‘The Assembly Line and Cars Come First’: Labor Relations and the Demise of Nissan Car Manufacturing in Australia

This article examines the fate of Nissan's plant in Melbourne, Australia, which the company closed in 1992. Studies of Japanese car plants that were set up in overseas markets have generally been positive, outlining how these firms were able to thrive by setting up flexible or lean production methods. In Australia, however, the company was unable to establish lean production and executives complained bitterly about union resistance to non-traditional production methods. The plant was also dogged by poor worker morale and high turnover. This is the first study of Nissan's Australian plant and it shows that not all Japanese transplants were successful.     

‘We Want Both!’: pressuring Philadelphia unions for inclusion and equity during the long 1970s

ABSTRACT

This article examines local labor insurgency in Philadelphia between the mid-1960s and mid-1980s. Drawing on alternative press sources, it traces the efforts of Black, Puerto Rican, and female workers to reshape their unions as stable employment opportunities declined. Across industries and job sites, workers pressured both their unions and their employers through public criticism, running slates of candidates in union elections, and taking part in picketing and wildcat strikes. Existing scholarship has privileged rank-and-file activism among White men focused on wages and working conditions. Enlarging our view to include a more representative workforce at the local level while following workers’ resistance forward through time recharacterizes the rank-and-file rebellion to include defiant, multiracial coalitions demanding progressive reform. That broader rebellion, in turn, challenges some long-held assumptions about US labor during the 1970s.     

Repertoires of industrial conflict in a modern city. Łódź, Central Poland 1861-1921

ABSTRACT

This article examines the changing patterns of industrial conflict in a rapidly modernizing Eastern European city, focusing on a multi-ethnic industrial hub. I follow repertoires of contention in four crucial moments characterized by shifting scales of the geopolitical embeddedness of the city: (1) an early Luddite riot of 1861 in the Polish autonomous sub-state within the Russian Empire, (2) the first massive labor protest and the following pogrom of 1892 in the city already fully subsumed under the imperial governance, (3) a failed revolution of 1905 with a sophisticated feedback loop between party politics and street emotions, (4) mobilization practices during the German military occupation during the IWW culminating in the tram workers strike of 1917, (5) developing forms of industrial bargaining in the early Polish state after 1918. This broad picture spanning over 60 years (1861–1921) is grounded in the existing secondary literature, extensive queries of primary sources such as administration reports, court proceedings and petitions, and the analysis of political leaflets and biographical testimonies of the working class militants. Such a cross temporal comparison brings a broader outlook on the labor unrest in Russian Poland and beyond, which before was researched only in a fragmented manner.     

Why did organized labor struggle for shorter hours? A diachronic comparison of trade union discourse in Germany

ABSTRACT

Shorter-hour struggles are a key element in the historical study of organized labor. Little attention has been paid, however, to long-term changes in the rationale underlying demands for work time reductions. Comparing arguments formulated by German workers around 1900 with arguments put forward half a century later, this article detects a fundamental narrowing of discourse in twentieth-century labor disputes. While trade unions once drew on a strikingly broad rationale when demanding work time reductions, the post-WW II decades witnessed a strategic departure from arguments that had long constituted the bedrock of shorter-hour rhetoric. Analyzing a leading theoretical labor organ as well as the members’ publication of West Germany’s largest single-industry union, the article reveals that work time reductions were increasingly framed as a powerful measure to improve workers’ health and safety and to increase leisure and family time. In so doing, West German trade unions abandoned a crucial link between work time reductions and the vision for a more democratic and participatory society. The article thus shows how strategic bargaining decisions helped undermine the rich legacy of the historical struggle for shorter hours.     

发展农村职业教育 促进农民角色转换——“农村职业教育与农村劳动力转移培训”研究

我国全面建设小康社会必然要求大批农村劳动力转换农民传统的角色,农村劳动力转移的趋势由体力型向素质型转变。农村职业教育是实现农村劳动力转变传统角色的关键因素。本文分析了我国农村职业教育在人才培养上所面临的困境,提出农村职业教育发展必须从面向\"三农\"转为面向城乡,促进农村剩余劳动力的角色转换,并对大力发展农村职业教育提出若干了建议。     

论程序正义理论对我国劳动争议诉讼的借鉴价值

建立社会主义市场经济体制和加入WTO引起了我国劳动关系的深刻变化.在协调劳动关系,处理劳动争议过程中,必须引进和推广程序正义理论,以利尽快完善我国的劳动法制,在劳动争议诉讼程序设计及劳动争议诉讼中更好地维护劳动者的合法权益.     

市场经济中的分配手段及其功能界定——以市场和间接政策为例

在市场经济中,市场具有复杂的分配功能,发挥着重要的分配作用.市场既能扩大,也能缩小收入差距;它不仅在初次分配领域,而且在再分配领域发挥作用;市场分配作用的发挥与市场发展程度直接相关,并且需具备相应条件.另外,就业、教育、产业、劳动力流动、公共服务等间接政策手段的收入分配效应也是显而易见的,只是这些还远未被充分认识和利用.重新界定并深入挖掘市场和间接政策的分配功能及效应,有助于充分发挥各种直接、间接分配手段的潜在作用.     

财富、劳动、按生产要素分配--"社会主义建设者"的理论依据

中国市场化改革的进程必然触及对财富 ,劳动 ,按生产要素分配等的价值判断。党的十六大报告对此进行了科学论述 ,充分体现了解放思想和理论创新 ,这是对劳动价值论的新发展 ,同时也是“社会主义建设者”的理论依据。