Labour in History and Society – serie

This book offers a comprehensive history of the Ethiopian labour movement, exploring the impact of trade unions and workers’ militancy from the 1960s onwards. The author analyses the sharp variation in the orientation and vicissitudes of the labour movement over time, and how these have affected labour conditions and wages. Drawing from new data gathered through extensive archival research in Ethiopia and abroad, this book is the first of its kind. It presents new datasets on strikes, unrest and wage levels, shedding light on how capitalist labour and industrial relations have developed in Ethiopia. Addressing a huge gap in the literature on African labour movements, this book makes a significant contribution to debates on trade unionism, workers’ agency and wage determination in peripheral capitalist settings, and challenges existing assumptions through detailed investigation.

This book examines the efforts of the Confederation of Latin American Workers (CTAL) in generating workers’ unity across the continent from 1938-1963. Emerging in 1938 during a period of geopolitical instability, CTAL was systemically and actively preoccupied with the problems that affected workers in Latin America, consistently carrying out concrete actions to protect working-class interests. In doing so, CTAL initiated a process that led to the strengthening of union organisations and the promotion of a common language to defend the social and labour demands of the working class across the continent. This was particularly important due to the complex economic and political repercussions of the Second World War: namely, the high cost of basic necessities, and restrictions on collective and individual liberties. By the end of 1944, CTAL had consolidated its position as a continental union, inserted itself into international debate with organisations such as the ILO, and received widespread support from other labour organisations, including those in the USA and Canada. By analysing how international politics affected workers’ movements across various countries, this book offers a transnational, historic overview of the working class in Latin America.

Bringing together historical research on a local, regional, and global scale, this edited collection investigates the processes, subjects and categories that shaped Latin American labour in the twentieth century and its connection with the International Labour Organization (ILO). The book proposes a renewed chronology and periodization in light of Latin American processes. Without neglecting the chronology that historiography has established for the ILO itself - a chronology that is also in dispute it allows us to focus on what we understand to be the characteristics of the relationship between the ILO and Latin America. Moreover, it contributes to the historicization of certain concepts linked to the definition of work and the multiple actors involved in the employment relationship. In this sense, the contributions in this book emphasize and illuminate attempts at regulation by the ILO, as well as the disputes over their meaning between workers, employers, national civil servants, trade unions and the ILO bureaucracy itself. The book also critically investigates the relations between Latin America and the ILO, challenging the centrality of European events in the constitution of the historiography on this organisation. In doing so, the book seeks to reaffirm the importance of the Latin American region and its actors in connection with the ILO.

This book chronicles the history of Chinese miners in one of the largest mines in Northeast Asia from 1900 to 1948, situating this emergent working class at the nexus of industrial capitalism, imperial expansion, and nation-state construction. Coal from Fushun (in present-day Liaoning province) fuelled industrial development that enabled the JAPANESE EMPIRE and later rival Chinese regimes to secure their economic, political, and military presence in the region. In turn, the extraction, processing, and distribution of Fushun coal depended on rendering immobile previously mobile migrant workers through coercion, surveillance, and incentives. The loss of mobility for these migrant workers ultimately resulted in their dependence on the mine for their livelihood. Drawing on Chinese and Japanese archival sources, this book investigates the global forces and environmental conditions that shaped the rise of these interdependent yet asymmetrical relations, and illuminates how coal extraction under industrial capitalism subsumed human labor while concurrently reproducing unequal power relations between social groups.

This open access volume explores the history of short-term employment and precarious work in pre-industrial Northern Europe. Contrary to popular belief, stable, long-term employment—potentially lasting decades—was uncommon in Northern Europe until the advent of large-scale industrialisation and the emergence of the welfare state. Prior to this, most wage earners survived through work that was often temporary, seasonal, and poorly paid, forcing families to rely on multiple jobs and alternative ways of supplementing their modest income. The central aim of this book is to investigate how people dependent on odd jobs or temporary work navigated precarious labour markets. What strategies did they employ to cope with uncertainty? What were their opportunities for social mobility? What do their labour relations reveal about the structure of pre-industrial labour markets in Northern Europe?The book focuses on two key groups of wage labourers: unskilled manual workers—such as servants and day labourers—and those engaged in temporary employment for institutions like the Crown and the Church, including scribes, clergymen, and military personnel. An uncertain livelihood, vagrant lifestyle, and loose ties with the local community have been traditionally associated with the lower echelons of society, but as this collection demonstrates, this was a reality for multitudes of people. Comprising nine chapters, the volume examines various social groups in both urban and rural settings, primarily within the borders of present-day Finland. Drawing on a rich array of source materials, it offers a fresh perspective on labour market insecurity in early modern Europe, and provides valuable insights for those interested in contemporary working life and culture.

This open access book examines how Piedmont, in early modern Italy, developed silk production into a distinctive system of technological and social innovation. It explores the ways in which this fragile yet economically significant material shaped regional strategies of adaptation and growth, linking local expertise to the expanding networks of global trade. Across ten chapters, the author traces the evolution of a complex production ecosystem, from small workshops to royal manufactories, and considers how technology, policy, and labour interacted to sustain the silk economy. Particular attention is given to the contributions of women, migrants, and apprentices, whose work underpinned both the aesthetics of fashion and the practical mechanisms of manufacture. As political and economic transformations unfolded across eighteenth-century Europe, silk became a lens through which to examine tensions between tradition and change, and between vulnerability and resilience. By situating Piedmont within broader European processes, the book demonstrates that innovation emerged not solely from institutional or technological breakthroughs, but from the craft of making, the capacity to adapt, and the steady labour of human hands.