Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1017/S0147547921000119
Büşra Satı
Abstract This paper focuses on the ideology and discourses of Tekstil İṣçileri Sendikası (the Textile Workers’ Union, Tekstil) in Turkey to highlight some of the specific visions of the organized labor for an emancipatory gender politics during the 1970s. This history of intersection between gender and working-class organizing has been overlooked by the Left scholarship on the one hand and liberal feminist scholarship on the other. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by highlighting gender and class concurrently throughout the history of the transformation of gender politics in labor organizations. The history of the simultaneous development of gender-related policies in Tekstil/DİSK and TEKSİF/Türk-İṣ reveals an unexplored aspect of the contentious dynamic between rival labor organizations. Between 1975–1980, the politics of gender became another pillar in trade union competition. Following the transnational influences in this transformation, this paper highlights a forgotten period of labor organizing and locates it within the history of labor and women's movements at the national and global scale.
摘要本文关注土耳其纺织工人工会İṣçileri sendikasyi(纺织工人工会,Tekstil)的意识形态和话语,以突出20世纪70年代有组织的工人解放性别政治的一些具体愿景。性别和工人阶级组织之间的交集历史被左派学者和自由主义女权学者所忽视。本文通过在整个劳工组织性别政治转型的历史中同时强调性别和阶级来解决文献中的这一差距。Tekstil/DİSK和TEKSİF/ t rk-İṣ同时发展性别相关政策的历史揭示了竞争劳工组织之间争议动态的一个未被探索的方面。1975年至1980年间,性别政治成为工会竞争的另一个支柱。随着这种转变的跨国影响,本文突出了一个被遗忘的劳工组织时期,并将其置于国家和全球范围内的劳工和妇女运动史中。
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Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1017/S0147547921000089
M. Battistini
Abstract This essay stitches together the fragments of Marx's work on the United States that are scattered in newspaper articles, letters, notes, in some digressions in his early writings, in his economic manuscripts and in Capital (1867). The main aim is to show that what we can call a “global history of the Civil War” emerges from his pen: a history that is global not simply in a geographical sense, that is, because it expands the European space beyond the Atlantic and towards the Pacific, but also because of the general meaning it takes on in the history of capitalism. The essay highlights how the Civil War opened the Marxian issue of emancipation, his vision of class struggle and his view of the working class, to the presence of a black proletariat that interacted with the struggle of the white working classes, the latter of which until then had been the main focus of his work. It also highlights how the different and disarticulated voices of labor – slave and free, black and white – on both sides of the Atlantic effected a revolutionary shift in the Civil War: interjecting a “revolutionary turn” into what we can call the “long constitutional history” of the political conflict between North and South that changed the economic and social shape of the nation. More importantly, the essay reconstructs what can be termed the “state moment,” which was entangled with the “long constitutional history” and the “revolutionary turn” of the Civil War. As the transnational calls for emancipation from slavery and wage labor impacted the transnational processes of accumulation of industrial capital, the American state became a player in the world market: its financial and fiscal policies became socially linked to the government of industrial capital. In this sense, as the essay underlines in the conclusion, the “global history of the Civil War” that Marx effectively drafted, outlined the theoretical and political hypothesis that formed the basis of his mature reflection in the pages of Capital: the “emancipation of labour” should be thought of as a global issue, “neither a local nor a national, but a social problem.”
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Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0147547921000156
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Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s014754792100017x
David Leupold
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Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1017/S014754792100003X
Joan Flores-Villalobos
The cover of Maid in Panama depicts a West Indian higgler as a “mammy.” Her skin is an exaggerated ink-black, her body is large, her face round, and she wears a servant's uniform, including headscarf and apron. The higgler walks across an open field carrying a tray of tropical fruits on her head, with a background of palm trees, a placid river, and fluffy clouds.
{"title":"Gender, Race, and Migrant Labor in the “Domestic Frontier” of the Panama Canal Zone","authors":"Joan Flores-Villalobos","doi":"10.1017/S014754792100003X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S014754792100003X","url":null,"abstract":"The cover of Maid in Panama depicts a West Indian higgler as a “mammy.” Her skin is an exaggerated ink-black, her body is large, her face round, and she wears a servant's uniform, including headscarf and apron. The higgler walks across an open field carrying a tray of tropical fruits on her head, with a background of palm trees, a placid river, and fluffy clouds.","PeriodicalId":14353,"journal":{"name":"International Labor and Working-Class History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S014754792100003X","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56985900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0147547921000053
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Pub Date : 2020-11-26DOI: 10.1017/s0147547920000174
A. Orleck
“It affects your nerves, your mental state, your way of thinking—because you have to be cautious in everything you do now,” Rosie said. “It's like I'm risking my life for a dollar. It's twisted.” Rosie is an Amazon worker in New York City. She made these comments during the summer of 2020 after learning that a colleague in his twenties had recently died of COVID-19.
{"title":"And the Virus Rages on: “Contingent” and “Essential” Workers in the Time of COVID-19","authors":"A. Orleck","doi":"10.1017/s0147547920000174","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0147547920000174","url":null,"abstract":"“It affects your nerves, your mental state, your way of thinking—because you have to be cautious in everything you do now,” Rosie said. “It's like I'm risking my life for a dollar. It's twisted.” Rosie is an Amazon worker in New York City. She made these comments during the summer of 2020 after learning that a colleague in his twenties had recently died of COVID-19.","PeriodicalId":14353,"journal":{"name":"International Labor and Working-Class History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/s0147547920000174","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48295495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-23DOI: 10.1017/S0147547920000228
David Leupold
Abstract The paper explores the historical trajectory of Interhelpo, an industrial cooperative from Czechoslovakia, and its role in forging urbanization “from below” in early-Soviet town of Pishpek (now Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan). In light of scarce literature available on the success and failures of Western internationalist communes in the early Soviet period, this paper draws from intensive field work in Kyrgyzstan and understudied sources in Czech, Kyrgyz, Slovak and Russian to offer a novel, bottom-up narrative on the socialist city in Central Asia. Founded 1914 by Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, German internationalists and Ido-learners around the mountaineer and Bolshevik Rudolf Pavlovič Mareček in the Czechoslovakian town Žilina, the cooperative actively shaped urbanization in what would be become known as the capital of Soviet Kyrgyzstan. From 1925 until its liquidation during WWII, the cooperative built from scratch a whole district including the first electric power station of the city, textile and furniture factories, workshops for tailors, shoemakers and joiners, a school, a kindergarten, a tannery, a brewery as well as unique residential district. In the process, the cooperative forged an organic patchwork language referred to as spontánne esperanto to secure translocal collaboration between internationalists from Central Europe, on the one hand, and a heterogeneous mix of workers including Armenians, Kyrgyz, Dungans, Uygurs, Uzbeks, Russians and Ukrainians, on the other. Transcending a purely historical analysis, the paper ultimately turns to the urban landscape of present-day Bishkek. There it argues that while the district built by Interhelpo corresponds today to an exiled site dislocated by the hegemonic ethno-national memory regime, its materiality harbors relicts of another future capable of mobilizing alternative narratives on the city and her socialist and multi-ethnic past.
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Pub Date : 2020-11-11DOI: 10.1017/s0147547920000265
Jennifer L. Klein
“We are becoming a 24/7 workforce.” —Fair Workweek Initiative “I Can't Breathe” —Eric Garner, George Floyd, Manuel Ellis, Derrick Scott, Byron Williams, Vincente Villela, Ngozi Mbegu, Willie Ray Banks, James Brown… On May 1, 2020, Justa Barrios, a New York City home-care worker and labor activist, passed away from COVID-19. After working twenty-four-hour shifts for fourteen years, Barrios had injuries and compounding medical issues, including asthma, stomach difficulties, and heart problems. Her doctor determined that she could no longer work twenty-four-hour shifts. Yet when the home-care agency received a letter from the doctor requesting Barrios be assigned to eight-hour shifts, the agency dropped her. Barrios fought back. She found her voice in the “Ain't I a Woman?!” Campaign; comrades described her as a “fearless leader.” Stemming from an alliance among female immigrants and US-born garment, plastics, office, and home-care workers, via workers’ centers such as the National Mobilization Against Sweatshops, this organizing effort has sought to end twenty-four-hour days—and the legally permissible practice of paying for only thirteen hours—in New York state through direct action, the courts, union arbitration, and state legislation prohibiting twenty-four -hour shifts. Women such as Justa Barros, Lai Yee Chan, Mei Kum Chu, Seferina Rosario, and Sileni Martinez see the “Aint I a Woman?!” Campaign as a “new women's movement fighting for control over our time, health, respect and payment.” As a cross-racial group, members chose to invoke Sojourner Truth, who tied together the causes of slavery abolition and women's rights, emancipation from coerced labor and from patriarchy, the dignity of women's labor and the dignity of release from work. But this legislation, which would seem so obviously humane and jarringly anachronistic, has been stalled in the New York legislature and ignored by Governor Andrew Cuomo for over a year.
“我们正在成为一个全天候的劳动力。”-公平工作周倡议“我无法呼吸”-埃里克·加纳、乔治·弗洛伊德、曼努埃尔·埃利斯、德里克·斯科特、拜伦·威廉姆斯、文森特·维莱拉、恩戈齐·姆贝古、威利·雷·班克斯、詹姆斯·布朗……2020年5月1日,纽约市家庭卡工人和劳工活动家贾斯塔·巴里奥斯因新冠肺炎去世。在24小时轮班工作了14年后,巴里奥斯受伤并出现了复杂的医疗问题,包括哮喘、胃部困难和心脏问题。她的医生断定她不能再24小时轮班工作了。然而,当家庭护理机构收到医生的来信,要求将巴里奥斯安排在八小时轮班制中时,该机构放弃了她。巴里奥斯进行了反击。她在“我不是女人吗?!”运动中找到了自己的声音;同志们形容她是一位“无畏的领袖”。这得益于女性移民和美国出生的服装、塑料、办公室和家庭护理工作者之间的联盟,通过全国反血汗工厂动员等工人中心,这项组织工作试图通过直接行动、法院、工会仲裁和禁止24小时轮班的州立法,结束纽约州24小时工作制,以及法律允许的仅支付13小时工资的做法。Justa Barros、Lai Yee Chan、Mei Kum Chu、Seferina Rosario和Sileni Martinez等女性将“Ait I a Woman,从强迫劳动和父权制中解放出来,妇女劳动的尊严和从工作中解放出来的尊严。但这项立法显然是人道的,而且不合时宜,但在纽约立法机构却停滞不前,被州长安德鲁·科莫忽视了一年多。
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Pub Date : 2020-11-03DOI: 10.1017/S0147547920000204
G. Solis
In San Jeronimo, Chihuahua, on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez, a beige monolith of placid architecture hovers over the newly reconstructed US-Mexico border wall. Looking like a mix between a prison and a city built entirely of suburban Walmarts, this is in fact Foxconn's largest assembly plant at the US-Mexico Border; a shrine of sorts to over fifty-five years of low-cost export manufacturing in the region. And in 2010, it was where a decade of labor struggle was about begin. On a cold night in February 2010, around three hundred night workers at Foxconn's San Jeronimo factory on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, anxiously waited for company buses to finally deliver them home after a long shift. Soon enough however, managers filed out of the factory to inform the workers that the due to technical issues, the buses were not coming. According to worker accounts, the managers explained that the best thing these workers could do was work an extra shift, and wait for the buses to arrive later in the morning. Realizing that they were essentially being held against their will at the remote factory, and perhaps fueled by recent lay-offs on the assembly line and consistent pressure to work extra shifts, anger erupted in the crowd. By the end of the night, workers had set fire to the cafeteria, smashed the managers’ dormitory windows, and collided more than once with security guards. Days later, despite Foxconn's assurance to the press that there would be no reprisal, around 75 night-shift workers were identified and fired from the company.
{"title":"Foxconn, Ciudad Juárez, and the Trials of Solidarity","authors":"G. Solis","doi":"10.1017/S0147547920000204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0147547920000204","url":null,"abstract":"In San Jeronimo, Chihuahua, on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez, a beige monolith of placid architecture hovers over the newly reconstructed US-Mexico border wall. Looking like a mix between a prison and a city built entirely of suburban Walmarts, this is in fact Foxconn's largest assembly plant at the US-Mexico Border; a shrine of sorts to over fifty-five years of low-cost export manufacturing in the region. And in 2010, it was where a decade of labor struggle was about begin. On a cold night in February 2010, around three hundred night workers at Foxconn's San Jeronimo factory on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, anxiously waited for company buses to finally deliver them home after a long shift. Soon enough however, managers filed out of the factory to inform the workers that the due to technical issues, the buses were not coming. According to worker accounts, the managers explained that the best thing these workers could do was work an extra shift, and wait for the buses to arrive later in the morning. Realizing that they were essentially being held against their will at the remote factory, and perhaps fueled by recent lay-offs on the assembly line and consistent pressure to work extra shifts, anger erupted in the crowd. By the end of the night, workers had set fire to the cafeteria, smashed the managers’ dormitory windows, and collided more than once with security guards. Days later, despite Foxconn's assurance to the press that there would be no reprisal, around 75 night-shift workers were identified and fired from the company.","PeriodicalId":14353,"journal":{"name":"International Labor and Working-Class History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0147547920000204","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56985275","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}