Goals: A wage increase of 35 percent to cover ‘dearness’ (cost of living) for textile labourers. Or to reach agreement with the Mill Agents’ Group to settle the dispute through arbitration.
Success in achieving specific demands: 6 out of 6 points
Survival: 1 / 1
Growth: 3 / 3
A heavy monsoon season in 1917 destroyed agricultural crops and led to a plague epidemic claiming nearly 10 percent of the population of the city of Ahmedabad in the state of Gujarat. During the…
Main goal: Prevent wage cuts
Secondary goal: Stop strikebreakers from working
Successes:
In achieving specific demands: 3 out of 6 points
Survival: 1 out of 1
Growth: 3 out of 3
Overall success: 7 out of 10
The campaign achieved its secondary goal of ending the use of strikebreakers. It also prevented further governmental and military intervention into labour conflicts in Sweden. However it is not clear if the strike prevented wage cuts. For that reason…
Goals:
A 21.5 percent wage increase to match the inflation rate An end to the austerity measures, including layoffs and spending cuts A stop to the privatisation of state-owned companies, including telephone, gas, oil, and electricity.The union leaders achieved their main demand to increase wages. They were partially successful in pressuring the government to agree to delay and review their austerity measures and plans to privatise state companies, though they did not receive…
In November 1962 – by chance and good fortune –
I heard the African-American singer/actress/songwriter/ civil-rights-activist, Odetta (1930–2008), and a new up-and-coming folk singer, Bob Dylan, sing live in London.
They appeared at the Singers Club – I was a member – which met at a Kings Cross pub, The Pindar of Wakefield. Also present was their somewhat controversial manager, Albert Grossman, and the event celebrated, I think, the club’s birthday.
It was an…
GOALS: To keep the owners from instituting a seven-day work week (owners were trying to add 12-hour mandatory Saturday and Sunday shifts – with no overtime pay)
On 9 June 1987, workers of the Sindicato de Trabajadores de Lunafil (Lunafil Thread Factory Workers Union, or SITRALU) were given unwelcome news by management.
The Lunafil factory was located on the main highway in Amatitlan, just 15 miles from Guatemala City (capital of Guatemala). In that factory workers spun cotton…
In May 2007, just after I started editing PN, we ran a front-page opinion piece by Dan Clawson, a US union activist and academic, on what trade unions and grassroots movements could learn from each other. He’d written a wonderful book about this, called The Next Upsurge.
Clawson gave an example of the new unionism he favoured: the Stamford…
Has the election of Donald Trump as president of the US got you down? Are there days you just don’t believe any more that we can win, that we can change big important things?
Jane McAlevey’s Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) is the perfect antidote to Trump-era pessimism and despondency. I’m going to buy a bunch of copies for people I know, and I think you should too.
There are books out there filled with inspiring thoughts and…
The fulcrum of the southwest Florida town of Immokalee is a dusty parking lot called by the old residents ‘The Pantry’ after the tienda (shop) located there. This is Immokalee’s labour…
French workers launched a wave of strikes after the French premier, Manuel Valls, announced a decision on 10 May to relax France’s protective labour laws by decree, using a rarely-invoked article of the constitution to bypass parliament. The reforms make it easier for employers to prolong the (currently 35-hour) working week, to disregard unions and to lay off staff more cheaply.
Following the use of CRS riot police to break up blockades of fuel depots, the country’s eight oil…
Published a few weeks before the EU referendum, Richard Seymour’s latest book is an important and timely intervention into Labour party – and national – politics.
Seymour, a former member of the Socialist Workers Party, is known as one of the sharpest intellects on the Left, and his sympathetic analysis of the rise of Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour leadership doesn’t disappoint.
There is a welcome recap of the heady days of summer 2015, when the unassuming MP for North Islington…
The sun shone down on Cardiff city centre, the day made even more attractive and colourful by the trade union banners of the May Day march.
The main focus of the march was the unrelenting attacks by the Tory/Lib Dem government on the poor, disabled and pensioners.
Over 3,000 homes in South Wales, mainly one-parent families, have been caught up in the Bedroom Tax. Every benefit to the unemployed and disabled has been ruthlessly cut; and even though the financial crisis was…
The Conservative-led government is committing billions to military spending while forcing through massive cuts in jobs and services, and reducing support for badly-needed green technologies.
The government has already spent £2bn on developing and deploying pilotless drone aircraft over the past five years, using some of them to kill an unknown number of Afghan civilians…
It is not enough for the anti-cuts movement to be a defensive, responsive movement. It is not enough to point out the flaws in the arguments for austerity (as the False Economy website does so brilliantly).
If we are going to have a world worth living in, we are going to have to merge together the agendas of the anti-cuts movement, the green movement, the labour movement and the peace movement.
We are already arguing for…
Let us agree about climate change. It is happening fast, potentially spiralling out of control. The latest messages from scientists who have been measuring the shrinking arctic ice cap demonstrate that the situation is dire.
However, our problem is that very few people are heeding the climate threat.
It has been said that the environmental and climate movement is the 'largest mass movement ever' (Paul Hawken in Blessed Unrest, Penguin 2007). Maybe. But the movement is…
After three years’ work, the Radical Routes network of radical co-ops presented the updated version of their brilliant ‘How to Set Up a Workers’ Co-op’ pamphlet to the world at the Northern Futures co-op conference on 23 June.
It is available for £6 (inc p&p) from Radical Routes, Cornerstone Resource Centre, 16 Sholebroke Avenue, Leeds LS7 3HB, or it can be downloaded for free:
www.tinyurl.com/…
