Labor History最新文献

{"title":"The rise of local labour legislation campaigns in post-war Hong Kong, 1969–1981","authors":"Ban Lee","doi":"10.1080/0023656x.2023.2275122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656x.2023.2275122","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThis article tells the story of the rise of local labour legislation agenda in post-war Hong Kong in the period between 1969 and 1981. For over a hundred years, the legislation on labour issues has been mainly led by the Colonial Office, which was driven by the changing politics in Britain. Given the lack of channels for workers to participate in the government, the weak and divided union movement, and the unions’ prioritization of external political agenda over local workers’ welfare, workers’ voices had no influence at all on labour legislation. Looking into three legislative campaigns between 1969 and 1981, this article reveals how non-governmental organizations, rather than labour unions, mobilized workers to develop the local labour agenda serving workers in Hong Kong. This is a missing chapter in the study of Hong Kong’s labour legislation history and contributes to the understanding of the rise of the autonomous labour movement in post-war Hong Kong.KEYWORDS: Labour legislationlabour lawsunionsHong Kong AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Mr. Raymond Fung (ex-director of HKCIC), Mr. Lau Chin Shek (ex-director of HKCIC), Mr. Leung Po Lam (ex-employee of HKCIC), and Mr. Leung Po Lung (ex-volunteer of HKCIC) for sharing their experiences in HKCIC with me. While I have relied mainly on archival records in my research, conversations with them have been invaluable in helping me have a much better understanding of the historical context, beliefs and campaign approaches of HKCIC. Any errors that remain in this article are my sole responsibility.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Autobiographical sketch(two or three sentences to be published; if a book is mentioned, please provide publisher and year).Notes1. Labour organizing efforts in 1930s and pre-war 1940s continued to be charged with anti-imperialistic sentiments and workers were mobilized to support the campaigns against Japanese invasion in mainland China (Lu, Citation2019). In the post-war years up to mid-1960s, social conflicts in Hong Kong were fused by ‘Chinese politics on Hong Kong soil’, referring to the political rivalry between the Nationalists and the Communists (Lui & Chiu, Citation1999).2. See Miners, N. (1981). p.48, footnote no.9. Miners contrasted the survey conducted by King, A. (1972). The Political Culture of Kwun Tong (Social Research Centre, Chinese University of Hong Kong) with other surveys, published in G. Almond and S. Verba, The Civil Culture (Princeton University Press, 1963, p.185), which revealed that in Britain, 78 percent believed they could affect government policies, 77 percent in the United States, 62 percent in Germany, 52 percent in Mexico, and 51 percent in Italy.3. The original proposal from the colonial government was that workers should have worked for not less than 20 days out of the 28 days preceding the holiday, or not less than 3 consecutive days immediately preceding the holiday, with no res","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134953966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘We build barren island, barren island builds us’: of imprisoned humans and mobilized stone in the Yugoslav Cominformist labor camp (1949–1956)","authors":"Milica Prokić","doi":"10.1080/0023656x.2023.2277873","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656x.2023.2277873","url":null,"abstract":"Goli Otok (Barren Island) was a site of the master political prison and forced labor camp of the socialist Yugoslavia between 1949 and 1956. The imprisoned, accused of siding with Stalin in the Tito–Stalin political rift, were sent to undergo ‘self-managed re-education’ through ‘socially beneficial labor’ in the island’s limestone quarries. The inmates were forced to build their own prison out of that very limestone – the first known human dwellings on the previously uninhabited island. They were also often forced to break, crumble and to carry massive stone loads from one place to another and back, with no constructive or productive purpose. However, the labor camp authorities also operated a lucrative business, oriented towards country-wide distribution, and sometimes towards international export of the island’s limestone. The quarried stone of the island therefore travelled more widely than its excavators, whose movements were limited to their island-prison. Set at the intersection of labor history and environmental history and drawing on the archival materials of the Yugoslav State Security Service, oral history interviews with the former prisoners, and their published and unpublished written memoirs, this paper examines the interrelations of the prison-island, its stone material, and the prisoners’ laboring bodies.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134953492","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Changes in the Croatian migration system: conceptualising the complexities of migrations, 1990-2023","authors":"Marko Valenta, Jo Jakobsen, Margareta Gregurović, Drago Župarić-Iljić","doi":"10.1080/0023656x.2023.2280052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656x.2023.2280052","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the recent history of labour migration in post-independence Croatia. The time period under investigation is 1990–2023, which encompasses three decades during which the country has experienced complex migrations, in particular of labour migrants and refugees. The article’s ambition is twofold. First, it identifies changing elements of the Croatian migration system, exploring how it is embedded in the wider regional and international migration systems. Second, it proposes a pioneering typology of Croatian migrations and discusses their drivers. The article argues that the Croatian migrations have been significantly affected by the country’s changing affiliations to neighbouring states and the European Union. Several historical, socioeconomic and political junctions have enabled, driven and hampered labour migrations and other migratory flows of the Croatian migration system. It is evident that the war of independence, the poor socioeconomic situation in the post-war period and increased opportunities to emigrate to more developed parts of Europe have all contributed to the depopulation of Croatia and to ongoing changes in its migration system. It is also asserted that understanding the Croatian migration system necessitates a long-term perspective on the interactions between immigrant and emigrant flows, and on how they overlap with return migrations.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135192910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Between labour and moral duty: social conflicts, volunteer work and the moral economy of life-boating in the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (1850–1914)","authors":"Nebiha Guiga","doi":"10.1080/0023656x.2023.2280048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656x.2023.2280048","url":null,"abstract":"The history of humanitarianism in the nineteenth century, and more specifically of the lifeboat movement, has so far paid limited attention to the role of rank-and-file, working-class volunteers and the ways in which they interacted with the broader moral framework of humanitarian causes. In order to contribute to this history, this article looks at social conflicts between lifeboat crews and local committees as related in inspection reports of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. It argues that these conflicts hinge on the double nature of lifeboat work as both labour and moral duty, the incommensurability of these two aspects and the ways in which different social actors interpret them. It frames these tensions under the concept of moral economy and argues that the practical implementation of the humanitarian imperative of lifesaving at sea is partly a result of tensions and negotiations of mutual monetary and non-monetary obligations of the various actors at play at station level.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135342319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Women workers’ education at the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions: excavating histories of transnational collaboration with the ICFTU","authors":"Selin Çağatay","doi":"10.1080/0023656x.2023.2272125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656x.2023.2272125","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThis article explores the relationship between the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions (Türk-İş) and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) from the 1960s until the 1990s with a focus on the transnational collaboration of activists who organised educational activities for women workers and trade unionists to empower them as rights-seeking political subjects and strengthen their position within the trade union movement. Demonstrating how women’s trade union education evolved within the framework of local politics as well as global processes such as the Cold War and the emergence of a UN-led gender equality regime, it argues that global inequalities, geopolitical differences, and Türk-İş leaders’ ambivalent attitude towards women’s status in the trade union movement led to a loose, sporadic relationship between local activists and those from the west. At the same time, it was often these activists’ sustained efforts towards collaboration and the circulation of their agendas that pressured Türk-İş to invest in women’s empowerment in trade unions. Utilising archival and trade union sources as well as oral history interviews, the article integrates the work of women labour activists in feminist labour historiography, offering a more comprehensive understanding of trade unions’ gender politics in Turkey and globally.KEYWORDS: Feminist labour historyICFTUtrade union educationtransnational collaborationTurkeyTürk-işwomen’s labour activism AcknowledgmentsThe author thanks Sylvia Hahn, Silke Neunsinger, Mahua Sarkar, and the ZARAH research team, and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticism and valuable comments on the earlier versions of the article.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis article is part of the ERC-funded project ‘ZARAH: Women’s labour activism in Eastern Europe and transnationally, from the age of empires to the late 20th century’ (Advanced grant no. 833691).Notes on contributorsSelin ÇağataySelin Çağatay is a postdoctoral researcher in History and Gender Studies at the Central European University, Austria. Her recent publications have appeared in Women’s History Review, International Feminist Journal of Politics, and the Palgrave Macmillan Thinking Gender in Transnational Times series. Currently she investigates educational activities targeting urban and rural women in the world of gainful work in Turkey and transnationally.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135341888","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘A first class medium’: the cautious anti-communism of the ICFTU’s International Labour Film Institute, 1953-1972","authors":"Kevin E. Grimm","doi":"10.1080/0023656x.2023.2266686","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656x.2023.2266686","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTBetween 1953 and 1972 the International Labor Film Institute (ILFI), affiliated with yet organizationally separate from the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), spread knowledge about, and encouraged the use of, films among Western trade unionists. Holding five formal film festivals, the ILFI also engaged in the collection and distribution of information about films and filmstrips on trade union topics, themes, and successes. Yet compared to other ICFTU forums, ICFTU and ILFI officials were relatively muted on Cold War issues when it came to film activities. When they did discuss such topics, they evidenced a level of uncertainty and confusion regarding how intensely to engage anti-communist messaging in the area of labor films, indicating a concern over how to strike the correct balance between showcasing topics solely focused on labor and engaging Cold War themes. Studying the ILFI and Western labor’s relationship to the medium of film thus reveals both an anxiety among Western labor leaders during the early and middle years of the Cold War over how best to weigh their desire to help workers with their goal of appearing sufficiently anti-communist as well as another way the vagueness of the ICFTU’s slogan of ‘free trade unionism’ impacted the ICFTU’s activities.KEYWORDS: International Confederation of Free Trade UnionsInternational Labour Film InstituteILFIICFTUanti-communismfree trade unionismJ.H. Oldenbroek Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis research was funded in part by research travel grants from Regent University.Notes on contributorsKevin E. GrimmDr. Kevin E. Grimm is an associate professor of history at Regent University in Virginia Beach. His work has appeared in Labor History, the Journal of Contemporary History, the Journal of West African History, and Cold War History. His first book, America Enters the Cold War: The Road to Global Commitment, 1945-1950 (2018), is part of Routledge’s Critical Moments in American History series and he is currently working on a book on the ICFTU and Ghana.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136235023","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Labor standards, labor policy, and compliance mechanism: a case study in Bangladesh","authors":"Robayet Ferdous Syed","doi":"10.1080/0023656x.2023.2272124","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656x.2023.2272124","url":null,"abstract":"The International Labor Organization (ILO) labor standard is crucial for ensuring labor rights, making it imperative for member states to adopt labor policies that align with and comply with the ILO. With this in mind, this manuscript addresses three key questions: First, what does the term ‘labor standard’ mean under the ILO? Second, does Bangladesh’s labor policy align with the ILO? Third, how can compliance with labor policy be improved to safeguard labor rights in Bangladesh? This qualitative study employs an interdisciplinary pure legal research methodology, as established by Arthurs in 1983, within the academic constituency. The findings reveal that labor legislation in Bangladesh often deviates from the ILO labor policy. In many cases, there is a lack of effective inspection mechanisms to enforce labor laws, and the penalties, incarceration, and other sanctions for labor law violations are inadequate. This leads to insufficient implementation of the law in Bangladesh, resulting in numerous violations of workers’ rights.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135111496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Freedom of movement <i>versus</i> freedom of work? Coping with the mobility of indigenous workers in a palm oil concession in French Congo (1910-1940)","authors":"Ferruccio Ricciardi","doi":"10.1080/0023656x.2023.2268544","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656x.2023.2268544","url":null,"abstract":"In colonial French Congo, one of the main challenges for labor relations was the need to reconcile contradictory efforts to promote the mobility of native workers while also stabilizing (or immobilizing) the workforce. As the interests of colonial employers and officials overlapped and merged, so did the status of indigenous workers evolve according to how administrative and economic leaders categorized indigenous work. Indigenous workers were therefore progressively categorized as migrant workers, deserters or vagrants. The political instruments which were supposed to ensure the circulation of migrant workers particularly (the laissez-passer, worker logbooks, orders regulating the flow of the workforce within the colony, etc.) were perversely used to constrain worker movement. Drawing on the archives of the French colonial administration and the private archives of the Compagnie Française du Haut-Congo, this article tries to grasp the relation between freedom and (im)mobility in the context of a colonial concession. In that context, colonial leaders sought to control of mobility for purposes relating to the construction of a local labor market, the consolidation of governmental rationality and the stabilization of colonial order.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135858332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Madras <i>Kraals</i> , animal labour and Veterinary Corps: colonising wild elephants in British South India","authors":"Santhosh Abraham, Susy Varughese","doi":"10.1080/0023656x.2023.2268557","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656x.2023.2268557","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTAnimals, animal labour and animal capital, were vital in developing colonial capitalism. For labour theories, working animals constituted only as tools or resources and affirmed the property rights of humans over animals by capturing, confining, breeding and training. The capitalist interactions with animals developed from the early warfare and hunting practices to the later discourses of conservation, juridical control and the commoditization of animals in the capital-intensive colonial industries. This article examines the entangled histories of wild elephants in colonial settings who were captured, tamed, and trained as working animals and sold as commodities to the capitalist timber industries. By using Jonathan Saha's conceptualization of 'undead capital', this article addresses how the wild elephants were transformed from being hunted to being protected, fed, provided for and kept healthy by veterinarians through the Kraal system only to be commoditized as working animals. However, such commoditization resulted in the subjugation of animals, the transformation of ecologies, and the fostering of new interspecies relationships between the elephants and their caretakers. The knowledge and experience of caretakers of elephants became central in colonial animal management and was perceived as a route through which colonialism created new knowledge about wild animals and the forests.KEYWORDS: Animal labourcommodificationworking animalstimber industryinterspecies relationships AcknowledgmentsThis article is developed from the Exploratory Research Project on ‘Animal Care, Science and Colonialism’, funded by the Centre for Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research (ICSR), IIT Madras, Chennai, India. Part of this article was presented at the International Workshop on Commodities of Empire at the University of York in July 2023. We would like to thank ICSR, IIT Madras for funding, Teresa Joshy for archival assistance and all the York workshop participants for their feedback. We also thank the editor and the two anonymous reviewers of this paper.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. For a detailed analysis of liberal and Marxian thoughts on nonhuman animals and labour, see Blattner et al. (Citation2020). Animal labour: A new frontier of interspecies justice? Oxford University Press.2. Government of Madras. (Citation1887). Board of Revenue (Forest) Despatches. Tamil Nadu State Archives Chennai (hereafter TSAC).3. Government of Madras. (1888). Board of Revenue (Forest) Despatches. TSAC.4. Government of Madras. (1892). Board of Revenue (Forest) Despatches. TSAC.5. Government of Madras. (1912). Board of Revenue (Forest) Despatches. TSAC.6. Government of Madras. (1913, February 7). Board of Revenue (Forest) Despatches. TSAC.7. Government of India. (1879). Elephant Preservation Act 1879.8. Government of Madras. (1885, June 20). Board of Revenue (Forest) Despatches. TSAC.9. Ibid.10. District Co","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136295861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Gigantic struggles: the battle to build the United Automobile Workers after the sit-down strikes, 1937–1945","authors":"Timothy J. Minchin","doi":"10.1080/0023656x.2023.2258101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656x.2023.2258101","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the struggle to build the United Automobile Workers in the years after the sit-down strike of 1936–37 in Flint, Michigan. The strike, which historian Sidney Fine has called ‘the most significant American labor conflict in the twentieth century,’ has secured the lion’s share of scholarly attention. While it was very important, much remained to be done to make the UAW an institution that represented almost all American autoworkers. At the time of the strike, only 10 percent of GM’s 47,000 Flint workers belonged to the UAW, while much of the industry was unorganized. This article changes the focus, examining the struggle to build the union after the strike. In this period, the union faced bitter internal divisions, ongoing corporate opposition, patchy membership levels, and economic instability. It struggled to establish itself, and internal records – especially overlooked executive board minutes that are mined here – reveal considerable vulnerability and instability. While the UAW made progress between 1937 and 1941, it was in World War II that it solidified itself nationally, helped by favorable bargaining conditions. Even then, it faced ongoing leadership divisions and rank and file disaffection. Building the union took time and deserves closer interrogation.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135814721","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}