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The crisis of accumulation which tore East African Railways and Harbours (E.A.R.H.) provoked fierce resistance from African railwaymen in all three colonies. This was marked by the East African Railway Strike which began on 14 November 1959, as the majority of railwaymen stopped work in response to the Railway African Union [Kenya] call for a colony wide strike. Railwaymen in Tanganyika and Uganda followed them into action to mark the region’s first inter-territorial strike. The strike rudely coincided with preparations for African majority government throughout the region, and continued intermittently until April 1960. This had an immense impact and triggered the era of strike waves which challenged the nature of the nationalist transitions to independence throughout the region in which the African bourgeoisie stood to become the principal beneficiaries. The following work attempts to bring out the organic interconnectedness of a regional struggle which veered between unity and fragmentation. In this connection, it questions the role of the British TUC, the International Transport Workers Federation and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in deflecting the course, and bargaining down the demands of this momentous confrontation. The examination of the strike attempts to reopen unresolved issues about the role and influence of organised labour within East Africa’s independence struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mexico's rail workers’ struggle of 1926–27 encompassed one of the largest strikes following the 1910–20 revolution, yet contemporary official government statistics omitted any mention of it. The labor struggle involved an independent, militant confederation of transport workers and, opposed to it, the largest rail company in the country (heavily indebted to foreign creditors), the state, and its principal labor ally. While the strike was broken, the confederation leading it obtained an impressive judgment from the nation's supreme court against the authoritarian federal executive power, which, moreover, vindicated the right to strike affirmed in the 1917 Constitution. But the judicial and administrative decisions reached in connection with the strike subsequently served to structure and limit labor's right to strike. This article analyzes the railroad strike of 1927, the judicial and administrative response to it, and its legal significance, which together have contributed to the formation of the nation's post-revolutionary system of regulating industrial conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on the railroad workers' strikes of 1877. The railroad workers' strikes in the summer of 1877 caused many in industrializing U.S. to shudder at the prospect of permanent class conflict. Overall, the strike itself that is, a specific job action taken by workers against their employers received less attention than a concern that these events marked a revolutionary turning point in American society. The nation-wide scope of the strike movement led some to suggest a conspiracy, and the dramatic violence in such cities as Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Chicago confirmed the worst suspicions of, among other newspapers, the New York Times.' Even more disturbing was the tenacity of the strikers. The introduction of federal troops in Baltimore, Pittsburgh and elsewhere did not signal the end of the strikes and riots. Rather, angry crowds attacked the troops. This emphasis on the dramatic expression of class anger has dominated the historiography concerning 1877. Examining areas of conflict with varying degrees of depth, these historians and their successors have remained chronologically locked within the time frame of the last two weeks of July 1877.

The article focuses on the Georgia Railroad Strike of 1909. The Georgia Railroad strike of 1909 dramatically galvanized attention on the complexities and perils that resulted when racial issues were injected into a labor dispute. Most public accounts attributed the crisis to a decision by officials of the line to reduce operating expenses. The discharge of the hostlers, who were members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, precipitated a walkout by all of the railroad's white firemen on May 17, 1909. This situation arose against a background of unresolved complaints by the union over wages, working conditions, seniority, and especially the use of black firemen on the company's engines. The railroad officials argued that they were merely attempting to economize by using black labor since Negro hostlers received wages of fifty cents a day less than whites. For its part the Georgia Railroad stoutly defended its black employees, but in the process company officials resorted to racial stereotypes almost as derogatory as those employed by the white firemen.

The article focuses on the alternatives to labor injunction that the federal courts can provide to meet the railway labor problem from 1877-1895. During the years between the Railways Strikes of 1877 and the Pullman Boycott-Strike of 1894, the courts turned labor injunction as a major device to protect railroads from demonstrators. Though labor advocates condemn the device, the businesspeople hailed labor injunction as proof that the U.S. legal system can adapt to the changing needs of industries. Aside from labor injunction, federal courts could have addressed railway labor disputes by acting as mediators on interstate railways, by requiring receivers to recognize and bargain with organized railway workers, or by empowering itself to enjoin workers from quitting and taking custody of the railroad companies in question until the dispute is resolved.

The periodical "Glasgow Sentinel" had consistently featured trade union news and given voice to Scottish Labor's views on social and political issues at home and abroad. Alexander Macdonald had made several visits to the United States in the 1860's to study American trade unionism; and his influence was probably behind the editorial which appeared in the Glasgow Sentinel on August 4, 1877, entitled "The American Railway Strike." The individualism of the inhabitants is so great that they cannot remain in compacts for objects connected with labor. The causes are manifold that have led to the outbreak-chief is, the amount of land they have succeeded in stealing from the people by huge grants to make the (Rail) roads-next, by the uniform advantage they take of all that have from necessity to trade with them in the utter disregard they have of the interests of the shareholders of the corporations-and the general pilfering all over the States by these railways-to this may be added the joint attack they all agreed to make on the rate of the men's wages.