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, reciprocating engines and other mechanisms were often described for their technical wonder, it was unusual to read of the living and working conditions of the men who built and operated these vessels, or to see crew members in the photographs and posters of ships which instead emphasised mechanical size and scale. 37 This deflected attention from less than salutary labour conditions on board, particularly in
different directions. Bourdieu and Standing are concerned with labour conditions and class identity, with the ways in which the rise of temporary, part-time, casualized low-waged work within neo-liberal, globalized economies together with the erosion of social benefits and opportunities for collective bargaining have generated worker insecurity and led to the emergence of a new kind of class, the precariat who ‘liv[e] and work … in insecure jobs and conditions of life’ (Standing, 2012 : 589). Although the issue of whether the precariat is a class in the classic Marxist
Kong’s labour conditions attracted the periodic attention of social reformers and manufacturing interests in Britain. In the mid-1960s, Elsie Elliott’s campaigns included visits to London to encourage parliamentary intervention. 57 David Clayton has shown that British governmental pressure was crucial in pushing the adoption of the eight-hour day for female workers in the late 1960s, and London
time he had been critical of the force’s overall efficiency. A decade later he reported that their efficacy had deteriorated still further. He explained this deterioration in terms of the post-war environment in which he observed changes in the political situation, labour conditions, trade union activities, education, cinemas
labour conditions, environmental standards, the sharing of economic benefits and other locally important concerns such as the protection of sacred sites. Social licensing in mining was defensively adopted by an industry distrusted by stakeholders and threatened by opposition groups and has often been contained at local community level. Its subsequent history shows that it is not a policy fix but a work in progress, which depends on community social capital and the political articulation of demands by networks of stakeholders at regional and national levels necessary to
-class dances did not hire AFM members but sought to find able players among non-union musicians. This meant that they had to select performers on a labour market that was open to virtually all comers and thus highly competitive. Black players were overrepresented on this market. Not only were they excluded from the unions, but they were also more inclined to work in music and put up with adverse labour conditions. A badly paid gig in show business was still more attractive than most other jobs available to African Americans
foundational economy. The notion of ‘social licence’ is most familiar in the mining industry, particularly in the developing world. It involves a formal or informal agreement between a community and an extractive mining company, which needs the acceptance and approval of the communities in which it operates.4 The agreement may cover labour conditions, environmental standards, the sharing of economic benefits and other locally important concerns such as the protection of sacred sites. Social licensing in mining was defensively adopted by an industry distrusted by stakeholders
effective working-class solidarity, in the political or industrial sphere, may require close local calibration, it would be unwise to dismiss them as simply ‘residual’ antipathies. Certainly, the continuing blight of sectarian strife in Liverpool, the resurgence of such hostility in the difficult labour conditions of the inter-war years in Glasgow and its environs, and the tenacity of ethno-religious communal loyalties in general, all feature as inhibitors to the emergence of the kind of class-based solidarity that would be necessary to support and sustain the Labour
dividing against East Indies MPs who sought sugar cultivation in the ‘free-labour’ conditions of British India. And ‘newer’ colonies, such as the Caribbean islands annexed from France in 1815 – whose interests were not the same as those of Jamaica – or Lower Canada, were less impressed with the haphazard system of representation that the old plantation colonies and India merchants. Rejecting the idea of separate colonial representation in 1831, the Quebec Gazette declared that ‘Lower Canada has never condescended to buy a seat in the House of Commons.’26 Besides the
contexts in Western capitalist nations; a transition that has been well documented in sociology and social histories of technology.2 The introduction of computerised and automated technologies profoundly transformed the labour conditions and industrial politics in factory and office workplaces. In some cases, automation and computerisation made tasks less dangerous or physically taxing, but in many others, new technologies made employees’ hard-won trade skills redundant.3 Computerisation often reduced the number of employees required and it often degraded the workers