Labor HistoryPub Date : 2023-02-11DOI: 10.1080/0023656X.2023.2171376
Raia Apostolova
{"title":"Theory and process of socialist migration: local enmities and international friendships in the Vietnam-Bulgaria relations (1975-1985)","authors":"Raia Apostolova","doi":"10.1080/0023656X.2023.2171376","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2023.2171376","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The essay explores the labor-exchange programs between postcolonial and socialist states as a form of moral economy that attempted to reconcile the notions of socialist internationalism and ‘mutually beneficial’ migration. Focusing on the relationship between Vietnam and Bulgaria, the article traces key logics of socialist migration and internationalism that informed, broke, and reshaped the relationships between different units of solidarity. These include links between the Party, mass organizations, and economic enterprises; between economic units, political organizations, and foreign workers; and essentially between the two countries, Vietnam and Bulgaria. The essay contends that the constant renegotiation of the meaning of internationalism between economic enterprises and ministries, on the one side, and the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party and foreign workers, on the other, produced two competing logics on whether labor-import from postcolonial states was politically valuable. To explore the clash, I concentrate on the years between 1975–1985, when some voices required the halt of labor exchange programs. This notwithstanding, in this period, the number of Vietnamese workers to arrive in Bulgaria more than tripled. The essay enters the spaces where socialist internationalist theory and the social practice of migration interacted, to make internationalism an open-ended domain.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44607772","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}
Labor HistoryPub Date : 2023-02-10DOI: 10.1080/0023656X.2023.2173728
D. Jovanović, D. Stojmenović
{"title":"The export of know-how at the (semi-)peripheries: the case of Yugoslav–Iranian industrial collaboration and labor mobility (1980–1991)","authors":"D. Jovanović, D. Stojmenović","doi":"10.1080/0023656X.2023.2173728","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2023.2173728","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT 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.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48379671","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}
Labor HistoryPub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/0023656X.2023.2182436
Haonan Yang
{"title":"Development phases of U.S. employment anti-discrimination law and reflections on its dilemmas from the perspective of China","authors":"Haonan Yang","doi":"10.1080/0023656X.2023.2182436","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2023.2182436","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The United States (U.S.) is an inescapable setting for Chinese scholars to study employment anti-discrimination law. They often analyse the U.S. law from different and even diametrically opposite perspectives. The systematic study of the law has theoretical and practical implications. The evolution of the U.S. law can be divided into three phases: the emergence and rise phase from the 1960s to the 1970s, the contraction and innovation phase during the 1980s, and the overall expansion and partial retraction phase from the 1990s onward. The U.S. employment anti-discrimination law is now constricted by the coexistence of effective regulation of explicit discrimination and insufficient regulation of implicit discrimination, decreasing success rates, increasing caseloads of employment discrimination suits, and an increase in the number of employment discrimination disputes resolved through alternate dispute resolution. The contribution of the U.S. law to expanding the breadth and depth of the right to fair employment opportunities, improving the burden of proof standard for employment discrimination disputes, and establishing a robust labour market competition mechanism can be used as a reference for other countries such as China.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43468407","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}
Labor HistoryPub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/0023656X.2023.2182435
Pablo Gutiérrez González
{"title":"Wage inequality and economic growth. A reassessment of the effects of Francoist developmentalism on income distribution in Spain","authors":"Pablo Gutiérrez González","doi":"10.1080/0023656X.2023.2182435","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2023.2182435","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT 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.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45584410","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}
Labor HistoryPub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/0023656x.2023.2166392
Nate Holdren
{"title":"Book review of Crandell and Jennings on disability rights, politics, and workers","authors":"Nate Holdren","doi":"10.1080/0023656x.2023.2166392","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656x.2023.2166392","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42006299","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}
Labor HistoryPub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/0023656X.2022.2163382
Saumya Devraj
{"title":"Post-colonial structure of the Indian garment industry and its role in maintaining the precarity of women workers","authors":"Saumya Devraj","doi":"10.1080/0023656X.2022.2163382","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2022.2163382","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Neoliberal policies and decentralization of production activities in developing countries have been blamed for the ever-increasing precarity of labor in India since the late twentieth century. Precarious labor, however, had long been a characteristic feature of the Indian garment industry before it actively participated in neoliberal global garment trade in the 1970s and 1980s. This study examines policies that shaped the Indian garment industry in the post-colonial period from 1947 and their effects on production, employment patterns, and women’s work. It employs the Indian Government’s official industry censuses and employment survey reports. Accordingly, the policy of small-scale garment production was backed by benevolent aims of reviving traditional Indian crafts and maximizing employment. However, it yielded a fragmented industrial structure and a pool of precarious labor from a poverty-stricken population. Gender-based social stereotypes further enabled a socio-economically disempowered female workforce. The neoliberal policies that gained ground with the industry’s increasing export orientation exacerbated the precarious working conditions rooted in indigenous policy-making and social mindset. Locating labor precarity and women’s vulnerability within this complex mesh of local and global factors offers an improved framework for testing how neoliberal policies maneuver them to influence production and employment patterns in today’s garment industry.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"58934388","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}
Labor HistoryPub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/0023656X.2023.2190963
J. McIlroy, A. Campbell
{"title":"‘For peace and defence of the Soviet Union’: the leadership of British Communism in the Popular Front era, 1935–1939","authors":"J. McIlroy, A. Campbell","doi":"10.1080/0023656X.2023.2190963","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2023.2190963","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This prosopographical investigation of the Central Committee (CC) of the British Communist Party during the Popular Front era analyses the origins, occupations, political careers and destinations of the 47 Communists who served on the CC in these years. The transition from Third Period leftism to class collaboration found minimal reflection in the characteristics of the Communist leadership, which remained in line with those of the preceding cohort. The Popular Front group was slightly older, the percentage of women declined and attention to the middle class saw only marginal increase in the numbers that experienced higher education. There were more Scots, fewer English while turnover remained high. ‘Debutantes’ were younger and relatively raw compared with the ‘Continuation Group’ − 40% of newcomers had joined the CPGB during the Third Period. However, a ‘core’ whose CC service stretched back to the early 1920s and a ‘core of the core’ who endured into the 1950s ensured continuity. The integration of CC members into the party bureaucracy observed in earlier years was maintained: 75% of CC representatives occupied full-time posts. Previous articles provided life histories of the ‘Continuation Group’; the biographical focus here is on the ‘Debutantes’. But the majority of committee members were ‘practical’ working-class activists. Executors of policy, in the end they left theory and strategy to the Comintern and the Soviet elite.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43134369","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}
Labor HistoryPub Date : 2022-12-30DOI: 10.1080/0023656X.2022.2130212
Karen Agutter, C. Kevin
{"title":"From forced to coerced labour: displaced mothers and teen girls in post-World War II Australia","authors":"Karen Agutter, C. Kevin","doi":"10.1080/0023656X.2022.2130212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2022.2130212","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT At the end of World War Two 1.2 million people were officially labelled Displaced Persons (DPs). Stateless, or refusing to return home, the majority were resettled in other countries including Australia which, like most receiving nations, saw these refugees primarily as a labour force for post-war economic recovery and expansion. However, unlike other nations, DPs destined for Australia signed a work contract which committed them to two years of assigned labour after arrival. This paper considers two specific subsets of these DPs, the ‘unsupported mothers’ (single, widowed, and divorced mothers with young children) and female unaccompanied teenagers. It illuminates the intersections of gender and displacement on the labour status of female DPs in post-war Australia and traces the continuities of coerced labour in their experiences of war and migration. We argue that the early life of female DPs in Australia provides an example of a continuum of forced and coerced labour which had begun under the shadow of war in Nazi Germany and continued after migration.","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45827932","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}
Labor HistoryPub Date : 2022-12-25DOI: 10.1080/0023656X.2022.2156989
Timothy J. Minchin
{"title":"‘“The most troubled time in our history”: the presidency of Douglas Fraser and the decline of the UAW.’","authors":"Timothy J. Minchin","doi":"10.1080/0023656X.2022.2156989","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2022.2156989","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT 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.”","PeriodicalId":45777,"journal":{"name":"Labor History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44398014","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}