Maritime Men of the Asia-Pacific

Maritime Men of the Asia-Pacific
Author: Diane Kirkby
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2022-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1802076778

Winner of the Australia and New Zealand Law and History Society (ANZLHS) Prize for 2023 Maritime workers occupy a central place in global labour history. This new and compelling account from Australia, shows seafaring and waterside unions engaged in a shared history of activism for legally regulated wages and safe liveable conditions for all who go to sea. Maritime Men of the Asia-Pacific provides a corrective to studies which overlook this region’s significance as a provider of the world’s maritime labour force and where unions have a rich history of reaching across their differences to forge connections in solidarity. From the ‘militant young Australian’ Harry Bridges whose progressive unionism transformed the San Francisco waterfront, to Australia’s successful implementation of the Maritime Labour Convention 2006, this is a story of vision and leadership on the international stage. Unionists who saw themselves as internationalists were also operating within a national and imperial framework where conflicting interests and differences of race and ideology had to be overcome. Union activists in India, China and Japan struggled against indentured labour and ‘coolie’ standards. They linked with their fellow-unionists in pursuing an ideal of international labour rights against the power of shipowners and anti-union governments. This is a complex story of endurance, cooperation and conflict and its empowering legacy.

In the Interest of Others

In the Interest of Others
Author: John S. Ahlquist
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2013-09-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1400848652

A groundbreaking study of labor unions that advances a new theory of organizational leadership and governance In the Interest of Others develops a new theory of organizational leadership and governance to explain why some organizations expand their scope of action in ways that do not benefit their members directly. John Ahlquist and Margaret Levi document eighty years of such activism by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in the United States and the Waterside Workers Federation in Australia. They systematically compare the ILWU and WWF to the Teamsters and the International Longshoremen's Association, two American transport industry labor unions that actively discouraged the pursuit of political causes unrelated to their own economic interests. Drawing on a wealth of original data, Ahlquist and Levi show how activist organizations can profoundly transform the views of members about their political efficacy and the collective actions they are willing to contemplate. They find that leaders who ask for support of projects without obvious material benefits must first demonstrate their ability to deliver the goods and services members expect. These leaders must also build governance institutions that coordinate expectations about their objectives and the behavior of members. In the Interest of Others reveals how activist labor unions expand the community of fate and provoke preferences that transcend the private interests of individual members. Ahlquist and Levi then extend this logic to other membership organizations, including religious groups, political parties, and the state itself.

Scope of Soviet Activity in the U.S.

Scope of Soviet Activity in the U.S.
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1052
Release: 1957
Genre: Communism
ISBN:

The CIO's Left-led Unions

The CIO's Left-led Unions
Author: Steven Rosswurm
Publisher:
Total Pages: 270
Release: 1992
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780813517698

The American labor movement seemed poised on the threshold of unparalleled success at the beginning of the post-World War II era. Fourteen million strong in 1946, unions represented 35 percent of non-agricultural workers, and federal power insured collective bargaining rights. The contrast with the pre-war years was strongest for those workers who retained vivid memories of the 1920s and early 1930s. Then, the labor movement lacked government legitimacy, and, at the worst point of the Great Depression, the union movement barely enrolled 5 percent of the non-farm workforce; one out of every four workers lacked a job. Now, the future seemed to hold unlimited possibilities.