In third-world countries an increasing number of people have been drawn into the process of industrialization as wage workers. The analyses here presented cover the limits set by workers to exploitation in workshop production, ethnicity as a workers'' strategy, the role of workers'' absenteeism and turnover, and labour strategies in a situation of recession and de-industrialisation. Using a historical approach labour migration, union strategy for democratisation, and the world-scale pattern of labour unrest are studied as outcomes of social conflict.