping company began to shift their transportation to a nonunion firm in 1999, Local 1422 in Charleston, South Carolina, mobilized to protect their hard-won rights. What followed culminated in a protest in which 660 riot police were deployed against fifty dockworkers, a group that grew to 150 before the night was over. Four black and one white longshoreman -- subsequently known as the Charleston 5 -- were held for twenty months under house arrest on trumped-up felony charges of inciting a riot.

Within the politically conservative, racially charged, and intensely religious climate of the South, the unassuming local union president, Ken Riley -- supported behind the scenes by a militant AFL-CIO staffer -- crafted an international, grassroots campaign in defense of the arrested longshoremen. From Australia to Europe to Korea to the entire west coast of the United States, longshoremen threatened to shut down ports jeopardizing billions of dollars in trade per day. Their ultimate success vaulted Riley, and his reform-minded coworkers, to higher leadership in a notoriously corrupt union, and laid the foundation for successful rebuffs in ports around the world. On the GlobalWaterfront explores in detail a local conflict and in the process exposes the powers that rule the United States and the global economy. This compelling narrative of a local struggle, a transformed union leader, and a newly energized international worker movement highlights the resounding importance of the international labor movement that is not only still vital, but still capable of stopping global commerce on a dime.

The Japan Teachers' Union, which represents 500,000 elementary and lower secondary school teachers, is an important interest group in Japanese politics. It is especially significant as a radical group operating both within and outside the political system and in direct conflict with conservative government policies in education and other areas of domestic and foreign policy. Donald R. Thurston's descriptive and analytic study of this most controversial labor union reveals a great deal about Japan's educational and political systems, and about the teaching profession in Japan and its relations with government and the community. It will therefore be of great interest both to political scientists and to those interested in comparative education. The purpose of this broad cross-sectional case study of the Japan Teachers' Union was to find out how much influence it has had on its own members and on the formulation and implementation of educational policies. The conclusion is that the union is much more influential at the local level where educational policies are implemented, and changed in the process of implementation, than at the national level where policy is formulated. It also shows that the Japan Teachers' Union has changed teachers' attitudes towards their roles, and that although the JTU is attached to the left-wing Japan Socialist Party, it is much more autonomous than has been thought. Originally published in 1973. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This Handbook is an authoritative and invaluable reference tool, uniquely analysing the forces governing unionism, union behaviour and union impact from a variety of perspectives, both theoretical and empirical. The 14 chapters are written in an accessible style by acknowledged leading specialists from the fields of economics and industrial relations. They offer a truly international perspective on this important subject. This superbly comprehensive Handbook examines the determinants of union membership, models of union behaviour and the economics of strikes, as well as the effects of unions on wages, pay inequality and firm performance (to include innovation). It also analyses trade unions as political actors and their impact on macroeconomic performance. Institutional detail is added in specific chapters documenting recent developments in the US and the UK, and prospects for a Europeanization of collective bargaining. A review of union density in more than 100 nations, is also provided. The Handbook is suited to a range of courses and is aptly designed to meet the needs of students - from undergraduates upwards - and academics in the fields of economics, industrial relations, human resources management, as well as general labour scholars.

Colin Winston traces the Libres' emergence following the collapse of Catholic syndicalism in Catalonia and shows how, in the period up to the Civil War, they moved from radical Carlism to a form of proletarian fascism.

Originally published in 1984.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In 1900 the manufacture of rubber products in the United States was concentrated in several hundred small plants around New York and Boston that employed low-paid immigrant workers with no intervention from unions. By the mid-1930s, thanks to the automobile and the Depression, production was concentrated in Ohio, the labor force was largely native born and highly paid, and labor organizations had a decisive influence on the industry. Daniel Nelson tells the story of these changes as a case study of union growth against a background of critical developments in twentieth-century economic life.

The author emphasizes the years after 1910, when a crucial distinction arose between big, mass-production rubber producers and those that were smaller and more labor intensive. In the 1930s mass-production workers took the lead in organizing the labor movement, and they dominated the international union, the United Rubber Workers, until the end of the decade. Professor Nelson discusses not only labor's triumph over adversity but also the problems that occurred with union victories: the flight of the industry to low-wage communities in the South and Midwest, internal tensions in the union, and rivalry with the American Federation of Labor. The experiences of the URW in the late 1930s foreshadowed the longer-term challenges that the labor movement has faced in recent decades.

Originally published in 1988.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Without parallel in sophistication of coverage for readers curious about labor, Rising from the Ashes? provides sharp analysis of the hottest issues being debated by labor scholars and activists.

Topics covered include the changing composition of the international working class, patterns of work under contemporary capitalism, the relationship of race and gender to class, the promise and limitations of recent eruptions of labor militancy, and the strategic options available to the labor movement today.

The '80s Socialist movement and Labor; the Knights of Labor; Haymarket and May Day; Labor political action; The rise of the AFL; The Homestead strike; Coal creek and Cour d'Alene; American Railway Union; Pullman strike; Labor populism; Labor and the Spanish-American War; Labor and imperialism, more.

The New York City Teachers Union shares a deep history with the American left, having participated in some of its most explosive battles. Established in 1916, the union maintained an early, unofficial partnership with the American Communist Party, winning key union positions and advocating a number of Party goals. Clarence Taylor recounts this pivotal relationship and the backlash it created, as the union threw its support behind controversial policies and rights movements. Taylor's research reaffirms the party's close ties with the union--yet it also makes clear that the organization was anything but a puppet of Communist power. Reds at the Blackboard showcases the rise of a unique type of unionism that would later dominate the organizational efforts behind civil rights, academic freedom, and the empowerment of blacks and Latinos. Through its affiliation with the Communist Party, the union pioneered what would later become social movement unionism, solidifying ties with labor groups, black and Latino parents, and civil rights organizations to acquire greater school and community resources. It also militantly fought to improve working conditions for teachers while championing broader social concerns. For the first time, Taylor reveals the union's early growth and the somewhat illegal attempts by the Board of Education to eradicate the group. He describes how the infamous Red Squad and other undercover agents worked with the board to bring down the union and how the union and its opponents wrestled with charges of anti-Semitism.

Militant Minority tells the compelling story of British Columbia workers who sustained a left tradition during the bleakest days of the Cold War. Through their continuing activism on issues from the politics of timber licenses to global questions of war and peace, these workers bridged the transition from an Old to a New Left.

In the late 1950s, half of B.C.'s workers belonged to unions, but the promise of postwar collective bargaining spawned disillusionment tied to inflation and automation. A new working class that was educated, white collar, and increasingly rebellious shifted the locus of activism from the Communist Party and Co-operative Commonwealth Federation to the newly formed New Democratic Party, which was elected in 1972. Grounded in archival research and oral history, Militant Minority provides a valuable case study of one of the most organized and independent working classes in North America, during a period of ideological tension and unprecedented material advance.

Adds significant new facts to these TUEL years and their import. More on the miners, Ladies' Garment workers, Fur workers, Amalgameted Clothing, Auto, Textile, Maritime and Agricultural workers; Labor and Fascism; Sacco-Vanzetti frameup; Black Workers; American T.U. delegation to Soviet Union; Changes in trade union policy.

A groundbreaking account of how the welfare state began with early nineteenth-century child labor laws, and how middle-class and elite reformers made it happen The beginnings of the modern welfare state are often traced to the late nineteenth-century labor movement and to policymakers' efforts to appeal to working-class voters. But in Agents of Reform, Elisabeth Anderson shows that the regulatory welfare state began a half century earlier, in the 1830s, with the passage of the first child labor laws. Agents of Reform tells the story of how middle-class and elite reformers in Europe and the United States defined child labor as a threat to social order, and took the lead in bringing regulatory welfare into being. They built alliances to maneuver around powerful political blocks and instituted pathbreaking new employment protections. Later in the century, now with the help of organized labor, they created factory inspectorates to strengthen and routinize the state's capacity to intervene in industrial working conditions. Agents of Reform compares seven in-depth case studies of key policy episodes in Germany, France, Belgium, Massachusetts, and Illinois. Foregrounding the agency of individual reformers, it challenges existing explanations of welfare state development and advances a new pragmatist field theory of institutional change. In doing so, it moves beyond standard narratives of interests and institutions toward an integrated understanding of how these interact with political actors' ideas and coalition-building strategies.