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 of unionism 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.
Author(s): Stefano Bellucci, Holger Weiss
Series: Palgrave Studies In The History Of Social Movements
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 450
Tags: Social Movements, Labor History
Front Matter ....Pages i-xxxi
1919 and the Century of Labour Internationalisation (Stefano Bellucci, Holger Weiss)....Pages 1-19
Front Matter ....Pages 21-21
Global Union Organisations, 1889–2019: The Weight of History and the Challenges of the Present (Dimitris Stevis)....Pages 23-49
The Guest Who Invited Himself: The International Free Trade Union Movement During and Between the Two World Wars (Geert Van Goethem)....Pages 51-70
Woman’s Labours and the Definition of the Worker: Legacies of 1919 (Eileen Boris)....Pages 71-93
Framing Working Women’s Rights Internationally: Contributions of the IFTU Women’s International (Susan Zimmermann)....Pages 95-117
The Labour and Socialist International and ‘the Colonial Problem’: Mobilisation by Necessity or Force, 1925–1928 (Fredrik Petersson)....Pages 119-143
‘Unite in International Solidarity!’ The Call of the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers to ‘Colonial’ and ‘Negro’ Seamen in the Early 1930s (Holger Weiss)....Pages 145-162
Front Matter ....Pages 163-163
Working Class Politics and Labour Internationalism in Latin America: An Overview of Labour International Organisations in the Region During the Interwar Period (1919–1939) (Lucas Poy)....Pages 165-189
Beyond International Solidarity: The US Anti-communist Labour Policy in Brazil During the Cold War (Larissa Rosa Corrêa)....Pages 191-213
‘Whenever Society Is in Travail Liberty Is Born’: The Mass Strike of 1919 in Colonial Trinidad (Christian Høgsbjerg)....Pages 215-234
The International Labour Organization as a Domesticating Arena: Argentinian Trade Unions and Workers’ Representations at the ILO in the First Half of the Twentieth Century (Andrés Stagnaro, Laura Caruso)....Pages 235-258
Strange Bedfellows but Not for Long: The Industrial Workers of the World and the Communist International (Peter Cole)....Pages 259-277
The International Labour Organization and the Labour Question in Republican China, 1919–1938 (Limin Teh)....Pages 279-300
United to Struggle or Struggling to Unite: Growth and Diversification of the Indian Labour Movement (S. Venkatanarayanan)....Pages 301-327
Transnational Activism and Equal Remuneration in India During the Twentieth Century (Silke Neunsinger, M. V. Shobhana Warrier)....Pages 329-350
The Ascent of African Labour Internationalism: Trade Unions, Cold War Politics and the ILO, 1919–1960 (Stefano Bellucci)....Pages 351-381
The Struggle for Legitimacy: South Africa’s Divided Labour Movement and International Labour Organisations, 1919–2019 (Duncan Money)....Pages 383-408
Front Matter ....Pages 409-409
Labour Internationalism in Context Small and Large (David Mayer, Marcel van der Linden)....Pages 411-420
Back Matter ....Pages 421-436
