Speakers:
In the Communist Manifesto of 1848, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels urged ‘workers of the world to unite, as they had nothing to lose but their chains’. They didn’t do so then and haven’t since but have combined in trade unions in every part of the industrialised world with significant results in improving their workplace situation and their nations’ social welfare provision. Since then, trade unionists have also banded together globally to bring about more fundamental changes to the status of the working class and to call a halt to the periodic bloodletting of nations in wars. However, they have found that workers can be nationalistic as well, in support of their nations against other nations. Two world wars have resulted with massive carnage of populations in every nation. Today trade unions are less confident about appealing to fellow workers abroad, but in the face of multi-national corporations evading national governments’ rules and standards, they still aspire to build international agencies to regulate such abuses.
This seminar looks at the various efforts trade unions made in the twentieth century to unite globally and to enforce International Labour Organisation standards in all countries.
Programme
IHR Seminar Series: History & Policy Trade Union Forum
H&P is based at the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, University of London.
We are the only project in the UK providing access to an international network of more than 500 historians with a broad range of expertise. H&P offers a range of resources for historians, policy makers and journalists.