Portal:Organized Labour
Introduction
- In trade unions, workers campaign for higher wages, better working conditions and fair treatment from their employers, and through the implementation of labour laws, from their governments. They do this through collective bargaining, sectoral bargaining, and when needed, strike action. In some countries, co-determination gives representatives of workers seats on the board of directors of their employers.
- Political parties representing the interests of workers campaign for labour rights, social security and the welfare state. They are usually called a labour party (in English-speaking countries), a social democratic party (in Germanic countries), a socialist party (in Romance countries), or sometimes a workers' party.
- Though historically less prominent, the cooperative movement campaigns to replace capitalist ownership of the economy with worker cooperatives, consumer cooperatives, and other types of cooperative ownership. This is related to the concept of economic democracy.
The labour movement developed as a response to capitalism and the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, at about the same time as socialism. The early goals of the movement were the right to unionise, the right to vote, democracy and the 40-hour week. As these were achieved in many of the advanced economies of western Europe and north America in the early decades of the 20th century, the labour movement expanded to issues of welfare and social insurance, wealth distribution and income distribution, public services like health care and education, social housing and common ownership. (Full article...)
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A company or "yellow" union is a worker organization which is dominated or unduly influenced by an employer and is therefore not an independent trade union. Company unions are contrary to international labour law (see ILO Convention 98, Article 2). They were outlawed in the United States by the 1935 National Labor Relations Act §8(a)(2), due to their use as agents for interference with independent unions. However, company unions persist in many countries.
Some labour organizations are accused by rival unions of behaving as "company unions" if they are seen as having too close or congenial a relationship with the employer or with business associations, and even if they may be formally recognized in their respective jurisdictions as bona fide trade unions, they are usually rejected as such by regional and national trade union centres. In a study of one such organisation, this form of company union was observed to rarely or never strike, exert relatively little energy in resolving individual workplace disputes, and undercut other unions by bargaining for well beneath industry-standard terms, and was characterised thus:
(Full article...)"[...] an accommodationist, or 'company,' union—an opportunistic, pariah organization that allows employers who would otherwise face a 'real' union (i.e., traditional, militant) a convenient union-avoidance alternative."
April in Labor History
Significant dates in labour history.
- April 01 - Burston Strike School began in 1914 the U.K.; the 1972 Major League Baseball strike began in the U.S. and Canada; the 1980 New York City transit strike began; the U.S. Supreme Court decided NLRB v. Truck Drivers Local 449; the Federation of Unions of South Africa was founded; the Allied Pilots Association was founded; the Loray Mill strike began in the U.S. in 1929; Sol Chick Chaikin died
- April 02 - Weldon Mathis was born; Eugene Hanley was born; the 1994–95 Major League Baseball strike ended in 1995
- April 03 - Percy Wells died
- April 04 - The On-to-Ottawa Trek began in Canada in 1935; William Quesse was born; the 2006 Minor League Baseball umpire strike began in the U.S.
- April 06 - Rose Schneiderman was born; the 1905 Chicago Teamsters' strike began as the Teamsters engaged in a sympathy strike; B. T. Ranadive died
- April 07 - The U.S. Supreme Court decided Lochner v. New York; Basawon Singh (Sinha) died
- April 08 - The 1998 Australian waterfront dispute began
- April 09 - John H. Dent died; the U.S. Supreme Court decided Adkins v. Children's Hospital and Bunting v. Oregon; Chris Watson was born; President Harry S. Truman nationalizes all steel mills in anticipation of the 1952 steel strike; Natascha Engel was born; Thomas Jackson was born
- April 10 - Harold J. Gibbons was born; Dolores Huerta was born; Joseph Diescho was born; George Lippard was born; Edward J. Carlough was born; Lee Batchelor was born; Anna Walentynowicz died
- April 11 - The 1980 New York City transit strike ended
- April 12 - Tom Addison was born; the U.S. Supreme Court decided NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp.; the Auto-Lite strike began in 1934 in the U.S.; the Union Label Department, AFL–CIO was founded; the Memphis sanitation strike ended; the Queensland Council of Unions was founded; the Sons of Vulcan was founded
- April 13 - Henk Sneevliet died; the Laborers' International Union of North America was founded
- April 14 - Dorothy Jacobs Bellanca was born; Marvin Miller was born; Ernest Bevin died
- April 15 - A. Philip Randolph was born; Pablo Manlapit died; the American Federation of Teachers was founded; "Black Friday" occurred in 1921 in the U.K.; Aleksei Gastev died; the Trade Unions Forum was founded; Margaretta Scott was born
- April 16 - Joseph Havelock Wilson died
- April 17 - Manwel Dimech died
- April 18 - Joseph Labadie was born; R. J. Thomas died
- April 20 - Gro Harlem Brundtland was born; The Ludlow Massacre occurred in 1914 in the U.S.; the International Harvester strike of 1979–80 ended
- April 21 - The Bituminous coal miners' strike of 1894 began in the U.S.; the First Employment Contract is repealed in France in 2006
- April 22 - Frederick Nicholas Zihlman died
- April 23 - Russell Crowell was born; the Canadian Labour Congress was formed; Cesar Chavez died; the Hock Lee bus riots occurred in 1955 in Singapore; Edward Lamb was born
- April 25 - Arnold Miller was born
- April 26 - United Trade Union Centre (Lanin Sarani) was founded
- April 28 - Workers' Memorial Day; Roy Lee Williams died; Bob White was born; Greg Combet was born; Jerry Horan died; Joseph Glimco died
- April 29 - The Coeur d'Alene miners' dispute of 1899 occurred in the U.S.
More Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that in the 1951 court case Kuzych v White, on appeal from the British Columbia Court of Appeal, five law lords of the British Judicial Committee ruled in favour of a Communist-led trade union?
- ... that in 1977, Appalachian folk singer Phyllis Boyens performed at a Christmas benefit concert to support Kentucky coal miners who had been on strike for 17 months?
- ... that Sting wrote "We Work the Black Seam" because he felt that "the case for coal was never put to the nation" during the 1984–85 British miners' strike, which began 40 years ago today?
- ... that a number of bus drivers who participated in a strike were unaware that it was illegally held?
- ... that the day after returning to Atlanta following his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance in 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. joined picketers who were on strike against Scripto?
- ... that in 1969, the first women's strike for equal pay in the Netherlands was called in a cigar factory in Nieuwe Pekela?
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"Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts."
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— Molly Ivins. |
Did you know
- ...that the first company union in the United States was created by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in response to the bad publicity generated by the Ludlow Massacre?
- ...that the New South Wales Court of Arbitration is claimed to be the first court devoted to resolving labour disputes in the world?
- ... that the F.N.B.P.B. bakery workers' union, founded in 1960, is the oldest member of the Confédération générale du travail du Burkina trade union centre in Burkina Faso?
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