The role of universities in the promotion of worker protection: UCLA labor occupational health and safety program as a model for countries with developing economies

ABSTRACT

Protection of the workers’ health in countries with developing economies is increasingly important because of the adverse effects of globalization, along with changing industrial relations, the rise of precarious work and outsourcing, and the decline in unionization. In this study, I examine whether the institutes created by universities might serve as an interface between workers, academia, and state agencies, and provide assistance for both improving workplace conditions and enforcing occupational health and safety rules. I describe the history of one such effort: The Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program (LOSH) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Using a review of written sources along with participatory observation and interviews as methods, I found that the challenges faced by LOSH historically have important parallels in countries with developing economies today. Ultimately, university-based occupational health programs like LOSH need to be followed in other parts of the world and be supported by governments if the mission to reduce workplace injuries and diseases is going to be realized in the United States and in other countries.     

The factory and the welfare state: redundancy,benefits and workers’ organization at Alfa Romeo Arese, 1963-1986

ABSTRACT

The article tracks the relationship between the Italian welfare state and the social relations of production at a Fordist factory, showing how social policy influenced the pattern of workers’ contention on the industrial shop floor. Welfare state analysis has concentrated on the institutional aspect of social policy but neglected the role that state benefits played in industrial organization and workplace relations. The article ‘nests’ the analysis of social policy in a micro-history of the factory, using the case study of Arese – a plant owned by the carmaker Alfa Romeo – Milan, Italy. Tracking the history of Arese, the article shows how the Italian system of short-time work subsidies, the Cassa Integrazione Guadagni (CIG), served to quell industrial unrest and target unions’ organizational resources. From the late 1960s, the CIG was used by managers to suspend workers during strikes and acted as a deterrent against their mobilization. As redundancies increased during the 1980s, workers were put on short-time for prolonged periods and prevented from entering the factory. This degraded their professional identity and eroded their political ties with the workplace, curtailing the basis of unions’ organizational strength within the factory.     

An early attempt at labor regulation in the Global South: the Argentine Ley Nacional del Trabajo of 1904 and the response of working-class organizations

ABSTRACT

In the first months of 1904, in a context of intense labor unrest, the Argentine executive branch presented to Congress a bill that became known as the ‘National Labor Law’ (Ley Nacional del Trabajo). It comprised a very extensive set of rules designed to regulate the labor market, the labor process and workers’ organizations. By that time, Argentina had a growing capitalist economy, a young and radical labor movement and no labor regulations whatsoever – in this context, the bill was the first attempt of regulating the relations between capital and labor and, not surprisingly, it sparked an important debate. Although it never became a law, the bill became an iconic reference in the history of labor regulations in Argentina. This article introduces the main characteristics of the proposed bill and focuses on the reactions that working-class organizations developed toward it. While anarchist-oriented groups and unions made clear its complete rejection toward an initiative that was seen as another intervention of an authoritarian state, the Socialist Party found itself in a much more complicated position. This article addresses these debates and tensions in order to better understand the reactions of working-class organizations with regard to the first attempt of labor regulation made by the Argentine state.     

A Vision for Postmaternalism: Institutionalising Fathers’ Engagement with Care

ABSTRACT

Social policy development under neo-liberal logic glorifies paid work in the market over relationships involving care, nurture and dependency. Under neo-liberal conditions, the social policy framework in a large number of welfare states has moved towards the norm of the adult worker model. The prevalence of this model, which signalled a ‘farewell to maternalism’, has had the consequence that supporting mothers’ care-giving roles are dismissed in state policy-making. Such neo-liberal logic leads to the creation of an apparent cultural anxiety about caregiving and nurturing. Julie Stephens [2011. Confronting Postmaternal Thinking: Feminism, Memory and Care. New York: Columbia University Press] calls this ‘postmaternal’ thinking. Drawing on feminist critiques of neo-liberal developments in social policy, this article provides a divergent and even slightly positive interpretation of postmaternalism that does not abandon care and nurture. This is evident in the recent development of parental leave policies that institutionally encourage men to become involved with caring. I argue that a ‘farewell to maternalism’ in social policy is therefore not too problematic. Parental leave policy – particularly with institutionalised incentives for men to take up parental leave – is creating a transformative space for men to experience the maternal thinking that confronts the cultural logic of what Stephens conceptualises as postmaternal thinking.     

Books revieved

Chinese Labor in California by Ping Chiu. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1963. 180 pp. $3.50.

The First International in America, by Samuel Bernstein, New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1962. 312 pp. $10.00.

“Recruits to Labor”, The British Labour Party, 1914–1931 by C. A. Cline. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1963. 198 pp. $6.95.

The Populist Response to Industrial America: Midwestern Populist Thought, by Norman Pollack. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962. 165 pp, $4.50.

Soldiers and Spruce: Origins of the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen by Harold M. Hyman. Los Angeles: Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California Press, 1963. 341 pp. $3.00.

The American Worker in the Twentieth Century, by Eli Ginzberg and Hyman Berman, New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1963. 368 pp. $7.50.

The Challenge to American Freedoms: World War I and the Rise of the American Civil Liberties Union. By Donald Johnson. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1963‐ 243 pp. $5.00.

Immigrant City: Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1845–1921. By Donald B. Cole. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963. 248 pp. $6.00.     

The industrial union bulletin: An introduction and appraisal

Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. By John Gaventa. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980. xi, 267 pp. $25.00.

History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Volume V: “The AFL In The Progressive Era, 1910–1915.”; By Philip S. Foner. New York: International Publishers, 1980. 293 pp. $4.95 paper.

Steelmasters and Labor Reform, 1886–1923. By Gerald G. Eggert. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981. xvii, 212 pp. $17.95.

Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: the Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880–1922. By David Alan Corbin. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981. 294 pp. $24.95 cloth; $12.50 paper.

The Response of Social Work to the Depression. By Jacob Fisher. Boston: G.K. Hall &; Co., 1980. xxii, 266 pp. $23.95.

The Communist Party and the Auto Workers Unions. By Roger Keeran. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980. 340 pp. $22.50.

Facing Mechanization: The West Coast Longshore Plan. By Lincoln Fairley. Los Angeles: Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California, 1979. xiv, 447 pp. $8.50 paper.

Radical Heritage: Labor, Socialism, and Reform in Washington and British Columbia, 1885–1917. By Carlos A. Schwantes. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979. ix, 288 pp. $25.00.

Fit Work for Women. Edited by Sandra Burman. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979. 201 pp. $18.00.

Poverty and Piety in an English Village, Terling: 1525–1700. By Keith Wrightson and David Levine. New York, San Francisco, London: Academic Press, 1979. 254 pp. $21.00.     

Labor rights are civil rights: inter-racial unionism and the struggle to unionize Nissan in Canton,Mississippi

Abstract

On 4 August 2017, workers at Nissan’s plant in Canton, Mississippi, voted 2244 to 1307 against being represented by the United Automobile Workers of America (UAW). The organizing campaign in Canton – which began shortly after the plant opened in 2003 – was one of the most important in recent labor history, and it attracted national and international media coverage. It also mobilized some high-profile supporters, including actor Danny Glover, musician Common, Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez, and presidential contender Bernie Sanders. This article uses interviews with Nissan workers and UAW staffers, together with the records of the long organizing drive, to provide the first detailed examination of this landmark campaign, revealing problems that press accounts did not cover. While the UAW and its supporters blamed Nissan’s fierce opposition for the outcome, this article reveals that the reasons for the loss were more complex. Apart from corporate opposition, community hostility, the increasing number of temporary workers – who were unable to vote in the election – and racial divisions were all important factors. Most of the UAW’s supporters were African-American, and they were mobilized by a campaign that declared that, ‘Labor Rights are Civil Rights.’ This slogan alienated many whites, however, weakening the union. While the UAW pledged to fight on, the defeat was another blow to its long campaign to organize foreign-owned automakers in the U.S., an increasingly important sector.     

Labor radicalism and the local politics of Chinese exclusion: Mayor Jacob Weisbach and the Tacoma Chinese expulsion of 1885

ABSTRACT

The 1885 Chinese expulsion from Tacoma, Washington Territory highlights the importance of local political economy in shaping how a wider anti-Chinese movement played out in a particular community. Tacoma was a newly emerging city where white residents felt the threat of corporate domination in the form of the Northern Pacific Railroad. In this context, the city’s German immigrant mayor, Jacob Weisbach, could draw upon his longstanding labor radicalism to mobilize a broad anti-Chinese coalition that blurred the divide between white workers and the local business class. The result was the forceful removal of Chinese residents following a year-long campaign that culminated in mob action and became known as the ‘Tacoma Method’. This local violence in turn fed into ongoing national efforts to secure Chinese exclusion. Tacoma’s Chinese expulsion illustrates how radical labor traditions could be turned, under particular conditions, to the politics of racial repression even as the proponents of expulsion framed their efforts in terms of an egalitarian and democratic agenda. The participation of the Knights of Labor and other labor radicals in a politics exemplified by the Tacoma Method was accordingly tied to the larger racialized American state-building project as it unfolded in the late 19th Century.     

Lifting the curse of dimensionality: measures of the states' labor legislation climate in the United States during the progressive era

Labor Management and Social Policy, Gerald Somers, Editor, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963. 303 pp. $6.00.

Myself by John R. Commons, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964, 201 pp., $1.75. (Originally published by the Macmillan Company in 1934.)

A. Mitchell Palmer: Politician, by Stanley Coben. New York: Columbia University Press, 1963. 351 pps. $7.50.

The Automobile Under the Blue Eagle, by Sidney Fine. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. 1963. 566 pp. $15.00.

Henry Demurest Lloyd and the Empire of Reform, by Chester McArthur Destler. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963. 657 pp. $12.00.

The Nation Transformed: The Creation of an Industrial Society. Edited with an introduction by Sigmund Diamond. New York City: George Braziller, 1963, 528 pp. $8.50.

America's Great Depression, by Murray N. Rothbard. Princeton, N. J.: D. Van Nostrand Co. 1963. 361 pp., $8.95.

Minister of Relief: Harry Hopkins and the Depression, by Seatle F. Charles. Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press. 1963. 286 pp. $6.00.

A History of the Los Angeles Labor Movement, 1911–1941, by Louis B. Perry and Richard S. Perry. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1963. 622 pp. $10.50.

A History of British Trade Unionism, by Henry Pelling, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1963, 287 pp. $8.50.     

Beyond stereotypes: Mary Wilkins Freeman's radical critique of nineteenth‐century cults of femininity

MARY SHELLEY &; FRANKENSTEIN; THE FATE OF ANDROGYNY by William Veeder. (The University of Chicago Press, 1986), Cloth, $22.50

THE FEMALE MALADY: WOMEN, MADNESS, AND ENGLISH CULTURE, 1830–1980 by Elaine Showalter. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 312 pp., 29 illustrations.

PATRIARCHAL STRUCTURES IN SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMA by Peter Erickson. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1985) xii + 209 pp. $22.00

RECLAIMING A CONVERSATION: THE IDEAL OF THE EDUCATED WOMAN by Jane Roland Martin. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); ALMA MATER: DESIGN AND EXPERIENCE IN THE WOMEN'S COLLEGES FROM THEIR 19TH‐CENTURY BEGINNINGS TO THE 1930s by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz. (New York: Knopf, 1984); IN THE COMPANY OF EDUCATED WOMEN: A HISTORY OF WOMEN AND HIGHER EDUCATION IN AMERICA by Barbara Miller Solomon. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).     

浅谈美国劳动关系委员会在当代的发展

美国劳动关系委员会在美国劳动关系的运作中举足轻重,因此当初设计这个制度的法律要求委员会在雇主和雇员之间扮演一个中立的角色.在里根总统之前,罗斯福等总统一般任命劳动关系的专家作为委员.后来,里根任命了强烈反对工会的人员作为委员,后来克林顿也相应地任命亲工会的人员作委员.这些委员的断案更加受其党派的政策的影响,而不仅仅是依靠专业知识,这就造成了劳动关系委员会政治化的现象.     

“Deserting the poor”: Three documents on a church in an expanding city—1893

Samuel Gompers and Organized Labor in America. By Harold C. Livesey. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1978. 195 pp. $8.95.

Eugene V. Debs. By Harold W. Currie. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1976. 157 pp. $6.00.

Work Without Salvation: America's Intellectuals and Industrial Alienation —1880–1910. By James B. Gilbert. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. xv, 240 pp. $14.00.

When Workers Fight: The Politics of Industrial Relations In the Progressive Era—1898–1916. By Bruno Ramirez. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978. viii, 241 pp. $17.50.

Building for the Centuries: Illinois, 1865–1898. By John H. Keiser. The Sesquicentennial History of Illinois, Vol. IV. Urbana, Chicago, London: University of Illinois Press, 1977. xvi, 386 pp. $12.50.

The Federal Writers’ Project: A Study in Government Patronage of the Arts. By Monty Noam Penkower. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. vi, 266 pp. $15.00.

The Finn Factor: In American Labor, Culture and Society. By Carl Ross. New York, Mills, MN: Parta Printers, Inc., 1977. xi, 220 pp. $10.00.

Black Labor and the American Legal System: Volume I: Race, Work, and the Law. By Herbert Hill. Washington, D.C.: The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., 1977. xiv, 455 pp. $17.50.

In the Almost Promised Land: American Jews and Blacks, 1915–1935. By Hasia R. Diner. (Contributions in American History, No. 59.) Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977. xvii, 271 pp. $17.50.

New Jersey's Ethnic Heritage. Edited by Paul A. Stellhorn. Trenton, NJ: New Jersey Historical Commission, 1978. 138 pp. $3.50.     

Newsnotes

Workers Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology, and Labor Struggles. By David Montgomery. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979. viii, 189 pp. $14.95.

Essays in Southern Labor History: Selected Papers, Southern Labor History Conference, 1976. Edited by Gary M. Fink and Merl E. Reed, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977. xv 275 pp. $19.95.

Industrial Relations in the Coal Industry. By Brian J. McCormick. Hamden, CT: The Shoe String Press, 1979. xii, 263 pp. $25.00.     

Employer associations: collective bargaining,services and power in historical perspective: the case of the EEF in the UK

ABSTRACT

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.     

From colony to oil producer: US oil companies and the reshaping of labor relations in Libya during the Cold War

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the labor relations the US government and American oil companies introduced in Libya between the Suez Crisis of 1956 and the rise of Muammar Qaddafi’s regime in 1969. It argues that labor policies played a crucial role in American Cold War efforts to place Libya in the Western bloc and assure access to its oil resources. Like in other contexts, the American government relied on anti-Communist trade unions, in particular the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), to oppose radical forms of labor organizing. Bini examines the ways in which Libyan oil workers resisted the forms of segregation and discrimination introduced in oil camps and company towns, by demanding the right to redefine labor relations through trade unions, and establishing ties with other trade unions in Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria. This article shows that despite American efforts to repress Libyan trade unions, in the second half of the 1960s oil workers were a crucial force in redefining international oil politics. During the Six Day War of 1967, they constituted one of the main forces behind Libya’s support of oil nationalism and set the stage for the emergence of Qaddafi’s regime in 1969.     

‘A pretty kettle of fish’: United Nations assistance in the mass dismissal of labor in the Iranian oil industry, 1959–1960

ABSTRACT

This article examines the assignment of John Alexander-Sinclair, a British United Nations (UN) development expert, in Iran. In the late 1960s, Alexander-Sinclair was invited to arrange the ‘redeployment’ of 20,000 allegedly redundant oil workers and mediate between the consortium of European and American companies, which was in de facto control of the country’s oil industry, and the state-led National Iranian Oil Company, which was nominally in charge. His UN mission enabled the cooperation between Iranian officials and foreign companies, which eventually led to the severance of workers on a massive scale. Much of the existing scholarly work on the history of international organizations and labor has focused on the role of the former in advocating international norms to improve the lives of workers across the globe. This article, by contrast, examines the use of UN assistance as a means to circumvent workers’ existing protections and benefits. Second, the notion of a ‘rule of experts,’ which suggests that development practitioners gained unprecedented powers after World War II, dominates much of the secondary literature. By showing how the UN representative in Iran appeared as a rather impotent pawn in the politics of local interest groups, the article demonstrates the limits of this argument.     

Permanent precarity: capital and labour in the Central African copperbelt

Abstract

This article provides a new history of mine capital and labour in the ‘Central African Copperbelt’ – the cross-border mining region of the Zambian copperbelt and Haut Katanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It doing so, it seeks to overcome the limitations of earlier structurally minded analysis rooted in modernist notions regarding the transformative capacity of mining capital and a ‘new’ African working class. Building on post-structuralist challenges to such assumptions, the article demonstrates the precarity, unevenness and uncertainty of the actually existing copperbelt economy and society. The comparison of the two copperbelt regions enables consideration of differential outcomes as a way of rethinking apparent inevitabilities. Analysis of how ideas about these mining societies were generated and circulated helps explain how dominant ways of understanding copperbelt capital and labour relations became established and continue to inform nostalgia for a ‘golden age’ of mining-fuelled prosperity at odds with historical reality.     

The chain of exploitation: intersectional inequalities,capital accumulation,and resistance in Burkina Faso's cotton sector

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how intersectional inequalities can facilitate the extraction of surplus value from agriculture. Through an ethnographic case study of the Burkina Faso cotton sector, I describe a ‘chain of exploitation’ wherein actors pass economic pressures on to less-powerful actors. People resist their own exploitation, yet justify exploiting others through discourses about intersectional inequalities – overlapping axes of social difference including class, gender, rural/urban status, and education level. I thus argue that intersectional social inequalities – exacerbated by economic pressures – can: (1) justify and thus facilitate the transfer of exploitation, and (2) fragment resistance efforts.     

From Non-consensual Pornography to Image-based Sexual Abuse: Charting the Course of a Problem with Many Names

ABSTRACT

Every day, people’s most intimate moments are recorded, uploaded and circulated online without their consent. This gross invasion of privacy – commonly known as ‘revenge pornography’ – has become part of the scenery in cyberspace. But the name ‘revenge pornography’ fails to communicate the scope and severity of this harm. It is a victim blaming term that risks misdirecting government policy and misinforming the public. So, in order to mobilise against ‘revenge porn’, activists have begun renaming it. ‘Non-consensual pornography’, ‘image-based sexual abuse’, and ‘digital rape’ are just a few of their new coinages. This research seeks to understand how ‘revenge pornography’ is being renamed and reframed in different contexts. To do so, it draws on interviews with thirty activists, experts, and scholars from twelve countries and seven professions. The article begins by comparing their alternative terminologies, bringing to light points of similarity and difference. It then looks forward, identifying new developments in activists’ thought and action. Despite their different vocabularies, this research finds among respondents a shared understanding upon which they could build an enduring coalition.     

“We feel that our strength is on the factory floor”: Dualism,shop-floor power,and labor law reform in late apartheid South Africa

ABSTRACT

This article explores the transformation of South African labor relations during the 1980s. In 1979, prompted by new shop-floor militancy, the Wiehahn Commission recommended that black workers, previously excluded from state labor machinery, be permitted to join recognized trade unions. Most discussions of this shift in apartheid labor relations focus on the ensuing debate within the black unions, torn between preserving their independence or securing state legitimation. This article looks instead at the related debate about ‘levels of bargaining’: should emergent black unions demand to negotiate at the factory level, where they had secured shop-floor strength through organizing and democratic practice, or pursue the benefits of the corporatist bargaining structures that had long excluded them and had privileged white workers? The eventual drift towards corporatism, I argue, imprinted the character of the South African labor movement into the post-apartheid era. An understandable desire to wield influence at the level of the national political economy eroded the tradition of workers’ control, shop floor democracy, and struggle unionism that black unions had forged during the 1970s and 1980s.