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The 1987-88 strike at International Paper's Androscoggin Mill in Jay, Maine severed a longstanding 'social contract' where workers and community residents tolerated the mill's air and water pollution in return for good-paying jobs and a robust local economy. This article traces the development of environmental consciousness among union workers and community residents during the strike and their efforts to protect the environment from the pollution of the mill. The union publicized environmental problems at the mill and the state's failures to regulate pollution when the strike began. After a series of environmental accidents during the strike, including a massive chlorine dioxide gas leak that threatened the safety of the town, Jay residents formed a community environmental organization and pressured the company and the state to close the mill. The environment remained an important issue after the strike, as labor and environmental activists joined forces to uphold a municipal ordinance that allowed the town to enforce state and federal environmental laws. This article studies how labor and environmental politics converged on a local level and also explores the broader themes of the conflict between job prosperity and environmental protection in industrial communities, labor and environmental movement alliances, and the current issues surrounding the 'green economy'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The opening of new archival sources often turns up surprising and interesting information. For example, one of political activist Lillian Hellman's biographers discovered in intellectual Joseph L. Rauh Papers statements by Hellman confirming her Communist Party membership in the late 1930's, an affiliation previously vigorously denied in some circles although suspected in others. Rauh, a leading civil liberties lawyer, had been Hellman's counsel when she prepared for a confrontation with the United States Congress House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1952. Hellman was prepared to testify regarding her own Communist activity but not to name others. Rauh's files contain drafts of a statement regarding her Communist affiliation that Hellman would give should HUAC agree to her condition. Joseph Rauh handled many important internal security cases in the late 1940's and 1950's, and historians will find much of interest in his legal files on his successful defense of playwright Arthur Miller, his removal of the Independent Socialist League from the Attorney General's list of subversive organizations, and his files on the hotly debated lawyer William Remington prejury case. The Ludwig Donath file in the Rauh Papers is an example of chance discovery of an unknown episode in the history of Hollywood Communism and the show business blacklist.

This article describes the labor history of the S.D. Warren Company, a leading producer of high quality coated and plain publication paper that employed over 3,000 by the mid-twentieth century at its principal Westbrook, Maine site. The company was an anomaly, staying non-union for decades after paper had become one of the most unionized manufacturing industries in the U.S., particularly in its home state of Maine. The key to its success in rebuffing unionization and quelling dissent for over a century lay in a distinct mix of paternalistic and corporate welfare practices. Beginning with founder Samuel Dennis Warren, S. D. Warren's executives blended paternalistic familiarity with a nascent welfarism; his descendents and, later, professional managers continued and deepened this hybrid approach to eliciting employee loyalty and warding off worker dissent. S. D. Warren continued to rely on the paternalism of its mill managers and on various forms of generosity and leniency to stay non-union. The company's failure to adopt a systematic approach to supervision, combined with the expectations created by its paternalism, made it vulnerable to worker dissatisfaction and dissent. Such dissent erupted in a 1916 organizing drive and strike, which was nevertheless skillfully defeated by the company. Dissent emerged again in the 1950s and 1960s, when workers and paper unions made several attempts to unionize, finally succeeding in 1967.

This article explores the presidency of Douglas Fraser, who led the United Automobile Workers, America's largest industrial union, from 1977–83. Unlike long-serving leader Walter Reuther, Fraser has received little scholarly attention, yet he headed the union at a decisive time. Between 1979 and 1983, the industry experienced a severe economic downturn, setting the stage for long-term decline. By 1982, over one-third of U.S. autoworkers were jobless. In these years, the union also approved its first contracts containing concessions, giving up $4 billion overall. In following decades, givebacks were common. This article argues that the Fraser era was a crucial one, for both the UAW and American workers broadly, whose post-1980 experience was framed by declining union density and increased economic insecurity. The first account to use detailed archival records of Fraser's presidency, including personal correspondence, UAW executive board minutes, and inter-union files, it uncovers how the union's fortunes changed dramatically during six decisive years. In many respects these years represented a turning point, straddling the era of bargaining gains – which occurred under Reuther and initially under Fraser – through to the concessions and layoffs of the early 1980s. This was, Fraser concluded, "the most troubled time in our history." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores experiences of temporary labor migration that entailed Yugoslav export of know-how (highly skilled knowledge and expertise) between 1980 and 1991, a result of industrial collaboration between Mining and Smelting Combine Bor, a state-owned copper-processing 'giant' in former Yugoslavia, and the biggest copper company in Iran, National Iranian Copper Industries Company. Based on interviews with individuals engaged in the Yugoslav project, supplemented by analysis of documents and historic newspapers from that period, the paper analyzes everyday practices of managerial bureaucratic improvisations and improvisations at work. The article shows how such improvisations helped overcome excessive and rigid Yugoslav socialist bureaucracy and made Yugoslav entrepreneurial capitalist ventures possible. Moreover, it argues that the export of know-how was constitutive of silent acceptances of reproduction of capitalist relations, which helped consolidate the process of liberalization of the socialist market in the late 1980s. We argue that such temporary labor migration and the often improvised work carried out by the Yugoslav workers cannot be seen as a resistance or alternative to the Western/Northern hegemonies. Rather, we argue that such practices were facilitators of the capitalist ventures at semi-peripheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress seeks to preserve personal papers and organizational records that document the course of America's national experience. Its more than 10,000 collections with more than 40,000,000 manuscript items touch upon every aspect of American history and culture. Collections containing labor-related material are considerable and constitute a major archive for labor history research. Some of the organizational records in the library includes the American Federation of Labor Letterbooks, American Friends Service Committee Work Camp Diary, Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Association of Railway Postal Clerks, National Child Labor Committee, National Consumers League, National Women's Trade Union League of America, and People's Legislative Service. Some of the personal papers included in the library are of Henry J. Allen, former governor of Kansas, Otto S. Beyer, a consulting engineer and labor-management relations specialist, Warren K. Billings, a labor militant, William E. Borah, a former U.S. Senator from Idaho, and Andrew Carnegie, a labor activist in the late 19th century.

This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of Thai women workers' experience during the economic boom between the 1960s and 1990s. Specifically, the paper focuses on the working conditions of female factory laborers located in Bangkok and neighboring provinces during this transformative period. To accomplish this, the paper utilizes a variety of previously unused primary sources: quantitative data from a series of surveys conducted by the Department of Labor and other governmental organizations, along with qualitative evidence from ethnographies, recorded interviews, and reports by non-profit organizations. Three aspects of working conditions are considered: health and safety, remuneration, and working hours. It is argued that women workers faced unsafe work environments and long hours, while the growth of their real incomes lagged behind that of GDP per capita. Despite socioeconomic and cultural obstacles to unionizing, this paper finds that collective action empowered women workers and gave them a voice in addressing these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial psychology in socialist Yugoslavia and Romania is a relevant source for both labor history and the history of science/intellectual history. In this paper, we lay down the intellectual and institutional foundations of the discipline in the two contexts, including the envisaged roles for industrial psychologists working in factories and plans for expanding the profession. We argue that industrial psychologists defined the pursuit of labor productivity on the shopfloor as not just a matter of economic calculation, but also as a matter of workers’ self-realization. Their perspective on workers went beyond the measurement of their abilities and skills, taking into consideration personality features as well as inter-personal relations. In research conducted to support creativity and battle monotony at work, industrial psychologists also broadened the understanding of labor efficiency to encompass the pursuit of workers’ satisfaction. We show that research in industrial psychology was part of a broader drive to theorize work and the future of labor under socialism. Discussions of issues such as the scientific-technological revolution, the second industrial revolution, AI, cybernetization, automation, and narcomania, which we analyze in the final part of the paper, represent a rich source of Marxist intellectual reflection on the topic of labor in late socialist Eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic insecurity represents an existential threat to many workers, not least those in the Creative and Cultural Sector (CCS). Based on recent survey data from Ghanaian musicians gathered between April 2022 and March 2023, this paper presents indicative findings which demonstrate a persistent pension savings gap, with only about one in seven musicians in the sample (14.6%) reporting participation in a pension scheme – explained by both demand-side reasons (i.e. indecision about enrolment, not having the financial wherewithal to contribute regularly or not knowing about existing pension schemes) and supply-side reasons (i.e. limited pension options developed with the involvement of musicians). The paper also finds that while education level, age, location, and marital/family status appear to be important factors, in relative terms, there was little evidence to suggest that any group was more likely than the other to participate in a pension scheme. To improve pensions uptake, the paper argues that a long overdue, deliberate policy strategy should involve piloting a dedicated group personal pension scheme for musicians and testing savings commitments in the case of voluntary schemes over the long term and short term, respectively, with both going hand in hand with pension literacy programmes and incentives, wherever necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a novel dataset on working-time regulation for 197 territories between 1789 and 2010 to document how working hours have become globally standardised through public policy. Descriptive analysis shows that working-time reforms are global in scope, rare events, sizable once undertaken and tend to reduce hours. Democracies were historically more likely than autocracies to regulate hours, but this is not the case now, and there has never been a large gap in the content of their regulations. Whereas independent states always regulated hours to a greater extent, over half of all dependent states just prior to decolonisation regulated hours with more generous regulations than independent states. Based on these patterns, the paper first makes a methodological plea for more long-term historical studies and, second, sketches two possible explanatory frameworks for working-time reforms. One highlights shocks to the powerbase of antiregulation coalitions; the other highlights international normative change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information on the papers on New Deal reform and labor history that were produced by the American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives as a result of a grant from the U.S. National Historical Publications and Records center in January 2000. Highlights of the Congress of Industrial Organizations records; Highlights of the Philip Murray papers; Highlights of the John Brophy papers; Highlights of the John A. Ryan papers.

Between 1980 and 1995, while John Sweeney was president, the membership of the Service Employees International Union rose from around 600,000 to over 1.1 million. It continued to increase after 1995, making the SEIU the largest and fastest-growing union in the country. This growth was remarkable because it occurred at a terrible time for unions, one where the overwhelming emphasis – in both the media and academic scholarship – was on labor's decline. While scholars have noted the SEIU's growth, there has been little sustained analysis of how it was achieved. Existing accounts also posit growth largely as a reflection of the union's organizing prowess. Drawing on the SEIU's papers and interviews, this article argues that the union's growth under Sweeney did reflect its commitment to organizing. At the same time, the article makes a fresh contribution by showing that the SEIU also grew because of lesser-known factors, including the affiliation of independent unions and legislative advances in public sector rights. The SEIU also benefited from operating in a growing sector of the economy, where low-paid workers needed unions. These conclusions are developed through analysis of "flagship" drives at Beverly Nursing homes, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and the high-profile "Justice for Janitors" campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between economic development and inequality has been closely examined by researchers. From the seminal work of Kuznets to the more recent work of Piketty, market forces in boom cycles, on the one hand, and institutional action, on the other, have been featured as the main drivers of change in income distribution towards more egalitarian societies. In the Spanish case, previous research has described varied processes with regard to the period of growth that followed the approval of the Stabilisation Plan during the Franco dictatorship (1959–1973). Thus, Alcaide reportedly detected a limited capacity of the developmentalist growth model to reduce inequality, which he attributed to institutional limitations. In contrast, later studies have highlighted the decline in inequality during the same period. This paper aims to investigate the effects of this growth cycle by examining the behaviour of wages in the most dynamic sector of the Spanish economy, industry. Specifically, by using the wage survey compiled by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística, the paper nuances previous research and shows how despite explosive growth, the developmentalist model and the peculiar institutional framework built within the Franco dictatorship contributed to increasing wage dispersion and income inequality in most industrial sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through historical and anthropological inquiry, this paper addresses the issue of memory antagonisms involving cultural landscapes in the context of a former mining region: the Belgian Black Country. This region, which became increasingly industrialized in the 19th century through the massive development of coal mining and steel industry, subsequently experienced deindustrialization, and now finds itself mobilized in a process of 'post-industrial' mutation. The paper is divided into two parts. In the first part, it examines how the landscapes inherited from industry, and in particular the slag heaps of the coalfield, have over time become repositories of a working-class memory, through the living and working practices of the communities surrounding the mines. It also documents the various representations attached to these landscape objects, whose contradictions echo the oppositions between capital and labor that have marked the development of industrial capitalism. The second part of the paper, which focuses on the present situation, examines how these representations are remobilized in the valorization processes that are initiated by different actors, in the context of a 'post-industrial' urban transition strategy that seeks to produce a unified and pacified historical narrative. We'll be looking at how historical conflicts still permeate the representations of these landscapes, the question of their conservation, and their possible future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the prevalence and impact of nativist and anti-labor narratives built on the claim that the ‘Molly Maguires’, a vague 1860s and 70s militant Irish labor phenomenon of the Pennsylvania anthracite region, was still active between the 1880s and the 1910s. It finds that such narratives were widespread until the late 1890s, and still regionally significant until the late 1900s, finally fading into obscurity in the 1910s. ‘Molly Maguirism’ as a media narrative was primarily directed at organized labor and the (Irish) working class; it is best understood as a form of ethnicized proto-Red Scare tactic, but could incorporate other elements, such as broader nativist ideology and sectarianism. Based on these findings, prevailing models of Irish acculturation, such as Painter’s ‘second enlargement of whiteness’, are obsolete; the paper recommends a thorough revision of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Irish American working-class history, accounting for the continued and hitherto massively underestimated presence of anti-Irish sentiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an important component of China's social security system, the housing provident fund (HPF) scheme has seen its fairness called into question. Based on the data from the China Household Finance Survey in 2017, this paper uses the least squares method and the unconditional quantile regression and decomposition method to study the wage gap between the state and non-state sectors from the perspective of the HPF. Its findings suggest that the HPF is an important component of the state-sector wage premium. That is, whether wages include the HPF affects the direction and significance of the sectoral wage gap. A closer look reveals that in the state sector, low-income workers benefit less from the HPF scheme than middle- and high-income workers. The breakdown of the wage gap within the state sector indicates that the wage premium for the middle- and high-income bracket and for the high-income bracket are mainly credited to the differences in individual characteristics of state-sector workers, while the wage premium obtained by the middle- and low-income bracket takes the form of the sectoral wage level, which benefits from the HPF system to some extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes how (post)-migrant media outlets discussed the position of (post)-migrant people in France. (Post)-migrant media are periodicals, radio stations, and other forms of media produced by (post)-migrant actors and addressed to them. I argue that changes in the Global Cold War order, French national politics, and social changes in French (post)-migrant communities fostered a transition from anti-imperialist to multicultural understandings of migration in the examined media. The paper shows how these changes affected the experiences and identities of (post)-migrant people and adds a global history perspective to existing explanations about generational change and national political developments. It tracks how (post)-migrant media offered a space to negotiate the position in France against the backdrop of global developments such as the Cold War, decolonization, the disillusion with postcolonial governments, and the rising human rights movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's employment policy has been continuously improved,and the employment situation has undergone tremendouschanges. Based on the economic system and typical employmentpolicy since the founding of China in 1949, this paper dividesthe employment system into five stages: the period ofplanned economic system featuring 'unified contracting anddistribution' (1949-1977), the period of dual-track system featuring'three-in-one combination' (1978-1991), the period of promoting the're-employment project' (1992-2001), the period of implementingactive employment policy (2002-2011), and the period of promotinghigher quality and fuller employment (2012-present). In these fivestages, while China has made great achievements in employmentwork, the pressure still exists and the quality of employmentremains the focus of attention. Can the development of employmentpolicy improve China's labor market? To study the effectivenessof employment policy in each stage, this paper uses two keyindicators of the unemployment rate and structural deviationdegree, then it reflects the economic effect in each stage andconcludes that the coordination degree between employment andindustrial structure is improving, but it still has a long way to go.Finally, the paper puts forward solutions to the remaining problemsand points out the direction for future employment work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the necessity of promoting national childcare development and establishing corporation childcare within the context of China’s low fertility rate. It emphasizes the significance of traditional Chinese cultural values as foundational elements for promoting corporation childcare initiatives and their growth. It examines the evolving responsibilities of corporations in China’s childcare development amidst varying government policies over time. Given the increasing innovation and responsibility among Chinese corporations. the article categorizes three modes of corporation childcare based on current trends: corporation self-built childcare, collaborative childcare with third parties, and embedded childcare. It advocates for customized childcare services, nurturing the happiness of children, fostering parent-child interactions, building childcare brands, and creating a conducive business environment tailored to each mode. Building these modes, the paper offers recommendations across five dimensions: customizing childcare services, supporting the joyful upbringing of young children, promoting parent-child interaction, branding childcare facilities, fostering a conducive business environment, aiming to establish a comprehensive corporation childcare network. Lastly, the paper explores future development prospects, focusing on promoting the expansion driven by corporation childcare, addressing homogenization among corporation childcare facilities, considering the integration of elderly and childcare to leverage the experience of the elderly and fulfill social responsibilities in elder care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the analysis of decolonization process and nationalist struggles for political independence of Africa, labour agitations and the press activism for human rights are common features. But most studies have treated labour crisis and the press activism during the period of decolonization as mere subsets of the linear narrative of independence movement. Drawing on the empirical data of the Enugu Colliery Shootings incident, this paper examined labour agitation as an independent event and reviewed the area of overlap with the nationalist struggles. It re-examined the Colliery Shootings beyond the preponderant nationalist view that lumped every social, economic and political protest of the decolonization period as a single metanarrative of nationalist movements. Lastly, the roles of Nigerian newspapers as mediators in the crises between the labour unions and the colonial government, and the nationalists with the colonial government were appraised. The paper argued that, despite the interconnection of labour agitations with nationalist movements of the period, the former was both characteristically independent and coincidental with the latter. Similarly, not all human rights agitations by the newspapers were independence-focused. Finally, the nationalists, through networking process, benefited from labour agitations and press activism by expanding and molding local protests as independence movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the collection of the resources for labor history in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. The resources gathered are the result of the first attempt to document the rise of industrial democracy in the U.S. The plan of labor historian and economist Richard T. Ely to write a comprehensive history of industrial society was thwarted by scattered and inaccessible source materials. Due to that problem, Ely collected documents on the labor movement even after he joined the University of Wisconsin faculty in 1892.

While in recent decades there have been growing bodies of literature on gender and war, on war and military labor, and on various forms and degrees of labor coercion, rarely have these areas – gender, coercion and war labor – been analyzed together as intersecting and interdependent themes. The special issue on Gender, War and Coerced Labor aims to fill this gap, and this introduction to the issue will not only present the five papers but also establish the three intersecting themes uniting these papers. Together the introduction and the papers contribute toward larger debates about the place of coercion, of degrees of exploitation, and of free/unfree continuums in a variety of gendered war work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labor history and international relations (IR) each offer insights regarding the extent to which women contribute to non-state armed groups and the value of their labor. Yet questions remain about how agency in joining armed movements – and, conversely, the forced participation of women – are operationalized and even fetishized by observers. Positivist empirical work in IR has operationalized agency and coercion as a dichotomy in gendered wartime labor, implying that where women's labor is coerced it may have a lesser impact on the conduct of conflict or conflict outcomes. This paper challenges the existence of an agency-coercion binary, drawing on the case of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Analyzing archival sources in a manner informed by both feminist international relations and labor history scholarship, I show the complex interplay of agency and coercion in women's lived experience within a non-state armed group. I further reflect on how a temporal understanding of labor relations, examining coercion and choice at the moments of entry, work, and exit, contributes to a more complete understanding of the gender dynamics of wartime labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper assesses the prevalent assumption in Malaysia, which equates certain ethnic groups with particular labour roles. It looks at how this situation has developed over the years to the extent that today certain ethnic groups are seen as the ones with the requisite guile and mastery of some particular skills and, therefore, with the ability to fill those roles. The paper investigates this phenomenon and provides a theoretical effort to unpack how ethnicity intersects with other forms of work. The resulting new framings of identity (ethnic, work and otherwise) provide the basis for our paper. The paper finds that this social construction of ethnicity has facilitated its appropriation by ethnic groups and employers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Archives of Labor History and Urban Affairs, Walter P. Reuther Library at the Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, was established in 1960 to collect and preserve the records of the American labor movement, with special emphasis upon industrial unionism and related social, economic and political reform movements in the U.S., especially those relating to workers. Later, in 1970, the scope of the Archives was expanded to include urbanization, especially relating to Detroit and southeastern Michigan. The majority of the archival collections relate to the period after 1920, though some collections like those of the Industrial Workers of the World, the American Federation of Teachers, and the personal papers of labor leaders date back to the turn of the century. Archives. From its beginning in 1960, the Archives has adopted a vertical collecting policy for union records. This vertical collecting policy differs sharply from the acquisitions policy of many archives that concentrate almost solely upon key offices of an international union and the personal papers of top union leadership.

The Martin P. Catherwood Library at the Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, is the largest academic collection on labor and industrial relations in the United States. The 813 manuscript accessions and 230,833 documentary items held by its Labor-Management Documentation Center, make the Catherwood Library an especially rich source for the study of labor history. The Library of the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations was founded in 1945. It was renamed in 1971 to honor Martin P. Catherwood, second Dean of the School, who subsequently served as New York State Industrial Commissioner. Although its primary purpose has always been to support the instructional, research, and extension functions of the academic unit of which it is a part, the Catherwood Library has, as well, developed a world- wide reputation for the quality of its holdings in the areas of collective bargaining, labor law, labor union administration, labor economics, income security, human resources, personnel administration, and, of course, labor history. The book, periodical, and government document collections housed in the Catherwood's open stacks include convention proceedings, officers' reports, and journals for every major and most minor 20th century labor unions.

This paper makes two major contributions: firstly, following on recent research, it offers a more detailed critical analysis of the historical role and structure of Employers' Associations (EAs), concentrating on a detailed analysis of the range of member services offered by a local Employers' Association within the Engineering Employers Federation (the EEF) during the 1970s. This focus is in contrast to the literature which has concentrated on the EAs national or 'central peak' level. It secondly addresses the 'countervailing power' hypothesis, and in so doing it illustrates the key roles of the disputes procedure. The study, as a typical or representative case, uses a qualitative methodology of documentary research combined with triangulation interviews of former officials: evidence which has so far not been prominent in the literature. This paper is, therefore, a significant addition to our understanding of these institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial espionage has been raised to a sophisticated level today, but pirating labor is still the quickest and surest way to get at a competitor's trade secrets. The loss of trade secrets through changes in employment was a principal topic of discussion at the eighth annual conference of the Patent, Trademark, and Copyright Research Institute of George Washington University held in Washington in July 1964. Conferees agreed that losses occur because employers put a price on their ethics and employees on their loyalty. As professor Richard B. Morris has made clear, pirating of workers and interference with contract relations in American history goes back to the colonial period, when both bound servants and hired workers were enticed away from their employers for their labor and their skills. Stolen manufacturing processes were the basis for the establishment of the textile industry in this country. The seduction of workers by pirates of manufacturing processes was a real and present danger to a community of manufacturers along Brandywine Creek in northern Delaware in the early nineteenth century.

The 'new mobilities paradigm' formulated in the early 2000s allowed scholars of labor to explore the possibilities of the concept of im/mobility as an interpretive framework for understanding processes of work and labor. This paper contributes to the continued cross-fertilization between mobility studies and labor studies by exploring the theoretical and methodological prospects of focusing on assemblages of temporal-spatial practices that simultaneously compel and confine movement. The article suggests that means, processes, and extent of labor coercion can be understood by analyzing how people are compelled to move or are confined to specific sites temporarily or permanently. It discusses how employing space and im/mobility as conceptual tools uncover the role of diffused, hierarchical layers through which labor coercion emerges. In this regard, environment emerges as a significant factor. The paper examines how mobility becomes a line of flight from sites/fields of coercion, or locks people into new forms of coercive relations; the legal/formal or informal frameworks that regulate or govern labor im/mobility within specific sites; and how the logics of deployment and coercion overlap and mutually reinforce one another. Ultimately, it aims to contribute to the calls for nonlinear, newly spatialized histories of labor processes and labor coercion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion paper is presented to be read in three simultaneous and different modalities. At one level, it is a historiography of British Bengali women's labour power and hence an exploration of the historical constraints that vis-a-vis appear as a natural logical consequence but on closer examination performed as part of a broader structure of inequality. At another level, it intervenes, utilising the theoretical lens of Pierre Bourdieu's 'thinking tools' to inform an awareness that does not pathologize, but instead reads against the constructed layers of assumptions to foreground the social conditions that appear as social structures in diminishing Bengali women's labour power. Finally, the discussion expands the site of analysis, arguing under Sunni orthodoxy based upon the recitation, women have significant labour rights, moreover those rights have diminished in Bangladesh. At the same time, in Britain, social conditions have superseded religious limitations that have benefitted British Bengali women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate the predicament of young widows residing in the tea estates of Bangladesh. The study used qualitative methods to understand how young widows perceive and interpret their experiences of widowhood. Nine young widows were chosen for the in-depth semi-structured interviews using referral sampling. Data were analysed thematically, which was then critically explored and contrasted with the previous literature. The results demonstrated that young widows in the tea gardens struggled to address the psychological, economic, health care, educational, and recreational demands of their children due to declining resource bases. Additionally, young widows face sexual harassment, emotional disturbances, financial insecurity, and gender-sensitive discriminatory cultural practices. The paper advocated for expanding the social safety net in the tea gardens and ensuring land ownership among the tea gardeners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America in Cambridge, Massachusetts was founded in 1943 when Radcliffe College, Cambridge, accepted the Woman's Rights Collection (WRC) . The WRC documents several woman's suffrage organizations and includes the papers of Maud Wood Park and other women active in the women rights movement. But it does not end with 1920, the year the federal suffrage amendment was ratified, and it includes the library's first labor collection, papers of Frances Perkins, U.S. Secretary of Labor, 1933-45, and the first woman in the Cabinet. Thus despite the emphasis on suffrage and women's political and legal rights, labor issues, from the beginning have been an integral part of the Schlesinger Library. At about the time the WRC arrived at Radcliffe, president Wilbur K. Jordan and Professor Arthur M. Schlesinger, of the Harvard University's history department decided to make it the centerpiece of a growing research library on women, rather than a static memorial to the suffrage movement. Soon after, in December 1945, another major labor collection arrived, the papers of Leonora O'Reilly. O'Reilly's papers make up one major series in the micropublication, "The Papers of the Women's Trade Union League and Its Principal Leaders," a project sponsored by the Schlesinger Library, edited by Edward T. James, and published by Research Publications Inc. in 1981.

The researcher used an archive of British newspapers during the 1926 General Strike. The transcripts included: the government's British Gazette; British Worker, a trade union newspaper; and other newspapers during the conflict. The British Worker stuck to communicating strike-related information, but lost the battle for terminology control to the British Gazette and the majority of the general circulation press. Those papers stressed terms associated with disruptive effects and overall threat to the country. The findings follow past trends in news coverage of strikes, and add supporting examples to game theory, social movement theory, indexing, and political economy of communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article questions the hypothesis, put forward by several historians and IR academics, that the 1980s decline in British union membership and strike frequency, was driven by major industrial defeats, a cultural shift away from collectivism, and the adverse effects of the Conservative Government's anti-union legislation. In contrast, this paper argues that international economic developments, most notably the globalisation of manufacturing production, along with the British Conservative Government's economic policies, which resulted in mass unemployment in heavily unionised areas of the economy, were the principal reasons for the declines in union membership and strike frequency during the 1980s. In support of this theory, my article draws upon extensive contemporaneous research, which I conducted when I worked in the Industrial Relations Research Unit at the University of Warwick in the late 1980s. This research illustrates how strike frequency and union membership fell in the early and mid-1980s, before membership stabilized, and the frequency of strikes relative to the number of unionised workplaces increased, during the short-lived economic upturn of the late 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents news briefs related to the U.S. labor history. The State Historical Society of Wisconsin and the Department of History at University of Wisconsin will sponsor the conference "Reworking American Labor History: Race, Gender, and Class." LaGuardia and Wagner Archives at LaGuardia Community College acquired the Wagner family papers. The Labor Heritage Foundation held its 13th annual Great Labor Arts Exchange in June 1991 in Washington, D.C.

This paper presents a significant revision of the evolution of labor incomes in Spain, challenging previous assumptions about the effect of Francoist institutions in the postwar era. Administrative data reveal weaker wage declines in the 1940s and consistent growth throughout the 1950s, driven by the growing importance of allowances and family bonuses. This more positive evolution primarily benefited workers in regulated industries (such as manufacturing and private services), while agrarian laborers and civil servants experienced subpar earnings growth. Consequently, for the first group, effective compensation increasingly trended above legal compensation, as evidenced by the results of the 1957 wage survey. These findings suggest that labor markets under Francoism had a more flexible compensation structure than previously believed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several recent European studies conducted over the past 50 years have documented a positive connection between a person’s height and their salary. However, there are very few studies for earlier periods and for southern Europe. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between the height of conscripts born between 1888 and 1907 and their daily wages in 1924. Data for the Spanish city of Zaragoza was used. The results showed that for every additional 10 cm of height, an individual earned approximately 3% more. Furthermore, the shortest 25% of individuals suffered a considerable penalty in their income (about 15%). To understand the causes of this discrimination, we then analyzed the data by socioeconomic group. We found that people in low socioeco nomic groups essentially suffered wage discrimination. This finding could be linked to the fact that a tall stature conveys an image of strength and productivity. It should be noted that these results were found mainly for the urban areas, with their relatively large labor supply and weak blood ties rather than rural areas or among immigrants. In other words, the height penalty affected the weakest groups of society (low socioeconomic level and immigrants). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This life history account illustrates the covert politics of sabotage, purging, and the defeat of defecting and rival factions that occurred within the United Farm Workers in Texas. I draw on Robert Michels’ framework of competing leadership to illustrate the mechanisms established leadership can use to sabotage, purge, and the eliminate rival leaders, in particular maverick and threatening leaders. This case study draws on the history of the Texas Farm Workers Union, led by Antonio Orendain in the 1970s, and its conflict with the United Farm Workers led by Cesar Chavez. I argue that Orendain’s maverick leadership and independent union activity led the UFW leadership to 1) actively block resources such as money and supplies to Orendain, 2) leverage political connections to blacklist Orendain’s campaign for collective bargaining, and 3) write Orendain out of the UFW narrative and memory in Texas. These moments provide an opportunity to reveal the covert and complex politics of controlling the direction, resources, and objectives of labour movements. Moreover, this paper also seeks to document the organizing career of one of the founders of the UFW who earned the moniker ‘The Cesar Chavez of Texas’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the divergent trajectories of automotive investment and employment in Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario. Located on opposite shores of the Detroit River, in the United States and Canada respectively, Detroit and Windsor are the founding cities of the North American auto industry. Long dominated by the Big Three, their factories have produced vehicles for the same continental market since 1965. Each has weathered parallel challenges since then, including spikes in the price of oil, the Big Three's loss of market share, the transition to lean production, and the near-collapses of Chrysler and GM. Yet Detroit began deindustrializing decades earlier and lost much more employment than Windsor. To determine why, we compared their automotive sectors from 1900 to the 2010s. Since the Depression, each city has repeatedly confronted the prospect of deindustrialization, but three factors have made Windsor more resilient: (1) federal and provincial interventions on its behalf, (2) Windsor's greater competitiveness with respect to factor costs, quality, and innovation, and (3) Windsor's annexation of outlying territory to capture new factories. These differences show how national, subnational, and regional/local policies have mediated corporate decision-making to produce a variegated North American Rust Belt, with Canada outperforming the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the racialized experiences of industrial closure and economic restructuring of the former Pilpilco coal mine through oral histories and feminist arts-based methods. We argue that Pilpilco's industrial closure illuminates the layers of historical violence exerted on bodies and land as inseparable categories to colonize and extract resources and labour in the Chilean coal basin in Mapuche land. Pilpilco's industrial closure illustrates how coloniality operates in Latin America, perpetuating racial, gender, political and social hierarchical orders and prescribing value to certain peoples and territories while disenfranchising others (Quijano, 2000, Lugones, 2008). The article reflects on the colonial wounds that continue to harm inhabitants and their environments, prolonging their inability to heal intergenerational pain. Finally, we analyse residents' creative strategies to reclaim Pilpilco's land through heritage recognition, women's solidarity, and alliances with indigenous struggles. The study expands the reach and depth of deindustrialization studies, providing insights into how processes of industrialization, deindustrialization, and reindustrialization unfolded through the entanglements of settler colonialism and indigenous dispossessions, authoritarian regime and political repression, and neoliberalism and social demobilization. It also contributes to the field by providing a perspective on industrial closure from women's experience – those unpaid care workers who sustained life in coal mining communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study calls for greater scholarly engagement with the generational experiences of the socialist working class in China. Through an analysis of collective actions in response to the reform of state-owned enterprises at the turn of the century, the paper divides the Chinese socialist working class into the Revolution Generation and the Transition Generation. Amid the restructuring of the state sector, workers from the Revolution Generation exhibited a proclivity for civic activism and petitions, while the Transition Generation, though grappling with unemployment, largely refrained from public dissent, instead expressing sentiments of bewilderment and resignation. The study illustrates how the differing lived experiences of two working-class generations played a pivotal role in shaping their interpretation of grievances and contention repertoire. The article underscores the significance of generational perspectives in gaining insight into the destiny of the Chinese working class, advocating for the integration of such perspectives into the broader fields of deindustrialization and labor studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]