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.     

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.     

Power and dispossession in the neoliberal food regime: oil palm expansion in Guatemala

ABSTRACT

Guatemala’s palm oil production has surged in line with the global demand for biodiesel and vegetable oil production. While corporate land grabs have been a popular concept in agrarian studies, we emphasize the integral roles of the state and racially-charged political power relations, enhanced by the neoliberal food regime. These power relations, with racism at their core, foster land control grabs occurring alongside the rise of the palm oil industry. Their effects extend beyond merely the dispossession of land. The oil palm expansion and related dispossessions mostly benefit the international markets and the wealthy ruling class comprised of creole descendants and affluent ladinos. The soaring industry has given rise to human rights violations and a lack of access to or control of various resources, such as food and water. Based on fieldwork, we show that dispossessed Guatemalans, especially the indigenous, experience rising poverty, domestic food shortages and an influx of foreign foodstuffs as the meagrely paid work in the oil palm sector is only available for the few.     

Building shared power: the Trans-Arabian Pipeline and the technopolitics of anti-sectarian labor mobilization in Lebanon, 1950–1964

ABSTRACT

This article examines anti-sectarianism and the technopolitics of labor mobilization at the facilities of the Trans-Arabian Pipeline (Tapline) company in Lebanon between 1950 and 1964. It argues that although Tapline helped sustain a Lebanese elite strategy of cross-sectarian power-sharing, it also unintentionally fostered specifically anti-sectarian labor mobilization. Pursuing a line of inquiry into the technopolitics of worker mobilization around oil infrastructure opened by Timothy Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy, this article specifically examines how Lebanese Tapline workers construed their actions, and did so in anti-sectarian terms. It also proposes that similar studies of labor and the technopolitics of infrastructure could offer productive avenues for inquiry into the origins of anti-sectarian politics in Lebanon.     

Sustaining Life: Rethinking Modes of Agency in Vulnerability

ABSTRACT

This article discusses ambivalence in the meaning and attribution of agency, and the role it plays in understanding vulnerability as a concept and condition that is specific to individual bodies. This involves examining agency as an embodied resource that vulnerability might draw upon when bodies endure conditions of uncertainty, detention and exile. The documenting of a partial narrative of an individual who set his body on fire provides an analytic lens through which to investigate the complexity and contextual specificities of vulnerability. The article argues that working with a single modality of agency resulting from a certain slippage between meanings of agency, political agency and resistance, might result in foreclosing alternative forms of living and sustaining lives. Agency is considered more expansively as a capacity for action that is necessarily mediated through situated capabilities, struggles and desires. The article argues for the need to analyse concepts held within a ‘grammar of vulnerability’ in order to discuss modalities of agency that capture both activities of resistance, but also other, often unseen, investments in sensory, affective and physical labours required for everyday activities in which individuals sustain their lives.     

East Timorese women,international networks,and the women’s human rights movement

ABSTRACT

This article explores the relationship between East Timorese women’s activism and the international women’s movement, within the context of East Timor’s struggle for independence from Indonesian military occupation (1975–1999). It examines the experiences and activism of several diaspora East Timorese women in international circles that converged around feminist solidarity and women’s human rights in the 1980s and 1990s. The article argues that these women played an important, yet underappreciated role in East Timor’s struggle for national self-determination.     

The British,the Tudeh party and the 1947 World Federation of Trade Unions’ visit: battle for labour reform in Iran

ABSTRACT

After the British-Soviet occupation of Iran during the Second World War, Iran became the key battleground for the international labour movement. The plight of the workers had become an important political issue with the Iranian government in conflict with the socialist Tudeh party for leadership over the trade unions. The Labour government in Britain was also deeply interested in the matter but regarded the Tudeh as too dangerous and too aligned with the Soviet Union to be supported. Within this climate, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) made an official visit to Iran. With its international delegates, they represented different views over the Tudeh, which caused much conflict during the visit. This article sheds crucial light on this important visit and reveals how international the Labour questions were in Iran and how the WFTU visit brought the various tensions to light. This research will also show how the timing of the visit may have impacted on the removal of the Iranian strong-man Ahmad Qavam by the end of 1947. This work is of particular significance as it looks at the previously understudied role and interest of the British government on the Iranian labour.     

Class,ethnicity and gender intertwined: Jewish women and the East London rent strikes, 1935-1940

Abstract

Feminist theorists have long debated whether gender or class position is of primary importance in shaping women's political consciousness; the consequences of ethnic or religious distinctions have not been examined as fully. This article hopes to rectify some of these oversights by focusing on the experiences of working-class, east London Jewish women involved in the pre-war rent strikes organized by the Communist-led Stepney Tenants' Defence League. It attempts to explain why so many of them became left-wing militants while their female Irish neighbors, equally marginalized, often gravitated towards the radical right. It concludes that in these close-knit communities ethnic identity proved more politically salient than did class or gender.     

An American oil multinational in the U.K.: its formal review of industrial relations strategy

ABSTRACT

This paper is a case study chronicling and analyzing the strategic considerations given to industrial relations in a proposal to develop a coherent and deliberate strategy for industrial relations by the U.K. subsidiary of an American multinational oil company. The study is based on interviews and substantial internal documents provided by the case study managers. This represents a unique illustration as to the extent a major company goes through in considering the way in which it needs to consider industrial relations issues. Seldom has a document such as this been able to be analyzed by industrial relations researchers, and it illustrates the lack of strategic thinking, even in such a large sophisticated organization.     

Violence and visibility in oil palm and sugarcane conflicts: the case of Polochic Valley,Guatemala

ABSTRACT

Over the last two decades, the expansion of oil palm and sugarcane plantations in the Polochic Valley (Guatemala) has exacerbated the historical struggle of Maya-Q’eqchi’ peoples for land rights. Based on a mixed-methods approach, I examine the dynamics of the conflict between 1998 and 2014, focusing on the visibility, manifestation and intensity of violence and the role of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and peasant organizations in opposition to oil palm and sugarcane plantations. I show that the evolution of the conflict can be explained by changes in the strength of organizations' alliances due to tensions and lack of coordination, as well as the fear of state repression and the funding context of these organizations. These results allow me to discuss how violence, the role of these organizations and the dynamics of related events have influenced the visibility of the conflict associated with the expansion of oil palm and sugarcane plantations in the Polochic.     

Heterosexuality and Race in the Australian Same-Sex Marriage Postal Survey

ABSTRACT

This article argues that race and class are central aspects of sexual citizenship in a Australia. It does so by investigating representations of heterosexuality that were produced and circulated during the 2017 same-sex marriage postal survey. Engaging with feminist and critical race theorists, we position same-sex marriage as not exceptional but part of a wider distribution of sexual citizenship within Australia's ongoing settler colonial history. We do so by introducing a number of illustrative examples of representations of heterosexuality produced during the survey. These representations reveal how same-sex marriage perpetuated heterosexual authority by asserting claims to authenticity and the occupation of space. We observe how heterosexuality in the survey material reproduced fantasies linking these three themes, for example, in an authentic white heterosexual family who speaks from their suburban backyard. It reveals that ceding to a bifurcated view of either progressive or conservative voices forestalls rather than advances other visions which may exceed the limited imaginings of sexual citizenship offered by the white liberal settler colonial state.     

The Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey and the Limitations of Vulnerability-based Politics

ABSTRACT

This article investigates opposition to the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey, which surveyed Australians on their position on marriage equality from September to November 2017. Opposition to the hosting of a public vote on marriage equality was based in a perceived vulnerability of LGBTIQ Australians, with marriage equality advocates taking what Tietze (2016) described as a ‘dark view of the voting public’. While acknowledging the high levels of homophobic rhetoric that occurred during the postal survey, and the impacts that public votes can have on the mental health of LGBTIQ people, the article argues this ‘dark view’ was overstated. This article argues that opposition to the survey reinforced vulnerability within LGBTIQ Australians, promoting an increased reliance on the state for protection and recognition. Opposition ignored the democratic potential of the survey, particularly as an opportunity to further debate on LGBTIQ issues and to reduce broader societal homophobia. Despite the eventual yes vote therefore, approaches to the postal survey missed a political opportunity, likely leaving LGBTIQ Australians and the Australian queer movement in a weaker position than previously.     

British Communists and the 1932 turn to the trade unions

Abstract

The Comintern’s Third Period, 1928–1934, based on Stalin’s ‘second revolution’ in Russia, capitalist crisis and the claim that social democracy and fascism were twins, generated sectarian, ultra-left politics which proved inimical to Communist activity in trade unions. This article sheds new light on that issue by exploring three connected episodes: the British party’s (CPGB) renewed turn to the unions, heralded in the January resolution of 1932; the roles the Comintern and CPGB leader Harry Pollitt played in this initiative; and the subsequent attempt by Pollitt to revise the politics of union work. This triptych reviews both primary sources and recent historiography. It argues that some accounts have overestimated the novelty of the January resolution, blurred its meaning and exaggerated Pollitt’s part in it. The resolution did not attempt to change the line but its application. Its impact was limited. Bids to go beyond it were muddled and unsuccessful. The 1933 move towards the united front, and subsequently the popular front, was of greater significance in creating an effective Communist presence in trade unions than the events of 1931–1932.     

Navigating class power and inequalities: new deal liberals and the Los Angeles regional labor board, 1933-1934

ABSTRACT

This article examines how local state officials operated the Los Angeles Regional Labor Board, 1933-1934, a regional branch of the National Labor Board. Amid a surge in workers mobilizing strikes and organizing unions, which faced fierce business opposition in LA, one of the period’s most anti-union cities, local state officials discarded initial solutions to industrial conflict – solutions based on state paternalism and involved parties’ voluntary compliance – and proposed more robust state interventionist tools. Such efforts were to enhance state authority and power and forge greater class equality by accepting worker rights and limiting business prerogatives, while the officials also obsessively encouraged the economic ‘wheels be kept turning and the pulse quickened.’ Drawing on regional-based archives, we trace local officials navigating and shaping social relations, and investigate the unpredictable, everyday workings of local responses to national-level policy-making. Earlier scholarship on the period highlights the role of leaders, like FDR or Senator Wagner, or business elites crafting seemingly pro-working-class policy, alongside the accounts of structural political economy. We emphasize local state agencies tasked with policy implementation becoming sites of contention for class actors and state officials, reflecting more general patterns but also initiating institutional procedures with enduring implications for US capital-labor relations.

Abbreviations: LA: Los Angeles; NLB: National Labor Board; RLB: Regional Labor Board; NLRB: National Labor Relations Board; AFL: American Federation of Labor; LACC: Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce; M&M: Merchant and Manufacturers Association; NRA: National Recovery Administration     

The impact of the 1970s’ oil boom on Iranian agriculture

This article challenges the dominant strand of thinking on Iranian agriculture, which has hitherto stressed the depressing effects of the 1970s’ oil boom on the rural economy. In highlighting the nature of the economic boom both in the rural and urban areas, it delineates new constraints imposed on agriculture and offers a new explanation as to its outcome. The precipitated outflow of agricultural workforce in this period is thus shown to have been a common source of difficulty to the sector, and not a mere manifestation of its demise. The reasons for this process are located in new developments in the rural non‐farm and urban construction sectors, rather than in the ‘decay’ and ‘disintegration’ of agriculture.     

Ethel Bright Ashford: more and less than a role model

ABSTRACT

There is a tendency to position the first women lawyers as role models for today’s young women. This article argues, through an exploration of the life and career of Ethel Bright Ashford, that these women are better recognised as pioneers or foremothers than promoted as role models. Ashford was one of the first women barristers, a long-serving borough councillor, and tireless activist for civic causes. Nonetheless, aspects of her career and politics pose problems for purely celebratory accounts. Yet there is real value in considering her biography: she offers both an alternative definition of a successful professional life and the reassurance that imperfection is not equivalent to failure. Ashford therefore illustrates the vital importance of a more nuanced and historically situated consideration of the first women lawyers.     

Women’s international Democratic Federation,the ‘Third World’ and the Global Cold War from the late-1950s to the mid-1960s

ABSTRACT

This article examines the work of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF) with women from Africa, Asia and Latin America. It analyzes their role in the WIDF’s decision-making process and activities during a period marked by decolonization and the intensification of women’s rights activism outside Europe. This analysis contributes to a better understanding of the extent to which the WIDF’s official position on support for the rights of women in the Global South was translated into the practical work of organization. The article is based on materials from Moscow archives that have hitherto not been explored in research on the WIDF. It shows that, in spite of the WIDF’s formal anti-colonial stance, women from the Global South were not always given a voice or able to insert their demands into WIDF policy.     

Command and control at work: the evolution of the rules of work on Mexican railroads, 1883–1923

Abstract

This article examines the evolution of written work rules on the railroads in Mexico from 1883 to 1923, looking at three sets of work rules from the Porfiriato and three from the Revolution. Just as foreign investors, British and American, and foreign skilled workers, mostly American, played an important role in the establishment of Mexico’s first railroad companies, these same foreign businesses brought their written rule books, necessary for the impersonal management of labor in companies with large, diverse, and a far-flung labor force like the railroads, to Mexico. The first rules are often Spanish translations of the English-language originals and paid no attention to the workers’ opinions. Through the Porfiriato, however, Mexican railroad workers unionized, in part following the pattern of the American Brotherhoods, and their unions, through labor activism and strikes, fought to transform work rules from company commands to negotiated terrain, with some success before the Revolution broke out. When the Revolution did break out, however, it radically transformed the terrain of work rules, first because railroad companies, even before they collapsed in the face of revolutionary violence, lost the support of the state that they so needed to impose their work rules, and second, because the new state that emerged from the Revolution allied with organized workers to provide them with many of their revolutionary demands: legal trade unions, mandated work benefits, and collective bargaining. Thus, newly powerful railroad unions through strikes and activism and in alliance with the new state made work rules not only negotiated terrain between companies and workers, but terrain in which workers and their unions held the upper hand. As a consequence, the work rules of 1923, where unions are powerful and impose significant benefits to workers, bear little resemblance to those of 1883, where unions are not recognized by the companies, which felt no obligation to provide any benefits at all.     

The role of debt,death and dispossession in world-ecological transformations: swidden commons and tar capitalism in nineteenth-century Finland

ABSTRACT

This article theorises about the ways in which commodity frontiers replace forest commons. New insights are offered into the role of debt, enclosures, the death of human and extra-human natures, and the role of the state in historical processes through an analysis of historical material and recent scholarship on eastern Finland's role in global capitalist expansion in the nineteenth century. The article contributes to the general study of commons and the expansion of capitalist world-ecology. We discuss how swidden commons were more sustainable than generally assumed. The article provides an original theoretical framework for studying world-ecological transformations. We argue that a study of debt, death and dispossession – which we call the three work-horses of tar capitalism – can shed new light on the expansion of commodity frontiers.