By studying the guilds of the seven maritime cargo handling trades of Barcelona, this paper aims to contribute to the relatively limited, but growing scholarship of port labour during the late artisan phase, and of service-sector guilds in general. It examines the relationship between occupational and organizational cultures, the types and means of inculcating human and social capital, and the formal and informal determination of qualification in view of the different guild responses to liberalization and abolition. Unlike guilds in the secondary sector, these corporations were organized horizontally among masters and had neither journeymen, nor apprentices in their respective trades. Some of them provided services individually while others worked collectively. They generally prohibited internal and external employment schemes, and many of them used a turn system or another to level work opportunities. One of these guilds transitioned directly into a trade union; others became owner associations or dissolved into unorganized competitors. The period studied covers the flexibilization of the labour market through progressively advancing liberal reforms of monopolistic guild privileges and the formal abolition of Spanish guilds in 1836. Comparisons with other European ports further highlight the multiplicity of considerations for understanding occupational and organizational cultures and the trajectories of guilds in the service sector.

Early modern globalization depended on labour-intensive production and transport of global commodities. Throughout the Dutch Empire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries labour was mobilized through a variety of different labour relations (especially casual, contract, slave, and corvée labour). The mobilization of these workers often entailed movements over short, but more often long, distances. Port cities were crucial nodal points connecting various sites of production and circuits of distribution. Furthermore, these ports were themselves also important working environments (ranging from transport and storage, to production and security). As a result, workers from various regional, social, and cultural backgrounds worked in the same environments and were confronted with each other – as well as with the legal and disciplining regimes of early modern urban and corporate authorities. This article studies the development of labour relations in the port work of the Dutch Asian empire, looking at the mobilization and control of labour for dock work (loading and unloading of ships) and transport in its urban surroundings. It will analyse and compare the development of the need for labour, the employment of different sets of labour relations, and the mechanisms of control that developed from it. As the largest trading company active in Asia (up to the 1750s), the case of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) is crucial in understanding the impact of early imperial and capitalist development in changing global social and labour relations.

The US Constitution preserves the right of the people to petition the government for redress of grievances. This right allows individuals to request private legislation from Congress and, as such, private bill petitions involve individual claims or pleas for relief for a specified person, or persons. Private petitions to Congress fall into two principal categories: claims against the US government (e.g., claims stemming from automobile accidents with government vehicles) and relief from immigration and naturalization laws. Although private laws concerning immigration and naturalization have influenced later public legislation by highlighting areas in need of reform, the private laws have limited application. Other than serving as precedent for subsequent private legislation for similarly situated individuals making requests for enactment of private laws, the laws do not benefit anyone other than the named beneficiaries of the bills.

This article considers the transformation of labour relations in wool farming in the Cape Colony/Province between 1865 and 1950. It focuses specifically on shepherds and how their relationship with farmers changed as a result of the requirement to improve production through the implementation of fenced camps in the late nineteenth century. It was expected that this innovation would reduce the demand among farmers for shepherds. This article shows, however, that the demand for shepherds continued due to the existence of jackals and the lack of sufficient water in the dry Karoo. It was not until the 1910s that, on the most progressive farms, the demand for shepherds was markedly reduced. But the shepherds were replaced by camp walkers – people who managed fences rather than sheep. Among farmers who had not invested in fencing and water supplies, the demand for shepherding continued, and, to compete, those farmers hired younger shepherds.

Studies of indigenous workers’ resistance focus largely on rural workers. In contrast, this article examines indigenous workers’ dissent in an industrialized and largely urbanized setting – that of Māori meat processing workers in Aotearoa New Zealand. I argue that far from being passive victims of colonization and capitalism, Māori meatworkers played an often vital role in the generally extensive informal and formal labour unrest that occurred in the meat industry during the late 1960s to the mid-1980s. However, Māori meatworkers’ resistance and solidarity was not universal, but instead varied significantly, both spatially and temporally. The dissent and solidarity that occurred were often a product of the multi-ethnic informal work groups that existed in many slaughterhouses. These workplace-whānau, in which Māori played a pivotal role, functioned similar to extended family networks on the killing floor. Workplace-whānau represented a significant intertwining of indigeneity and class. Nevertheless, as they were often based on masculine bonds, they frequently excluded female workers (including Māori women).

During the two first centuries of Portuguese colonization in America there was an intense debate about the legitimacy of enslaving Africans and Indians. In Portuguese America, the mission to spread the Christian faith was connected with the subjection of populations on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean to an ideology that considered labour as God's punishment for Adam's sin. In that sense, the justification of the unfree labour inflicted upon Indians and Africans in Portuguese America was a product of the same ideology, one that condemned manual work as rendering a man dishonourable. The purpose of this article is to review the debate from its medieval origins in Portugal, and to examine what effect the arrival of the Jesuits in America had on that debate, until the final prohibition of Indian enslavement in the mid-eighteenth century, documented by letters, reports, and sermons.

Am Ende des Ancien Régime lebte die Mehrzahl der deutschen Familien an der Grenze des Existenzminimums. Verstärkt durch den wechselhaften Witterungsverlauf schwankte die Lebenshaltung dieser Zugehörigen zu den ländlichen und nichtbürgerlichen Unterschichten wegen des ungleichmäßigen Angebots an Lebensmitteln zwischen Unterversorgung mit den lebensnotwendigen Bedürfnissen bei Minderernten (und relativ hohem Preisniveau) und damit abwechselnden Zeiten ausreichender Bedarfsdeckung in wohlfeilen Jahren. In den beiden ersten Jahrzehnten und in der Mitte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts stieg der Anteil dieser urn die physische Existenz ihrer Familie ringenden Bevölkerungsgruppen erheblich an. Engels und Marx haben dieses Phänomen der Massenarmut (oder das Elend des Proletariats) auf die Industrialisierung und den übermächtigen Einfluß des Kapitals, das zunehmend in alle Lebensbereiche eindrang, zurückgeführt. Durch Abzug von Kapital aus dem Produktionsprozeß und Akkumulierung zu großen Vermögen würden den in der großbetrieblichen Produktion beschäftigten Arbeitern nur noch Löhne ausgezahlt, die lediglich für die Bestreitung der physischen Existenz ausreichen wiirden. Mit zunehmender Industrialisierung und Konzentration der Produktion in Fabriken hätte schließlich eine ständig wachsende Zahl von kleingewerblichen Produzenten ihren Besitz verloren und sei in die Klasse des Proletariats (Expropriation) abgesunken. Knapp hat für Deutschland noch eine Sonderentwicklung aufgezeigt, indem er als wesentliche Ursache für die Entstehung eines freien Arbeiterstandes die Bauernbefreiung herausstellte.

Wenige Wochen nach dem plötzlichen Ableben seines Direktors, Professor A. J. C. Rüter, hat das Internationale Institut für Sozial-geschichte am 1. Oktober 1965 mit dem Tode Werner Blumenbergs, des Leiters der Deutschland-Abteilung, einen zweiten schweren Verlust erlitten.

Die beiden nachstehend mitgeteilten Briefe fand ich, kurz nach der Herausgabe der Hess'schen Korrespondenz, in der “Heine-Sammlung” der Landes- und Stadtbibliothek Düsseldorf, derem Leiter, Herrn Dr. Eberhard Galley, ich für die Genehmigung der Veröffentlichung und mehrere nützliche Hinweise zu Dank verpflichtet bin. Der Inhalt des Briefes vom 19. Oktober 1837 zeigt deutlich, dass er der erste ist, den Hess an Heine richtete. Dieser Brief, in dem Hess ein ungeschminktes Bild seiner eigenen Persönlichkeit entwirft, ist psychologisch einer der interessantesten, die er je geschrieben hat.

This articles argues that it was primarily cash, rather than culture, that shaped employment decisions by Cornish miners in the mid-nineteenth century. Although their occupation cut their lives short, total lifetime earnings as a metal miner, at home or abroad, exceeded the probable income from readily available alternative employment, even over a longer working life. In economic terms, Cornish miners rationally sold part of their lives for both higher short- and long-term incomes.

This paper examines labour disputes in London between 1790 and 1870, based on a systematic coverage of working-class newspapers. Disputes were classified by type, cause and trade. Evidence exists for 294 disputes, the large majority of which were strikes. The incidence of disputes roughly paralleled cyclical and seasonal fluctuations in the economy. Wage claims were the main cause for conflict, although interpretation of such disputes needs to be related to price movements. The most serious disputes were associated with significant changes in control over employment and the labour process. Skilled and unskilled workers were involved in disputes, both taking advantage of specific circumstances to exert power at the workplace. The extent to which London was prone to disputes is discussed and tentative comparisons drawn with other regions in Britain.

This essay compares and contrasts two British organizations, the Workers' Travel Association (1921–1966) and the British Workers' Sports Association (1930–1957). It considers their motives, their relationships with the labour movement domestically and internationally, and how far they were able to maintain the international activities to which they aspired.

During the 1990s, over seventy per cent of the married men and adult children of Stone Mill village in northeastern China have been employed i n wage labor each year. Because a vast number of household laborers (i.e. husbands, sons, and daughters) have nonagricultural jobs outside the village, daily agricultural tasks are performed by married women and elderly men, who are fondly described by the villagers of Stone Mill as “Troop Number 3860” (3860 budut). The number 38 refers to International Women's Day, March 8, representing the women in the village's agricultural labor force, while the number 60 represents the minimum age of the elderly agricultural workers.

“Jewish protection rights” (Judenschutzrechte) — the legal category according to which Jews were tolerated in a few territories of the old German Empire during the early modern period — made it difficult for Jewish subjects to establish a secure existence. There were, above all, two reasons for this. First, the personalized nature of protection rights enabled the respective authorities to develop selective settlement policies oriented consistently towards the fiscal interests of the state. The direct results of this were increased tributary payments and the withdrawal of one's “protection document” (Schutzbrief) if taxes were not paid. Second, legislators for the territories developed a multiplicity of restrictive decrees concerning the gainful employment of Jews. Consequently, there were only a few economic niches n i which “privileged Jews” (Scbutzjuden) were permitted to earn a living. In the countryside — which is where such settlements were mainly situated in the early modern period — Jews were thus dependent upon peddling foods, textiles and cattle as well as upon lending money. The specific methods of business which developed from this were reflected in the anti-Jewish legend of the deceptive travelling salesman who, by awakening ever new consumer needs, brought his Christian customers into increasing debt. If one confronts this legend with reality, one finds two characteristic methods of business which arose out of necessity: the cultivation of a varied palette of goods offered, and the development of a differentiated system of payment by instalments. At the same time, these business methods accorded with the model of an “economy of makeshift”. In the sense of such “makeshift trade”, Jewish peddlers were prepared to travel for days in order to make even the most insignificant profits.

In the context of the Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations, in this article, we relate the analysis of precarious work in Portugal to the state, in particular, as a direct participant functioning as both employer and mediator. In the second part, we present a short overview of the evolution of casualization in the context of employment and unemployment in contemporary Portugal (1974–2014). In the third section, we discuss state policies on labour relations, particularly in the context of the welfare state. Finally, we compare this present analysis with Swedish research done from the perspective of the state as a direct participant and mediator over the past four decades.