This edited collection is a global history of workers’ organisations since 1919, the year when the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the Comintern and the International Federation of Trade Unions were formed. This historical moment represents a caesura in labour history as it epitomises the beginning of what the editors and the contributors in this book call the internationalisation of the labour question. The case studies in this centenary volume analyse the relationship between global workers’ organisations and the new ideological confrontation between liberal capitalism, socialism and communism since the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Workers’ organisations, trade unions in particular, grew in importance and managed to organise internationally, forming alliances cemented by ideology and sustained by international institutional bodies or centrals. In the nascent capitalist versus communist struggle, trade unions thrived. Is it mere coincidence that today’s decline of unionism coincides with the end of ideological antagonism? This book emphasises important global labour issues such as gender as well as international workers’ histories from Latin America, Asia and Africa.

This original study examines the extent to which international labour issues have become issue of concern within the European Union, the ILO, the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), and the WTO (World Trade Organization).

Originally published in 1987, this book focusses on the debate around the international role of the working class and other dominated classes such as the rural and urban poor. The contributions discuss whether Marx’s original version of the revolutionary role of workers can still be sustained. They examine the response of workers to the globalisation of production, to structural unemployment in the industrialized world and to the changing composition of the workforce in the industrialising periphery. The volume questions the historic starting points in the theorization of international labour.

Excerpt from The Labour International Handbook The scheme of this Handbook is two-fold. Part I. Consists of reviews of the leading issues of international affairs and foreign policy from a labour standpoint. Part II. Is intended as a guide to the international labour movement.' The field attempted to be covered is wide, in fact too wide for wholly satisfactory treatment but it was felt that in the absence of any available book, some preliminary survey of this nature was needed for labour use. Its preparation has only been made possible by the willing co operation of the many contributors who have put their special knowledge of particular questions concerned at the service of the labour movement. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.