Trade Union History

In this Master Thesis, we analyse the role of Marcus Thrane and his workers union in the 19th century Norway and how they have contributed to the preparation of the basis for a modern-day democracy and the creation of political parties in the country.
For a long time, Thrane and his union were not so well-known by historians and scholars, although there have been studies and research made about this subject, mainly from the end of 1950's until the 1970's.
Two ways of approaching this subject were practiced by scholars: an economic approach, and a political approach, often being one against the other.
In this Master Thesis, we approach the subject in both the economic and the political aspect of Thrane's ideology and the functionning of his union. The goal is to show that the Arbeiderforening has set the ground basis for the creation of modern-day democracy by demanding the universal male suffrage, and by its organisation and functionning, how the Arbeiderforening was more than just a workers union and could be seen as a proto-political party, years before the emergence of the Workers' Party (1887) and the modern-day workers' union Landsorganisasjon (1889).

Arbeitspapier aus der Kommission „Erinnerungskulturen der sozialen Demokratie“
Die Erinnerung an die Migrationsbewegungen der 1960er und 1970er Jahre und an die gewerkschaftliche Migrationspolitik ist sowohl innerhalb als auch außerhalb der Gewerkschaftsbewegung geprägt von Klischees und falschen Legenden. Im Kontext der gewerkschaftlichen Erinnerungspolitik zeugen die bis in die Gegenwart wirkmächtigen Interpretationen und Narrative der 1970er Jahre vom Fehlen einer tiefergehenden Auseinandersetzung einerseits und einer weitgehenden Tendenz, Ambivalenzen zu Gunsten einer Erfolgserzählung auszusparen andererseits. Und das obwohl die Zuwanderung in die Bundesrepublik und auch die oft gegen die Gewerkschaften gerichteten migrantischen Arbeitskämpfe aus heutiger Sicht als eine Erfolgsgeschichte für die Gewerkschaften gelten müssen.

Der Beitrag widerlegt zunächst ausführlich einen bis heute weiter tradierten Mythos, der eine Zustimmung der Gewerkschaften zur Anwerbepolitik behauptet. Der Entstehungszusammenhang dieses Mythos verweist auf Dilemmata, in denen sich Gewerkschaften wiederholt gefangen sehen, wenn es um Fragen der internationalen Mobilität von Arbeitskräften und Zuwanderung geht. Ein  gewerkschaftliches Narrativ über Migrationsgeschichte, das die Ambivalenzen des eigenen Handels in den Vordergrund rückt, zeigt jedoch Auswege aus diesen Dilemmata. Anhand einer kurzen Zusammenfassung von migrantischen Arbeitskämpfen, die entscheidend für bundesdeutsche Geschichte der Arbeitsbeziehung waren, wird deutlich, dass es oft die Momente von Desintegration, Widerspruch und Selbstorganisation jenseits der Gewerkschaften waren, die einen sozialen Fortschritt für die gesamte Arbeiterbewegung auslösten.

In the 1960s and 1970s, sociologist and Jesuit Harry Hoefnagels, born in de mining town of Kerkrade, played a prominent role in debates on trade union renewal, developments in the Catholic Church, and in society in general. This article focusses on his ideas about industrial relations. Influenced by developments in the French Christian trade union movement (CFTC, later CFTD) in the early 1960s, Hoefnagels was very critical of the passive and conciliatory attitude of both the catholic and social democratic trade unions in the Netherlands. He was a pioneer in the movement towards the merger of the catholic Nederlands Katholiek Vakverbond (NKV) and the socialist Nederlands Verbond van Vakverenigingen (NVV) into Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging (FNV) in 1976. In Limburg, he played a prominent role in protests against the social consequences of mine closure in the late 1960. Research on his opinions and public performances is relevant in the context of societal change in the Netherlands in the 1960s and 1970s.

List of the members of the I.W.W. and innocent bystanders - Killed for Organizing, Striking, Taking Direct Action, or For Carrying a Red Card.

These members and bystanders were Shot, Stabbed, Beaten, Tortured, Starved, Strangled, Lynched, Drowned, Disappeared, and Executed. 

Several previous listings have been removed as further research has shown that reports of their deaths were greatly exaggerated.    While he was a supporter of the IWW and many IWW’s joined his cause Ricardo Flores Magón has been removed as he was not a member of our union.

As they have become known the names of those Wobs that died in Spain have been added.

On the 19th of November 1915 the labour activist and song writer Joe Hill was executed by firing squad at the Sugar House Prison, Salt Lake City, Utah. The musical legacy of Hill lives on through the still popular songs that he contributed to ‘the Little Red Song Book’ and in several well-known songs written about his life and inglorious death. The site of Sugar House Prison is now an attractive park but within its grounds even a diligent explorer will find no mention of Joe Hill or his Union, the radical, revolutionary and at one point extremely popular Industrial Workers of the World. This seems endemic of the American labour movement in general, which is poorly understood by the general public after decades of suppression and criticism, and which, with a small number of important exceptions, lacks formal recognition in terms of public monuments and artwork.

On the 12th of May 1916 the labour organiser, author and lecturer James Connolly was executed by firing squad at Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin, Ireland. As one of the 16 men singled out for execution following the Easter Uprising of 1916 Connolly is a household name in Ireland and amongst the diaspora. His life is commemorated in a large number of monuments, both for the 1916 martyrs collectively and a number of more individual monuments. However Connolly’s own beliefs as a radical socialist, and a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, have been subsumed into a broader narrative about Irish nationalism, many aspects of which Connolly would have been at odds with.

This paper argues that archaeologists working on topics relating to the late 19th and early 20th century need to ensure they have a proper understanding of radical politics when discussing the social dynamics in the lead up to the First World War. Modern narratives tend to down play the sheer exuberance and progressiveness of the socialist movement, painting it as a mere reformist affair that made a small contribution to the development of today’s wealthy western societies. Archaeological projects have the potential to shed much needed light on our radical forbears if those involved are prepared to engage with the abundant sources about the revolutionary politics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

This article looks at the migration policy of the trade unions as well as the political activism of migrants in West Germany during the 1960s and 1970s. It argues that migrants’ political activities have been rather neglected in historiography, because the research has followed the governmental view on migration which has led to an unnecessarily rigid analysis of migrants’ individual motivations to emigrate and ignored their demands. Through several instances of migrant protest and self-organization, the article emphasizes the importance of migrants’ political activism for the social history of the Federal Republic. Ultimately the idea of integration in historiography is discarded as a discourse that covers the migrants’ precise demands for equal rights.

I contributi qui pubblicati illustrano gli effetti giocati sulle forze sociali europee dall'apertura economica internazionale avviata negli anni cinquanta e sessanta, con particolare attenzione per quello che, almeno nel vecchio continente, ne fu l'elemento centrale: il mercato comune europeo.
Spostando progressivamente le decisioni di politica economica fuori dai confini nazionali, tali dinamiche costituirono una sfida soprattutto per le forze sindacali, che sempre più si trovarono costrette a confrontarvisi e a commisurarvi la loro azione, e che all'inizio degli anni settanta iniziarono a spostare a livello europeo gli obiettivi di pieno impiego e di redistribuzione tradizionalmente perseguiti in ambito nazionale.
Attraverso una serie di approfondimenti sulla situazione italiana, sui maggiori sindacati europei e su alcune sedi internazionali di particolare rilievo, i saggi contenuti nel volume offrono un contributo alla ricostruzione di tali vicende, mostrando l'evoluzione delle singole forze, i tentativi di un'effettiva azione sindacale europea e il rapido ridimensionamento di quest'ultima a causa delle nuove condizioni economiche degli anni settanta, caratterizzate da pressioni inflazionistiche e disoccupazione crescente.

An article exploring the activities of socialists and organized labour in the cities of Fort William and Port Arthur during the First World War. Particularly focused on is the contradictory response of the labour movement to Canada's involvement in the war and its reaction to the issue of conscription.

This paper will explore the activities of the two largest trade unions operating within the Scottish iron and steel industry, the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation and the Amalgamated Engineering Union, with regard to occupational health and safety in the twentieth century. This will be done through discussion of three case studies: convalescent care after the Second World War, the Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations 1978 and the respiratory ailments studies of the 1980s. Johnston and McIvor have argued, with regard to the asbestos hazard, that trade union policies were to a degree a reflection of masculine work culture: a fatalistic, stoic and machismo-influenced environment that invariably placed wages above health and safety issues and, indeed, gave greater publicity to traumatic injuries and death than the dangers of long-term exposure to a hazardous substance, effectively overshadowing the efforts made at local branch levels. Bufton, Melling and Bloor have also commented on danger in the workplace, emphasising a shared working experience. Bloor in particular discusses the collectivist impulse in working-class behaviour: the environment previously described as promoting wages above all else also created shared, collective health behaviour.

Ultimately, it will be seen that a collectivist approach to health and safety in the steel industry became more pertinent as the twentieth century progressed and that this ‘shared health consciousness’ can be found at different levels of the workplace. The example of convalescent care can be seen as an attempt by management and unions to instil a collectivist ethos in the workforce through, for instance, the maintenance of convalescent homes through voluntary subscriptions. The case of safety representatives and safety committees will be held up as examples of what were initially workplace-specific attempts (many of which pre-dated the Regulations) by the unions to ‘police’ health and safety in the workplace. The codifying of such committees through the regulations of 1978 represent the first steps in a drive towards an ‘across the board’ approach to health and safety that was then taken up by unions and the British Steel Corporation through increased safety training. Finally, the unions’ interest in respiratory ailments signifies an awareness of the long-term dangers of working in the iron and steel industry, both from a medical and legal perspective.