Transformations of Trade Unionism
Title
Transformations of Trade Unionism
Subtitle
Comparative and Transnational Perspectives on Workers Organizing in Europe and the United States, Eighteenth to Twenty-First Centuries
ISBN
9789048544486
Format
eBook PDF
Number of pages
312
Language
English
Publication date
Dimensions
15.6 x 23.4 cm
Also available as
Hardback - € 45,95
Table of Contents
Show Table of ContentsHide Table of Contents
List of illustrations List of tables and appendices List of acronyms Introduction Chapter 1 An international of insolence: the great anger of the cloth shearers in north-western Europe in the eighteenth century Chapter 2 Transnational cigar-makers: cross-border labour markets, strikes, and solidarity at the time of the First International (1864-1873) Chapter 3 From artisanal associations to collective bargaining agents: two phases of early trade unionism in Amsterdam (1864-1894) Chapter 4 Trade unions and workplace organization: regulating labour markets in the Belgian and American flat-glass industry and in the Amsterdam diamond industry (c. 1880-1940) Chapter 5 From placement control to control of the unemployed: trade unions and labour market intermediation in western Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Chapter 6 The transnational origins of Dutch miners' unionism: a case study in the nationalization of labour movements (1907-1926) Chapter 7 Justice for Janitors goes Dutch. Precarious labour and trade union response in the cleaning industry (1988-2012): a transnational history Conclusion: past and future transformations Bibliography Index

Reviews and Features

"This detailed, well-written and novel account should be on the shelves of anyone interested in the history of unionism." - Michele Fenzl, *LSE Review of Books*, April 2019

Ad Knotter

Transformations of Trade Unionism

Comparative and Transnational Perspectives on Workers Organizing in Europe and the United States, Eighteenth to Twenty-First Centuries

The historical experiences of workers organizing in Europe and the United States figure among the many forms of workers’ resistance resulting from the variety of labour relations in the global past. They cannot and will not be uniformly duplicated or copied from their present form in the global transformations of labour and workers’ movements that we are witnessing today. Nevertheless, in the twentieth century trade unionism as a form of collective agency among workers became a global phenomenon. With growing numbers of workers being exposed to wage labour and labour markets, the cases of workers organizing in the original heartlands of trade unionism in Europe and the United States can provide a historical background for future prospects and transformations. Based on comparisons of long-term developments and focusing on transnational connections, Transformations of Trade Unionism shows that historically there have been many varieties of trade unionism, emerging independently or transforming older ones, and that these varieties and transformations can be explained by specific and changing labour regimes. The case studies all start from Dutch examples, or incorporate a Dutch element, but the comparative and transnational approach connects these histories to general developments in Europe and United States from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. This publication was made possible thanks to the generous financial support of the Stichting Unger - van Brero Fonds
Author

Ad Knotter

Ad Knotter is Emeritus Professor of Comparative Regional History at Maastricht University, the Netherlands, and Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam.