The studies offered in this volume contribute to a Global Labor History freed from Eurocentrism and methodological nationalism. Using literature from diverse regions, epochs and disciplines, the book provides arguments and conceptual tools for a different interpretation of history – a labor history which integrates the history of slavery and indentured labor, and which pays serious attention to diverging yet interconnected developments in different parts of the world. The following questions are central: ▪ What is the nature of the world working class, on which Global Labor History focuses? How can we define and demarcate that class, and which factors determine its composition? ▪ Which forms of collective action did this working class develop in the course of time, and what is the logic in that development? ▪ What can we learn from adjacent disciplines? Which insights from anthropologists, sociologists and other social scientists are useful in the development of Global Labor History?

This book is the first comprehensive account of the International Labour Organization’s 100-year history. At its heart is the concept of global social policy, which encompasses not only social policy in its national and international dimensions, but also development policy, world trade, international migration and human rights. The book focuses on the ILO’s roles as a key player in debates on poverty, social justice, wealth distribution and social mobility subjects and as a global forum for addressing these issues. The study puts in perspective the manifold ways in which the ILO has helped structure these debates and has made – through its standard-setting, technical cooperation and myriad other activities – practical contributions to the world of work and to global social policy.

First Published in 2007. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The 'Red International of Labour Unions' (RILU, Russian abbreviation Profintern) was a central instrument for the spreading of international communism during the inter-war period. This comprehensive and scholarly history of the organisation, based on extensive research in the former communist archives in Moscow and East Berlin, sheds significant light on the international trade union movement of the period. Tosstorff shows how the RILU began as a revolutionary alliance of syndicalists and communists in defiance of the social democratic International Federation of Trade Unions. His text presents a full account of the organisation’s main stages: the decline of the revolutionary wave after World War One, after which many syndicalists left, and others were integrated into the communist parties; the continuation of the RILU as an international communist apparatus; and its dissolution in 1936–7 as part of communism's popular front policy. First published in German as Profintern: Die Rote Gewerkschaftsinternationale 1920-1937 by Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn, in 2004.

There has been a recent resurgence in interest in the theorization of labour regimes in various disciplines. This has taken the form of a concern to understand the role that labour regimes play in the structuring, organization and dynamics of global systems of production and reproduction. The concept has a long heritage that can be traced back to the 1970s and the contributions to this book seek to develop further this emerging field. The book traces the intellectual development of labour regime concepts across various disciplines, notably political economy, development studies, sociology and geography. Building on these foundations it considers conceptual debates around labour regimes and global production relating to issues of scale, informality, gender, race, social reproduction, ecology and migration, and offers new insights into the work conditions of global production chains from Amazon's warehouses in the United States, to industrial production networks in the Global South, and to the dormitory towns of migrant workers in Czechia. It also explores recent mobilizations of labour regime analysis in relation to methods, theory and research practice.

A history of the global nature of the radical union, The Industrial Workers of the World