Rise of the Rural-Industrial Workers

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lou Martin
Keyword(s):  
Technological Innovation ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Rural Migrants ◽  
Large Pool ◽  
Hancock County ◽  
Low Wages

This chapter looks at the rise of the rural-industrial workers. In the early 1900s, industrialists had believed that building new potteries and tinplate mills in rural Hancock County would result in more disciplined and loyal workforces, but they soon discovered that many of the conflicts they had had with craftsmen in urban centers followed them to the countryside. In the 1920s, owners in both industries began another round of technological innovation that reduced the power of skilled craftsmen and allowed managers to hire more unskilled laborers and semiskilled operatives, mostly from a large pool of rural migrants. In contrast to the skilled jiggermen and rollers, few of these rural migrants had any factory experience, but local employers were grateful for a steady stream of new workers that would accept low wages and harsh working conditions.

Lending a Hand to Labor: James Myers and the Federal Council of Churches, 1926–1947

1999 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Fones-Wolf ◽  
Ken Fones-Wolf
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Textile Industry ◽  
Textile Workers ◽  
Industrial Conflict ◽  
Christian Century ◽  
Federal Council Of Churches ◽  
Low Wages

On 31 September 1929, James Myers, the industrial secretary of the Federal Council of Churches (FCC), arrived in Marion, North Carolina, to investigate the causes for the continuing industrial unrest that had swept across the southern textile industry since the spring. Shortly after Myers's arrival, as the textile workers attempted to picket the plant, sheriff's deputies fired into the crowd, killing six strikers and wounding twenty-five others. Myers's eulogy for the slain workers admonished the mill owners for the harsh working conditions and low wages, but mostly for their opposition to their workers' right to organize. He also scolded clergymen who argued that industrial conflict was “not the Church's business.” Over the ensuing months, Myers set an example of Christian involvement in labor unrest. He investigated the strike's impact on the community, he met with the governor, and he offered to help mediate the conflict. Dismayed by the suffering that he had uncovered, Myers also organized a relief campaign among church people on behalf of the families of the striking workers. Reflecting on Myers's efforts, the Christian Century declared that Myers stood “almost alone as representative of any active concern in the churches” in the midst of “appalling industrial warfare.” Otherwise, “the forces of organized religion would have to confess to an amazing indifference when confronted by the most acute industrial conflict of the year.”

scholarly journals Welfare and locomotor system disorders in active draft horses (cart horses)

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (12) ◽  
pp. 942-948
Author(s):  
Vivian C.M. Prado ◽  
Maria Cristina F.N.S. Hage ◽  
Renata G.S. Dória
Keyword(s):  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Locomotor System ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACT: Horses performing tasks is a common scene in urban centers, evidenced by the significant number of animals pulling carts along the streets (cart horses). Despite the rising concern of the population for animal welfare, as well as the creation of laws that prohibit traction activity in several Brazilian municipalities, these attitudes must be based on the impact of such activity on equine health. Locomotor system disorders are commonly observed in animals of this species, and become even more frequent when they are submitted to unhealthy working conditions. In this context, we conducted a survey on locomotor system disorders in 11 active draft horses. To this end, we performed lameness assessments and radiographic and ultrasound examinations. Information on management regarding the horses’ hooves, type of harness used, and type of work performed was also obtained through the application of questionnaires to the owners. The collected data showed that, although most of the animals in the study presented critical orthopedic conditions, they were not treated and the horses did not rest for adequate time. We observed that the disorders, which are often chronic, may be directly associated with incorrect management of the animals. We emphasize the importance to disseminate information that values the welfare of traction animals in order to tackle mistreatment.

Digital Media and the Changing Nature of Labor Action

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 376-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faiz Ullah
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Labor Strikes ◽  
Production Processes ◽  
Indian State ◽  
Neoliberal Policies

Precarious working conditions resulting from neoliberal policies of the Indian state have placed an overwhelmingly young and mobile industrial workforce under a lot of duress. Traditional forms of organizations and modes of resistance such as labor strikes that were thought to be effective are now increasingly seen as inadequate against the speed and complexity of contemporary production processes, forcing the workers to devise commensurate responses. In this article, I discuss some of the newer strategies of resistance gaining prominence among industrial workers, especially as they are mediated through digital media. Focusing on online self-work underpinning worker agitations, I argue that contemporary labor movement should devise creative strategies using new media tools, to which the millennial worker has unprecedented access, in addition to their traditional rank and file struggles, to counter contemporary challenges.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lou Martin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Family Income ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
Hancock County ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
The Way

This concluding chapter examines how the rural-industrial working-class culture that emerged in Hancock County gradually disappeared in the late twentieth century. The ethic of making do traveled well from the farm to the factory town, but it began its decline in the late 1960s and 1970s as buying power increased and industrial workers focused more on vacations or socializing and less on making do. While many people in Hancock County still tend gardens, work on their houses, hunt, and fish, these activities no longer supplement family income the way they did in the 1950s. Moreover, the localism of their culture may have persisted in some ways to the present, but a localized system of negotiation that local manufacturers helped create disappeared along with many of those companies.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lou Martin
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Capital Mobility ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
Rural Migrants ◽  
The Core ◽  
Hancock County ◽  
Rural Places ◽  
The Relationship

This introductory chapter argues that studies of the industrialization of rural places like Hancock County can help in understanding the nature of industrial capitalism, particularly the relationship between capital mobility and the working class. Industries periodically entered periods of crisis that required a general restructuring for companies to remain profitable, and relocations were a key component in the process. In “undeveloped” rural areas, some manufacturers believed that they could create new environments free of discord and find grateful and compliant pool of rural laborers—often women and other low-wage workers—to surround the core of handpicked skilled workers. Thus, manufacturers' old labor problems and their high hopes for an improved workforce figured prominently in the migration of capital to rural places. Eventually, rural migrants and young people from local farms brought their own ideas, goals, and culture—distinct from those of the skilled craftsmen—and came to constitute a truly rural-industrial workforce.

Class Crimes

2020 ◽  
pp. 455-473
Author(s):  
Eric Tucker ◽  
Judy Fudge
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Working Day

This chapter compares the historical development and use of criminal law at work in the United Kingdom and in Ontario, Canada. Specifically, it considers the use of the criminal law both in the master and servant regime as an instrument for disciplining the workforce and in factory legislation for protecting workers from unhealthy and unsafe working conditions, including exceedingly long hours work. Master and servant legislation that criminalized servant breaches of contract originated in the United Kingdom where it was widely used in the nineteenth century to discipline industrial workers. These laws were partially replicated in Ontario, where it had shallower roots and was used less aggressively. At the same time as the use of criminal law to enforce master and servant law was contested, legislatures in the United Kingdom and Ontario enacted protective factory acts limiting the length of the working day. However, these factory acts did not treat employer violations crimes; instead, they were treated as lesser ‘regulatory’ offences for which employers were rarely prosecuted.

Strategic Democracy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolina Bank Muñoz
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Productive Process ◽  
Warehouse Workers ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Low Wages

Chapter 4 looks at the warehouse union in detail. The chapter explores workplace abuses, organizing strategy, and outcomes. Warehouse workers initially suffered poor working conditions and low wages, but today they earn significantly more than warehouse workers in Chile and even more than some warehouse workers in the U.S. The conceptual framework from Chapter 3 is brought to life by illustrating how the warehouse union engages in strategic democracy and looks at concrete outcomes. At the heart of their success is a strategy that creates conditions for workers to control the productive process and have significant structural leverage vis-à-vis Walmart.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on employment relationships and development of social partnership in the Russian Federation

2021 ◽  
pp. 25-35
Author(s):  
Aleksandr Anatolievich Dovganenko
Keyword(s):  
Working Conditions ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Social Partnership ◽  
Employment Relationships ◽  
The Social ◽  
Coronavirus Infection ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Low Wages

Before the outbreak of the pandemic and a radical change in the social and labor situation in the country, the main sources of the beginning of confrontations between workers and employers were non-payment of wages, low wages and violations of working conditions. In the context of the spread of the coronavirus infection, the top three included "reductions in workers", displacing "low wages". These reasons determined the key and main problems faced by the majority of the country's citizens.

The Origins of the Seattle General Strike of 1919: The Timber Beast

2020 ◽  
pp. 47-56
Author(s):  
Cal Winslow
Keyword(s):  
Working Conditions ◽  
Washington State ◽  
Coastal Forests ◽  
Rain Forests ◽  
Lumber Industry ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The City ◽  
General Strike ◽  
Low Wages

Seattle in 1919 was an island in a still immeasurable sea of timber. The Pacific coastal forests were estimated to contain nearly two-thirds of the timber in the country, and the Washington State forests accounted for the largest part of these. The physical hardships associated with the lumber industry, including isolation deep within the rain forests, made working conditions an even more miserable burden than low wages. The work was seasonal and layoffs were common; the completion of one job might mean termination and the search for work elsewhere. When the winter rains brought an end to work in the woods, the state's loggers fled to the city, not welcome elsewhere. In some years, there might be thousands on Seattle's streets.

Am I a peasant or a worker? An identity strain perspective on turnover among developing-world migrants

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 801-833 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Qin ◽  
Peter W Hom ◽  
Minya Xu
Keyword(s):  
Developing World ◽  
Interactive Effect ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban Migration ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
High Turnover ◽  
Rural Migrants ◽  
Rural Identity ◽  
Multi Phase ◽  
Organizational Costs

Developing-world rural migrants provide crucial labor for global supply chains and economic growth in their native countries. Yet their high turnover engenders considerable organizational costs and disruptions threatening those contributions. Organizational scholars thus strive to understand why these workers quit, often applying turnover models and findings predominantly derived from the United States, Canada, England or Australia (UCEA). Predominant applications of dominant turnover theories however provide limited insight into why developing-world migrants quit given that they significantly differ from UCEA workforces in culture, precarious employment and rural-to-urban migration. Based on multi-phase, multi-source and multi-level survey data of 173 Chinese migrants working in a construction group, this study adopts an identity strain perspective to clarify why they quit. This investigation established that migrants retaining their rural identity experience more identity strain when working and living in distant urban centers. Moreover, identity strain prompts them to quit when their work groups lack supervisory supportive climates. Furthermore, migrants’ adjustment to urban workplaces and communities mediates the interactive effect of identity strain and supervisory supportive climate on turnover. Overall, this study highlighted how identity strain arising from role transitions and urban adjustment can explain why rural migrants in developing societies quit jobs.

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