The Internationalisation of the Labour Question
Description
This edited collection is a global history of workers' organisations since 1919, the year when the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the Comintern and the International Federation of Trade Unions were formed. This historical moment represents a caesura in labour history as it epitomises the beginning of what the editors and the contributors in this book call the internationalisation of the labour question. The case studies in this centenary volume analyse the relationship between global workers' organisations and the new ideological confrontation between liberal capitalism, socialism and communism since the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Workers' organisations, trade unions in particular, grew in importance and managed to organise internationally, forming alliances cemented by ideology and sustained by international institutional bodies or centrals. In the nascent capitalist versus communist struggle, trade unions thrived. Is it mere coincidence that today's decline ofunionism coincides with the end of ideological antagonism? This book emphasises important global labour issues such as gender as well as international workers' histories from Latin America, Asia and Africa.
Reviews / Votes
"This book is a timely and highly welcome contribution to the literature on the International Labour Organization on the occasion of its centenary. The focus on the labour movement as a driver of internationalization of labour and social policy debates and practices all over the world sheds light on a thus far understudied aspect of this larger story. The multi-faceted and thoroughly global perspective represented by this fine collection of essays is a real achievement." (Daniel Maul, University of Oslo, Norway)"This book deftly unravels the conceptual, ideological and practical factors that initiated, accelerated or impeded the successful development of global labour activism. Not only is it an important contribution to the scholarly literature on internationalism but it is also an excellent historical guide for workers' organisations seeking to reinvent themselves and to bring back the labour question to the realm of politics." (Magaly Rodriguez Garcia, KU Leuven, Belgium)
"This book by Stefano Bellucci and Holger Weiss arrives at a critical juncture in the history of labour. It marks the beginning of the second centenary existence of the International Labour Organization, critically, reflecting on the role of the ILO as the only United Nations Agency, whose decision-making processes are tri-partite in nature and scope. The challenges facing trade union organizations are analyzed with a keen interest in the changing nature of labour struggles as a response to the frontiers of capitalistic transformations which transcends not only nation-states but has through the power of Multinational Corporations emasculated many governments and media houses, especially in the developing world. The way in which the central role of the State has suffered multiple onslaughts through free trade and workers and their organizations as the ultimate sacrifice is well articulated. A must-have book for anybody who is interested in the evolution of labour through the transformation of capital and how the systematic ideological onslaughts on socialism and communism took place over the last 100 years." (Hilma Mote, International Trade Unions Confederation in Africa, Togo)
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Persons
Stefano Bellucci is a Lecturer at the Institute for History of Leiden University, the Netherlands, and a Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social History, the Netherlands.
Holger Weiss is Professor of General History at Åbo Akademi University, Finland, and Guest Professor of History at Dalarna University, Sweden.
Content
1 Introduction: Stefano Bellucci and Holger Weiss. 1919 and the Century of Labour Internationalisation.- Part 1: Global Dimensions and Universal Issues 2 Dimitris Stevis. Global Union Organizations: The Weight of History and the Challenges of the Present, 1889-2019.- 3 Geert Van Goethem. The Guest who Invited Himself: The International Free Trade Union Movement during and between the Two World Wars.- 4 Eileen Boris. Woman's Labours and the Definition of the Worker: Legacies of 1919.- 5 Susan Zimmermann. Framing Working Women's Rights Internationally: Contributions of the IFTU Women's International.- 6 Fredrik Petersson. The Labour and Socialist International and 'the Colonial Problem': Mobilization by Necessity or Force, 1925-28.- 7 Holger Weiss. 'Unite in International Solidarity!' The call of the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers to 'colonial' and 'Negro' seamen in the early 1930s.- Part 2: Global South, Regional and National Perspectives .- 8 Lucas Poy. Working Class Politics and Labour Internationalism in Latin America: An Overview of Labour International Organizations in the Region during the Interwar Period, 1919-1939.- 9 Larissa Rosa Corrêa. Beyond International Solidarity: The US Anti-Communist Labour Policy in Brazil during the Cold War.- 10 Christian Høgsbjerg. 'Whenever Society is in Travail Liberty is Born': The Mass Strike of 1919 in Colonial Trinidad.- 11 Andrés Stagnaro and Laura Caruso. The ILO as a Domesticating Arena: Argentinian Trade Unions and Workers' Representations at the ILO in the First Half of the Twentieth Century.- 12 Peter Cole. Strange Bedfellows but Not for Long: The Industrial Workers of the World and the Communist International.- 13 Limin Teh. The ILO and the Labour Question in Republican China, 1919-1938.- 14 Venkatanarayanan Sethuraman. United to Struggle or Struggling to Unite: Growth and Diversification of Indian Labour Movement.- 15 Silke Neunsinger and M.V. Shobhana Warrier. Transnational Activism and Equal Remuneration in India in Twentieth Century.- 16 Stefano Bellucci. The Ascent of Labour Internationalism in Africa: Trade Unions, Cold War Politics and the ILO, 1919-1960.- 17 Duncan Money, The Struggle for Legitimacy: South Africa's Divided Labour Movement and the ILO.- 18 David Meyer and Marcel van der Linden, Labour Internationalism in Context.