From the start of its existence organized labor has been the voice of workers to improve their economic, social, and political positions. Beginning with small and very often illegal groups of involved workers it grew to the million member organizations that now exist around the globe. It is studied from many different perspectives – historical, economic, sociological, and legal – but it fundamentally involves the struggle for workers’ rights, human rights and social justice. In an often hostile environment, organized labor has tried to make the world a fairer place. Even though it has only ever covered a minority of employees in most countries, its effects on their political, economic, and social systems have been generally positive. Despite growing repression of organized labor in recent years, membership numbers are still growing for the benefit of all employees, including the non-members. Historical Dictionary of Organized Labor: Fourth Edition makes the history of this important feature of life easily accessible. The reader is guided through a chronology, an introductory essay, 600 entries on the subject, appendixes with statistical material, and an extensive bibliography including Internet sites. This book gives a thorough introduction into past and present for historians, economists, sociologists, journalists, activists, labor union leaders, and anyone interested in the development of this important issue.

Organized labor is about the collective efforts of employees to improve their economic, social, and political position. It can be studied from many different points of view—historical, economic, sociological, or legal—but it is fundamentally about the struggle for human rights and social justice. As a rule, organized labor has tried to make the world a fairer place. Even though it has only ever covered a minority of employees in most countries, its effects on their political, economic, and social systems have been generally positive. History shows that when organized labor is repressed, the whole society suffers and is made less just. The Historical Dictionary of Organized Labor looks at the history of organized labor to see where it came from and where it has been. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, a glossary of terms, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 400 cross-referenced entries on most countries, international as well as national labor organizations, major labor unions, leaders, and other aspects of organized labor such as changes in the composition of its membership. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about organized labor.

This volume is a pioneering study of the history of organized labor in the Central American republics. It traces the history in the various countries from the early nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. It also discusses why they appeared, what organizational and ideological tendencies characterized the movement in these countries, the role of collective bargaining, the economic influence of organized labor, as well as the relations of the movement in the individual countries with one another and with the broader labor movement outside of the countries involved in this volume.

In this the third of a series of studies of the history of organized labor in Latin America and the Caribean, Alexander explores the history of the Argentine labor movement from the mid-19th century onward. Throughout most of the 20th century, Argentina had one of the largest, strongest, and most militant organized labor movements in the Western Hemisphere. While the roots of the labor movement can be traced to colonial times and the craft guilds of that era, European immigrants, particularly from Italy and Spain, who were political refugees from the unrest of the mid-19th century were key to the development of the Argentine labor movement. During much of the late 19th century, the labor movement was predominantly under anarchist influence, although during and after World War I, syndicalists, Socialists, and Communists emerged as the predominant political influences in the trade union movement. The military coup d'etat of 1943 drastically altered the nature and size of Argentina's organized labor as Juan Peron sought to utilize labor as a principal support—along with the armed forces—for the regime. During the nearly 18 years following the overthrow of Peron in 1955, the organized workers remained loyal to the fallen dictator. Peron returned to power in 1973 with the overwhelming support of the Argentine working class. After his death, the Peronista regime was again overthrown early in 1976 and a brutal seven-year military dictatorship sought to undermine organized labor. By and large successive governments have followed a similar strategy. The privatization of much of the state-owned sector of the economy and opening up Argentina's economy to foreign competition have greatly weakened the country's labor movement. Utilizing his personal contacts as well as extensive written materials, Alexander has produced a study that will be of great use to scholars, students, and researchers involved with the history and current state of labor in Argentina and the Latin American world in general.

The first scholarly work to focus exclusively on the roles of pan-regional and worldwide labor organizations in the labor movements across the nations of the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. With a career that covers over a half century, Robert J. Alexander is perhaps our foremost authority on Latin American history and politics. In International Labor Organizations and Organized Labor in Latin America and the Caribbean: A History, Alexander explores one of the most fascinating and often overlooked aspects of the Latin American labor scene he has so meticulously chronicled: the relationships between labor unions within specific nations, region wide organizations, and organized labor around the world. Alexander has written many of the cornerstone works on labor movements within the nations of Latin America, and this is his first volume to focus on the impact of international unions on Latin American labor issues. Coverage includes the AFL-offshoot Pan American Federation of Labor and the CIA-backed AIFLD; the role of the Russian Union, Profintern; European-based unions like the anti-Communist/anti-Fascist Postal Telegraph and Telephone International; and intraregional organizations like the Confederacion de Trabajadores de America Latina (CTAL)—the first attempt to form a multinational labor organization exclusively for the region.

This new edition to the series will provide an up-to-date textbook covering a wide-range of employment and labour law issues which affect the Commonwealth Caribbean. Initially the book will embark on a comparative analysis of employment and labour law in Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados, as a reference point for distinguishing the laws of other Commonwealth Caribbean jurisdictions. The book will continue to examine how the law operates within the legal systems of the Caribbean, taking into account the umbilical link to British jurisprudence and the persuasive precedent of other Commonwealth jurisdictions, and the impact this has had on the growth and development of the area. Commonwealth Caribbean Employment and Labour Law will be essential reading for students enrolled on Employment Law, Discrimination and Dismissal Law courses in the Caribbean.

In Matria Redux: Caribbean Women Novelize the Past, author Tegan Zimmerman contends that there is a need for reading Caribbean women’s texts relationally. This comprehensive study argues that the writer’s turn to maternal histories constitutes the definitive feature of this transcultural and transnational genre. Through an array of Caribbean women’s historical novels published roughly between 1980 and 2010, this book formulates the theory of matria—an imagined maternal space and time—as a postcolonial-psychoanalytic feminist framework for reading fictions of maternal history written by and about Caribbean women. Tracing the development of the historical novel in four periods of the Caribbean past—slavery, colonialism, revolution, and decolonization—this study argues that a pan-Caribbean generation of women writers, of varying discursive racial(ized) realities, has depicted similar matria constructs and maternal motifs. A politicized concept, matria functions in the historical novel as a counternarrative to traditional historical and literary discourses. Through close readings of the mother/daughter plots in contemporary Caribbean women’s historical fiction, such as Andrea Levy’s The Long Song, Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones, Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow, and Marie-Elena John’s Unburnable, Matria Redux considers the concept of matria an important vehicle for postcolonial-psychoanalytic feminist literary resistance and political intervention. Matria as a psychoanalytic, postcolonial strategy therefore envisions, by returning to history, alternative feminist fictions, futures, and Caribbeans.