5,414 research outputs found
The Lockdown Diaries of the Working Class
No full textCollated by the Working Class Collective, The Lockdown Diaries of the Working Class is a beautiful, self-published, illustrated book featuring the diaries of working class people from across the UK and their experiences of life during the first COVID19 lockdown
Organizing Working-Class Academics: A Collective History
No full textIn 2008, the Association of Working-Class Academics was founded in upstate New York by three former members of the Working-Class/Poverty-Class Academics Listserv. The Association had three goals: advocate for WCAs, build organizations on campuses that would support both working-class college students and WCAs, and support scholarship on issues relevant to class and higher education. The Association grew from a small handful to more than 200 members located in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and Germany. In 2015, it was formally merged with the Working-Class Studies Association, and continues there as a special section for WCSA members. This is our collective account of the organization, told through responses to four key questions. We hope this history will provide insight and lessons for anyone interested in building similar organizations
Our Union: UAW/CAW Local 27 from 1950 to 1990
No full textThe post-war period witnessed dramatic changes in the lives of working-class families. Wages rose, working hours were reduced, pension plans and state social security measures offered greater protection against unemployment, illness, and old age, the standard of living improved, and women and members of immigrant communities entered the labour market in growing numbers. Existing studies of the post-war period have focused above all on unions at the national and international levels, on the "post-war settlement," including the impact of Fordism, and on the chiefly economic issues surrounding collective bargaining, while relatively scant attention has been paid to the role of the union local in daily working-class experience. In Our Union, Jason Russell argues that the union local, as an institution of working-class organization, was a key agent for the Canadian working class as it sought to create a new place for itself in the decades following World War II. Using UAW/CAW Local 27, a broad-based union in London, Ontario, as a case study, he offers a ground-level look at union membership, including some of the social and political agendas that informed union activities. As he writes in the introduction, "This book is as much an outgrowth of years of rank-and-file union activism as it is the result of academic curiosity." Drawing on interviews with former members of UAW/CAW Local 27 as well as on archival sources, Russell offers a narrative that will speak not only to labour historians but to the people about whom they write
Taking the Great Leap Forwards: Teaching Woody Guthrie in the College Classroom
No full textThis essay explores the work of Woody Guthrie and other folk artists who have followed in his tradition of documenting working-class people’s experiences in song. In addition to outlining the creation of the Teaching Woody Guthrie Faculty Learning Collective–a group of teacher-scholars, activists, and musicians who are dedicated to collaborating across disciplines to illustrate Woody Guthrie’s relevance in today’s precarious world–the essay includes suggested curriculum to teach folk music and political activism in the college classroom
The Costs of Class Actions: Allocation and Collective Redress in the U.S. Experience
No full textOnce a preserve of the American legal landscape, the class action device today transcends geographic boundaries. In the past decade, efforts have intensified to establish collective litigation instruments in diverse legal terrains outside the United States - including Europe - often with the common goal of allowing some form of collective legal redress while avoiding perceived disadvantages of class actions in the American experience. Today more than ever, from legislators to litigants to scholars, European reformers face the challenge - and the opportunity - of making fundamental choices about the scope and shape of the collective legal remedies they wish to make available. Choices about the shape of the class action device reflect foundational judgments about the proper allocation of costs, and there is much from the U.S. experience that can inform Europe's prospective reformers. This article describes the history and current status of class action rules in the U.S., and then compares class actions and another form of extra-compensatory damages - one type of punitive damages â as means of doing the same thing. Although neither punitive damages of this sort nor class actions generally have traditionally existed in civil law systems, they both - and especially this particular form of punitive damages - can, from an economic view, be made to vindicate the same kind of social cost accounting goals. By considering these legal devices together, we hope to shed light on crucial choices facing Europe as it grapples with how best to provide collective legal redress in light of the lessons of the U.S. experience with class actions.Class actions, Collective legal redress, Punitive damages, Extra-compensatory damages, Allocation of costs, Deterrence
History and the Working-Class Now: The Collective Impulse, Tumult and Democracy
No full textTerry Irving was invited to address the Sydney Historical Research Network at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia, in March 2017, as part of a session on ‘Histories of Class Now’. The other speakers were Hannah Forsyth and Elizabeth Humphrys. Each of them was asked to say something about their current research. This is a revised version of his address, followed by a note on source
Collective Bargaining under EMU: Lessons from the Italian and Spanish Experiences, CES Working Paper, no. 72, February 2000
No full textThis paper seeks to shed light on the question of the likely evolution of collective bargaining in Europe under EMU by considering the experiences of two countries (Italy and Spain) in which governments and social actors attempted to decentralized collective bargaining during the 1980s only to opt in favor of a re-centralization of bargaining during the 1990s. The paper argues that the experiences of Italy and Spain offer two kinds of insights for our understanding of the future evolution of wage bargaining in the EU. On the one hand, they illustrate why governments and social actors may come to favor a consolidation of the structure of bargaining under EMU rather than opt for a further decentralization of bargaining. On the other hand, they also suggest that any such process of consolidation faces great obstacles in moving beyond the national level. The recent experiences of Italy and Spain thus lead us to conclude that the most likely outcome in the EU is that of a reaffirmation of the national and national/sectoral-levels of bargaining within member states, rather than either a radical decentralization of bargaining across the EU, or an effective shift to EU-level bargaining
‘Really useful’ knowledge? The London Mechanics’ Institution and the struggle for (independent) working class education
No full textThe London Mechanics’ Institute (LMI), founded in 1823 was not the first such institution, but by general consent it was the most important. The institutional history of the LMI (and of the subsequent growth of mechanics institutions and associated bodies) is relatively well known, in outline at least. However the LMI’s origins were controversial and contested at the time and subsequent accounts have tended to ignore the fundamental issues of principle - focused on constituency, curriculum, and control - that surrounded them. This paper revisits the events surrounding the formation of the LMI in 1823-4. It concludes that whilst the question of precedence may be resolved by provisionally describing J C Robertson and Thomas Hodgskin as ‘founders’ of the Institute which George Birkbeck ‘inaugurated’ the more important issues of collective vs. individual models of ‘self-help’, of ‘useful’ versus ‘really useful’ knowledge, of what working-class education might be and whether it can ever be ‘independent’ are still with us, two centuries on
Ordinary working men...transformed into giants on the rugby field': Individual and Collective Memory in Oral Histories of Rugby League.
No full textAs a sport that partly owes its existence to the issue of ‘broken time’, the working life of professional players outside the game is a highly symbolic issue in rugby league. In England financial reality meant that until the 1990s most players at professional level had to combine their career with full time employment away from the sport, often in the communities they represented on the field. To many this helped create a strong communal bond between those who played and watched rugby league and this perception has become a key cultural narrative in the sport’s ‘collective’ memory. This article uses individual narratives from oral history interviews which relate to the working life of professional players outside rugby league to examine the contention advanced by the sociologist Maurice Halbwachs and others that recollections of personal experience are always shaped to fit within the accepted public discourse. A wide range of personal testimonies are considered in order to illustrate how far, as some oral historians have argued, individuals are able to reflect upon the significance of shared experiences in ways which offer alternative perspectives to dominant cultural scripts
Alternative forms of working-class organization and the mobilization of informal-sector workers in Brazil in the era of neoliberalism
No full textThis article examines recent changes in working-class collective actions. First it explains which were the main causes for the decline of traditional labor union militancy resulting from effects of economic stabilization, neoliberalization, and globalization on those key segments of labor movement that accounted for the backbone of union militancy as in the case of the automotive workers, bank workers, steelworkers, and civil servants of the Brazilian economy during the decade of the 1990s. Secondly, the article analyzes the emergence of alternative forms of worker contention among the urban informal sector and the rural workers through the landless workers movement, which also have been affected by the processes of neoliberalization and globalization, but unlike the workers in the formal sector, these continue to contend for worker entitlements and introduce new forms of worker organization different from the conventional union organizations upon which is based the Brazilian labor movement.o TEXTO COMPLETO DESTE ARTIGO, ESTARÁ DISPONÍVEL À PARTIR DE AGOSTO DE 2015.72638
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