Workers

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Connexions Library

Ah-Hah!: A New Approach to Popular Education
Book
1983
AH-HAH seminars are designed to organize groups of comman interests, especially workers, to come to a common understanding.
Already in Hell: Labor After Communism: Against The Current vol. 118
Windau, George
Article
2005
Factory workers in the former Soviet Union have a saying: “Things can’t get any worse, we are already in hell.” David Mandel’s book Labour After Communism documents the realities of working-class life...
The American Socialist Movement: 1897-1912
Kipnis, Ira
Book
1952
A history of the American Socialist Party, which at its height had over 150,000 dues-paying members, published hundreds of newspapers, and won almost a million votes for its presidential candidate.
The American Working Class in Historical Persepctive
Glaberman, Martin
Article
1973
A review of Jeremy Brecher's Strike! (See CX6590)
Angels of the Workplace: Women and the Construction of Gender Relations in the Canadian Clothing Industry, 1890-1940
Steedman, Mercedes
Book
1997
Examines how the intricate weaving together of the meanings of class, gender, ethnicity, family, and the workplace created a job ghetto for women. Detailing the disparities between men and women in te...
At the Lenin Shipyards: Poland and the Rise of the Solidarity Trade Union
Persky, Stan
Book
1981
A first-hand account of the rise of the Solidarity trade union in Poland.
Auto worker says automation creates worker alienation
Diemer, Ulli
Article
1974
It is only struggle, says Martin Glaberman, that creates an awareness of collective strength.
The Blue-Collar Hellscape of the Startup Industry
Tvetten, Julianne
Article
2017
The tactics and work environments at tech companies, including Amazon, show a disregard for the fundamental health, safety and humanity of low-tier workers, demonstrating what laissez-faire startup-st...
The burden of slavery: New Internationalist August 2001 - #337
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2001
Discusses a brief history of slavery in different parts of the world, and its existence in the presence. Outlines ways for people and the government can contribute to end slavery.
Cambodia: Labor and the Coup
Phillips, Joshua E.S.; Robinson, Ian
Article
1998
IN THE FACE of a repressive and dangerous environment, workers are on the move in Cambodia. Though Americans heard little about it, the emergence of an independent labor movement was one of the most p...
Chinese Workers' Resistance: Against The Current vol. 111
Diamond, Norm
Article
2004
Norm Diamond interviews Tim Pringle, who lives in Hong Kong, where he participates as an observer and also as a member of the editorial board of the Chinese-language magazine Globalization Monitor.
Coal in Our Blood: 200 Years of coal mining in Nova Scotia's Pictou County
Ryan, Judith Hoegg
Book
1992
An account of the coal mining community of Pictou County, Nova Scotia.
Combatting Racism in the Workplace: A Course for Workers
Thomas, Barb; Novogrodsky, Charles
Book
1983
With the ultimate aim of combatting racism within the labour movement, the Cross Cultural Communication Centre, under the auspices of the Humber Collage for Labour Studies, ran a ten-week, 30 hour pil...
Common Sense for Hard Times: The Power of the Powerless to Cope with Everyday life and Transform Society in The Nineteen Seventies
Brecher, Jeremy; Costello, Tim
Book
1976
Presents a vision of society as it is and as it could be. Putting the problems of contemporary daily life in historical perspective, it reveals that they have their roots in the way our society is org...
Connexions Library: Labour and Unions Focus
Website
2009
Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on labour and unions.
Connexions Library: Work Focus Page
Website
2009
Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on work.
Cooperation at Work: The Mondragon Experience
Bradley, Keith; Gelb, Alan
Book
1983
A guide to work co-operatives, based on the experience of the Mondragon group of co-operatives in Spain.
The Corrosion of Character
Sennet, Richard
Book
2000
Richard Sennett explores the myth of efficiency in the new business order. This is a book about people who went through being downsized in their work. This is the New Capitalism- All Human Character ...
Cultures of Solidarity: Consciousness, Action, and Contemporary American Workers
Fantasia, Rick
Book
1989
In three vivid case studies Fantasia explores the complicated, multi-faceted dynamics of American working-class consciousness and collective action.
Down To Earth People: Beyond Class Reductionism and Postmodernism
Secombe, Wallace; Livingstone, David W.
Book
1999
Working class women and men offer their analysis of the world today and its multi-dimensional inequalities.
The East York Workers' Association: A Response to the Great Depression
Schulz, Patricia V.
Book
1975
An account of the activity of relief recipients in the township of East York, an eastern suburb of Toronto, in the 1930s.
The Export of Philippine Women
Aguilar, Delia D.
Article
1997
Principles of social justice are clearly not served by applauding a system that prides itself in an increased GNP at the same time that it farms out its women to be servants of the world.
General Strike France 1968: A factory-by-factory account
Hoyles, Andree
Book
1969
Andre Hoyles analyses the development, organisation and end of the mass strike in France, 1968, with reference to case studies of particular factories.
Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite
Levine, Bruce E.
Book
2011
Levine offers insights into the epidemic of political passivity in America and analyzes how major U.S. institutions have created helplessness and fatalism. He proposes ways of recovering dignity, ener...
Getting There: Producing Photostories With Immigrant Women
Barndt, Deborah, Cristall, Ferne, Marino, Dian
Book
1983
Photostories about immigrant women surviving in and adapting to a new culture.
The Ghost of Anarcho-Syndicalism
Bookchin, Murray
Article
1992
The danger of modern anarchists of falling into the trap of anarcho-syndicalism.
Glaberman, Martin - Writings - Index
Glaberman, Martin
Article
Writings of Martin Glaberman (1918-2001).
Global Labor: Socialist Register 2001: Book review
Fletcher, Bill Jr.
Article
2001
For all intents and purposes, I discovered the Socialist Register during the early '90s. When I say "discovered" I, of course, do not mean that I was the first to come across it. Rather, having heard ...
The Greater Toronto Workers Assembly: A Hopeful Experiment
Rosenfeld, Herman
Article
2011
We are living in a kind of transitional era, where the old forms of working class organization and politics are sorely in need of a replacement, and the theoretical and practical bases of those replac...
The Hand That Feeds
Lears, Rachel; Blotnick, Robin
Film/Video
2015
A documentary portraying 12 undocumented immigrants who face an uphill battle and the threat of deportation when they take on the popular restaurant in New York City where they work.
HERstory: Jeritan
Ho Wing Yin, Cecilia (Director)
Film/Video
2009
A story of Indonesian female migrant workers who left their homes to work as domestic helpers in Macao, China, a community consisting of mainly Chinese as well as a city of casinos and entertainment p...
The Hidden Injuries of Class
Sennett, Richard; Cobb, Jonathon
Book
1966
Sennett and Cobb look at human relations between people of different classes and analyze everyday life and ordinary situations to identify class signals that make people feel inadequate.
How the Unions Killed the Working Class Movement
Stratman, Dave
Article
2006
An analysis of how the vertical integration of unions disempowers workers and forces them to use captilist systems such as courts instead of relying on friendship and solidarity.
Immigrant Workers in the United States (Part 1): Against The Current vol. 127
Moody, Kim
Article
2007
The rise of mass immigration in much of the developed world began its acceleration with the global economic crisis of the 1970s. A deepening crisis of profitability; the collapse of the Bretton Woods ...
The Informal Work Group
Weir, Stan
Article
1973
Stan Weir on some of his life experiences at work and what he saw as the "the only organizational form opposed to formal bureaucracies which cannot be captured by them", the informal work group.
Invisible Force: Women Workers in Pakistan
Gazdar, Aisha (Director)
Film/Video
2007
Millions of women workers in Pakistan remain unaccounted for in official figures. Even those who are in the formal workforce face problems like lower wages for the same work as men and sexual harrasme...
Is that an archive in your basement... or are you just hoarding?: Sources News Release
Article
2012
Are you an 'accidental archivist'? Have you been saving the publications and documents produced by the social justice projects you've been involved in? Then Connexions would like to hear from you.
Israel's Arab Women Workers Need Not Apply
Cook, Jonathan
Article
2009
Israel's private sector is almost entirely closed to Arab women because of discriminatory practices by employers.
Just a Matter of Gloves
Weir, Stan
Article
An account of a work stoppage over the issue of gloves being supplied in a factory.
Just Another Car Factory?: Lean Production and Its Discontents
Huxley, Chris; Rinehart, James; Robertson, David
Book
1997
Just Around the Corner: The Paradox of the Jobless Recovery
Aronowitz, Stanley
Book
2005
Aronowitz details how U.S. capitalism has achieved higher profits at the expense of the quality and quantity of jobs, and contradicts the ideological justifications that seek to justify deteriorating ...
Keep Out: The case for open borders: New Internationalist October 2002 - #350
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2002
A look at refugees and the challenges they face. Discussion of how the refugee experience differs in different parts of the world.
The "Labor Aristocracy" and Working-Class Struggles: Consciousness in Flux, Part 2: Against The Current vol. 124
Post, Charles
Article
2006
Whatever the theoretical and empirical problems with the economics of the labor aristocracy thesis, its defenders still claim that well paid workers have generally been more reformist and conservative...
The Labor Wars
Lens, Sidney
Book
1973
A survey of landmark events in the U.S. labour movement.
Life After Death for Labor?
Cohen, David
Book
2015
A review of Stanley Aronowitz's book "The Death and Life of American Labor: Toward a New Workers’ Movement."
The Life and Resistance of a Chinese Worker
Ren, Hao; Li, Zhongjin; Friedman, Eli
Article
2016
Under China's labour management system, independent unionism is strictly banned, and the state's official trade union body monopolizes worker representation. That means that all of China’s 806,498,521...
Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global
Mason, Paul
Book
2010
Mason realtes a series of struggles for worker and human rights over the past two hundred years and compares them to current struggles.
Marx and the Working Class
Wheen, Francis
Article
1999
Francis Wheen's 1999 biography of Marx, from which this is extracted, painted a warts-and-all portrait which shatters all the romantic and orthodox-Marxist idealisations of the founder of modern commu...
A Marxist History of the World part 77 World Revolution
Faulkner, Neil
Article
2012
In the five years after the First World War, revolutionary contagion spread around the world. It showed the extraordinary possibilities that arise when the masses become active in making their own his...
The Maximum Wage: A Common-Sense Prescription for Revitalizing America---by Taxing the Very Rich
Pizzigati, Sam
Book
1992
The author traces the history of attempts to limit incomes and proposes the adoption of a maximum wage to revitalize American economy.
Migration: Changing the World
Arnold, Guy
Book
2011
The author discusses the increasing trend of migration in the modern world, its causes and effects, and peoples and governments responses.
Militant as Hell on the Waterfront: The Political Thought of Stan Weir
Article
2007
New Beginnings looks at the life of workplace militant and writer, Stan Weir.
Monographs on the Portuguese
Article
1975
A collection of analytical essays on the Portugese immigrant community in Toronto.
The New Left in Canada
Roussopoulos, Dimitrios
Book
1970
A book of essays on the 1960s New Left in Canada, by members of the New Left.
New York's Latino Workers Center
Moody, Kim
Article
1996
By organizing around both "labor" and "social" issues-and seeking to transcend this distinction-workers' centers can integrate a variety of unifying issues into their efforts to build an organization ...
The Newsletter #2
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1973
The Newsletter #3
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1973
The Newsletter #4
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1974
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Book
2001
Millions of Americans work full-time, year-round, for poverty-level wages. Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them, inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any...
Notes from a Revolution Dying: Against The Current vol. 134
Pirani, Simon
Article
2008
In June 1922, five years on from the Russian Revolution, a group of Moscow communists gathered to discuss a letter by Vladimir Petrzhek, an auto worker, tendering his resignation from the communist (o...
On Unions and the Class Struggle
Article
1969
Written during the wave of workers' struggles known as the Italian hot autumn of 1969, when the autonomous struggles of the working class reached an unprecedented level, laying bare the character and ...
On workplace organisation
Article
1997
A look at the exchange between Stan Weir and Sam Friedman on workplace organisation.
Organizing Unions
Cornish, Mary; Spink, Lynn
Book
1994
How to form or build a union. Shows how to strength organizing drives by responding to the concerns of all workers, including women, immigrant workers, people of colour, workers with disabilities, leb...
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - April 23, 2015: Eduardo Galeano, Latin America, the Vietnam War
Diemer, Ulli (editor); Rickwood, Darien Yawching (production)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2015
In this issue of Other Voices, we mark the death of Eduardo Galeano by featuring two of his books, as well as an article about his life and work. Galeano once wrote that he was "obsessed with remember...
Our Generation: Volume 10 Number 1
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1974
Out of Africa: A Migrant's Story: New Internationalist June 2005 - #379
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2005
An issue on the story of a nurse's return back to Kenya and the reason why she has worked so far away from home. Also, a discussion on a widespread crisis in international healthcare and the human co...
Out of the Driver's Seat: Marxism in North America Today
Article
1974
Outlines the political perspective of the Windsor-based Labour Centre in the wake of divisions in the Centre in 1974. Issues explored include the nature of the working class, women in the working clas...
The Politics of Urban Liberation
Schecter, Stephen
Book
1978
A broad-ranging study which covers the political economy of the urban question and the importance of the city in the history of social revolution. Schechter's evaluation of libertarian insurgency high...
Portugal: The Impossible Revolution?
Mailer, Phil,
Book
1977
The story of what happened in Portugal between April 25, 1974 and November 25, 1975, as seen and felt by a deeply committed participant.
Poverty in Wealth
Johnson, Leo A.
Article
1976
A critique of existing poverty research in Canada.
Rank and File Networks: A Way to Fight Concessions
Weir, Stan
Article
1983
Suggests rank and file networks to fight workplace closings and to circumvent the official unions.
Rank and File: Personal Histories of Working Class Organizers
Lynd, Alice; Lynd, Staughton (eds.)
Book
1973
A collection of stories and recollections from labour movement organizers.
Red Menace #4: Volume 3, Number 1 - Winter 1979
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1979
A Libertarian Socialist Newsletter
Rediscovering Two Labor Intellectuals
Early, Steve
Article
2004
Steve Early reviews collections of writings by Martin Glaberman and Stain Weir.
Report from Dubai: Against The Current vol. 131
Francis, Vicky
Article
2007
Dubai — This gulf emirate is shaping up into a key tourist destination. For golf, luxury hotels and high-end shopping, it is firmly established as a key player in the Middle East region. Dubai’s geogr...
Resistance in China Today
Yu, Au Loong; Ruixue, Bai
Article
2012
Cases of Resistance in China continue to grow. Protests both large and small are extremely frequent. These range from workers’ protests against unpaid wages and demands for labor rights to protests ag...
The Role of the Individual and the Group in the Creation of Work Cultures
Weir, Stan
Article
1980
Stan Weir compares wildcat strikes in Poland and San Diego and their basis in the 'informal work group'.
Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution
Dunayevskaya, Raya
Book
1981
Part I - Rosa Luxemburg as Theoretician, as Activist, as Internationalist. Part II - The Women's Liberation Movement as Revolutionary Force and Reason. Part III - Karl Marx: From Critic of Hegel to Au...
6 Floors to Hell
Efrat, Johnathon Ben (Director)
Film/Video
2008
On the outskirts of Tel Aviv, in an underground world, live hundreds of Palestinian workers sleep in this hell in order to find a day's work in Israel and bring money home to their families in the Wes...
Slavery still shackles Mauritania, 31 years after its abolition
Mark, Monica
Article
2012
Rigid caste system and ruling elite have enabled a centuries-old practice to continue into the 21st century.
Socialism and Revolution
Gorz, Andre
Book
1967
Representative democracy in every industrially advanced country is in a state of profound crisis. But we have been accustomed for so long to accept democracy in the form of its outward appearances and...
The Socialist Register 1975: Volume 12: A Survey of Movements & Ideas
Miliband, Ralph; Saville, John (eds.)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1975
Socialist Register 1991: Volume 27: Communist Regimes the Aftermath
Miliband, Ralph; Panitch, Leo (eds.)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1991
Spanish Dock Workers Build Union Without Bureaucrats
Fitz, Don
Article
1989
Containerization has devastated port labor throughout the world. Spanish struggles over containerization have been unique becausea "socialist" government has spearheaded port reorganization and it has...
Spontaneity and Organization: Some Comments
Montgomery, David
Article
1973
A contribution to a symposium on Jeremy Brecher's book Strike!
Strike!: The True History of Mass Insurgence from 1877 to the Present
Brecher, Jeremy
Book
1972
A history-from-below that brings to light strikes as authentic revolutionary movements against the establishments of state, capital, and trade unionism.
Strikes, List of: Connexipedia Article
Article
The following is a list of deliberate absence from work related to specific working conditions (strikes) or due to general unhappiness with the political order (general strikes).
A Tale of Two Offices
Farragher, Elaine
Article
1977
Daily life and offices politics viewed through the experience of working in two libraries with very different management styles.
Towards a Canadian Economy
Goudzwaard, Bob; de Lange, Harry
Book
1986
Traces of Magma: An Annotated Bibliography of Left Literature
Knight, Rolf
Book
1983
An annotated bibliography of left wing novels which deal with the lives of working people during the twentieth century.
A Troublemaker's Handbook: How to Fight Back Where You Work -- And Win!
La Botz, Dan
Book
1991
An organizing manual for workers dealing with both major issues and everyday problems in the workplace.
A Troublemaker's Handbook 2
Slaughter, Jane (ed.)
Book
A manual for workers who want to take control over their lives at work. In hundreds of first-person accounts, workers tell in their own words how they organized and struggled to do that.
Two Miners
Article
1971
Unions and Free Trade: Solidarity vs. Competition
Moody, Kim; McGuinn, Mary
Book
1992
This handbook details the effects of free trade on workers in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. It argues that solidarity, not competition, is the only long-term strategy for unions. It includes case studi...
Unions with Leaders Who Stay on the Job (a.k.a. Class War Lessons)
Weir, Stan
Article
Stan Weir writes about direct action and on-the-job union leadership as a merchant marine in the 1940s.
Vincenzo Pietropaolo: Witness to the Harvest Pilgrims
UFCW Canada (Director)
Film/Video
2009
Vincenzo Pietropaolo has documented the story of Mexican migrant workers over a number of years. This is a brief look into that story.
The War after the War
Maclean, John
Book
1918
We Are Wisconsin
Williams, Amie
Film/Video
2012
When a Republican Governor’s bill threatens to wipe away worker rights and lock out public debate, six (extra)ordinary citizens join the growing protest at the Wisconsin State Capitol, and spend the n...
Wildcat Strikes in China
Carter, Lance
Article
2010
Women at Work - Ontario, 1850- 1930
Goldsmith, Penny; Shephard, Bonnie.
Book
...
Worker activism is now the new normal as strikes and protests erupt across China
Article
2015
China Labour Bulletin’s Strike Map logged record numbers of strikes and worker protests in the first quarter of 2015.
Worker-Student Action Committees France May '68
Gregoire, R.; Perlman, F.
Book
1969
An account of the May-June 1968 events in Paris. The authors state that "our intention is not to 'clarify' the sequence of events which took place in France in order to make possible a ritual repetiti...
Workers Hold the Keys
Chibber, Vivke; Farbman, Jason
Article
2017
An interview with Vivek Chibber.
A Workers' Inquiry
Marx, Karl
Article
1880
The Workers' Party and Political Crisis in Brazil: Lula at a Crossroads?: Against The Current vol. 123
Baiocchi, Gianpaolo
Article
2006
In June 2005, the first allegations of a rogue politician in a rightwing party in coalition with Brazil's governing Workers' Party (PT) seemed spurious enough. The politician himself, Roberto Jefferso...
Workers Profiles: Below the Minimum Wage
Jaffri, Sara and Singh, Harshita
Article
2016
An endless supply of alcohol, good music, pool tables, and friendly strangers -- these elements seem like a recipe for a fun time. For those of us who frequent bars and pubs, this kind of environment ...
Working -- and Not-Working -- at the Post Office
Article
1974
An essay written by a young postal worker in Toronto, Canada.
Working-Class History: Connexipedia: Article in the Canadian Encyclopedia
Article
The story of the changing conditions and actions of all working people.
Working in a supermarket
Anonymous
Article
1979
Observations on working as a carry-out in a supermarket.
Working in an office -- for a while
Article
1978
The first thing that strikes one about working in this particular office is how little actual work ever gets done.
Working in Steel: The Early Years in Canada, 1883-1935
Heron, Craig
Book
1988
Examines the huge steel plants that were built at the turn of the twentieth century in Sydney and New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, and Trenton, Hamilton, and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Emphasizes the importa...

Connexions Directory of Groups & Websites

Against the Current
Bi-monthly magazine oriented toward movements for social and economic justice; radical, socialist and feminist in orientation.
Break Their Haughty Power
Articles on capitalism, socialism, and revolution, from a left-Marxist perspective.
Labor Notes
Labor Notes is a media and organizing project that has been the voice of union activists who want to put the movement back in the labor movement since 1979. Through our magazine, website, books, conf...
Marxists Internet Archive
Large archive of the writings of Marx and Engels and of others in the Marxist tradition. Searchable.
News and Letters
An organization of Marxist-Humanists standing for the abolition of capitalism, both in its private property form and ins its state property form. We stand for the deveopment of new human relations; wh...
Prole.info
"Prole" is short for "proletarian" a word used by Karl Marx to describe the working class under capitalism. We are all the people in this society who do not own property or a business we can make mone...
Red Menace, The
The online archive of the libertarian socialist newsletter The Red Menace. Articles on socialism, Marxism, anarchism, work, popular education, organizing, wages for housework, Leninism, bureaucracy, h...
Workers Solidarity Alliance
Workers Solidarity Alliance is an anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian organization of activists who believe that working people can build a new society and a better world based on the principles of so...

Sources Experts & Spokespersons

Sources Library

On Workers in A Lean World
Moody, Kim
1999
IN HIS GENERALLY positive review of my Workers in a Lean World (ATC 78, January-February 1999), Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval accuses me of "too many broad generalizations," of dismissing globalization as...

From the Connexions Archives

Against the Current
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1986
Bi-monthly magazine oriented toward movements for social and economic justice; radical, socialist and feminist in orientation.
Cleaners' Action Newsletter
Periodical profile published 1979
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1979
Cleaner's Action is a monthly newspaper published in Portuguese, English and Spanish.
Marxists Internet Archive
Website
Large archive of the writings of Marx and Engels and of others in the Marxist tradition. Searchable.
News and Letters
Serial Publication (Periodical)
Articles from a Marxist-Humanist perspective.
The Newsletter
Periodical profile
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1973
Newsletter published in 1973 and 1974 by the New Tendency, a loose collaboration of independent leftists primarily based in Toronto, Windsor, Winnipeg, and Kitchener-Waterloo. Articles dealt with work...
The Red Menace
A libertarian socialist newsletter
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1975
Articles on topics such as socialism, Marxism, anarchism, work, popular education, organizing, wages for housework, Leninism, bureaucracy, hierarchy, jargon, prostitution, obscenity, science fiction, ...