Forces of Labor: Workers' Movements and Globalization Since 1870Recasting labor studies in a long-term and global framework, the book draws on a major new database on world labor unrest to show how local labor movements have been related to world-scale political, economic, and social processes since the late nineteenth century. Through an in-depth empirical analysis of select global industries, the book demonstrates how the main locations of labor unrest have shifted from country to country together with shifts in the geographical location of production. It shows how the main sites of labor unrest have shifted over time together with the rise or decline of new leading sectors of capitalist development and demonstrates that labor movements have been deeply embedded (as both cause and effect) in world political dynamics. Over the history of the modern labor movement, the book isolates what is truly novel about the contemporary global crisis of labor movements. Arguing against the view that this is a terminal crisis, the book concludes by exploring the likely forms that emergent labor movements will take in the twenty-first century. |
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This book is simply extraordinary in its scope and empirical evidence. A must read for all who struggle to understand the social changes our world is going through time and again as something other than simply the work anonymous, systemic forces of capital, state and war. In this study, Silver manages to show the relation between labor struggles and large scale social change - the gradual globalization of particular production cycles and industries, from textile to automobiles and beyond.
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Forces of Labor: Workers' Movements and Globalization Since 1870 Beverly J. Silver Limited preview - 2003 |
Forces of Labor: Workers' Movements and Globalization Since 1870 Beverly J. Silver No preview available - 2003 |
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action activity analysis argued associational automobile industry autoworkers bargaining power capital capitalist central Chapter collective competition continued contrast core countries created crisis database decades direct discussed dynamics early economic effect efforts emerged employers employment Europe example expansion Figure firms fixes followed force forms geographical global Group growing hand historical important increased investment Italy labor movements labor unrest late leading less major mass mentions militancy Moreover move Nevertheless nineteenth organization pattern period phase plant political processes production profitability protest Record relatively relocation reports resistance response result rising Second shift significant social sources South South Korea spatial strategy strike strong structural struggles studies success teachers textile Third transformations transportation turn twentieth century U.S. South union United wages waves of labor Western workers workplace bargaining power world labor World War