Enlightening Quotes

"[T]rade union action is class struggle. There is a class antagonism in capitalism -- capitalists and workers have opposing interests. Not only on the question of conservation of capitalism, but also within capitalism itself, with regard to the division of the total product.

... [C]onflicts of interests between the national capitalisms explode into wars. World war is the crowning of the policy of imperialism. For the workers, war is not only the destruction of all their feelings of international brotherhood, it also means the most violent exploitation of their class for capitalist profit. The working class, as the most numerous and the most oppressed class of society, has to bear all the horrors of war. The workers have to give not only their labour power, but also their health and their lives. ....

... [T]he narrow field of trade union struggle widens into the broad field of class struggle. ... the workers themselves must change. They have to take a wider view of the world. From their trade, from their work within the factory walls, their mind must widen to encompass society as a whole. Their spirit must rise above the petty things around them. They have to face the state; they enter the realm of politics." -- Anton Pannekoek, "Trade Unionism" (1936)

 

"Now that ... workers are superfluous, what do you do with them? First of all, you have to make sure they don't notice that society is unfair and try to change that, and the best way to distract them is to get them to hate and fear one another." -- Noam Chomsky, The Common Good (1998), p. 35.

Introduction

UDHR, Article 23, 1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

 

2. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

 

3. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

 

4. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

 

Article 24: Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

 

La Via Campesina, Declaration of Rights of Peasants - Women and Men.

Initiatives

International

Global

Europe

European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) "More farmers, better food"

European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) / Europäischer Gewerkschaftsbund

European Trade Union Institute (ETUI)

National

Ireland

United Kingdom

Trade Union Congress (TUC) "Changing the World of Work for Good"

Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC)

USA

American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) "America's Unions"

Change to Win (CtW) "Strategic Organizing Center"


Resources

Archives

English

Deutsch

Books & Articles

English

Boyer, Richard O. & Morais, Herbert M., 1979, Labor's Untold Story: The Adventure Story of the Battles, Betrayals and Victories of American Working Men and Women, 3rd Edition, United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America.

 

Einstein, Albert, 1949, "Why Socialism?", Monthly Review, May 1949.

 

Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth A., 1994, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-60, University of Illinois Press.

 

Fraser, Steve, 1991, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor, Free Press.

 

Freire, Paulo, 1968/1970/2007, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Continuum.

 

Krishan, Kumar (ed.), 1973, Revolution: The Theory and Practice of a European Idea, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

 

Lukács, György, 1923/1968, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, Merlin Press.

 

Luxemburg, Rosa, (publications)

Luxemburg, Rosa, 1900, Reform or Revolution,

Luxemburg, Rosa, 1904, Social Democracy and Parliamentarism,

Luxemburg, Rosa, 1906, The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions,
 

Mason, Paul, 2007, Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global, London: Harvill Secker.

Mason, Paul, 2012, Why It's Still Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions, revised and updated edition, Verso.

 

Montgomery, David, 1987, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925. New York: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge.

 

Standing, Guy, 2011, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, Bloomsbury.

Standing, Guy, 2014, A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens, Bloomsbury.

 

Ware, Norman, 1924, The Industrial Worker, 1840-1860: The Reaction of American Industrial Society to the Advance of the Industrial Revolution. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Deutsch

Documentaries & Video

Glawogger, Michael, 2005, Workingman's Death.

Loach, Ken, 2019, Sorry We Missed You.