2024
August
Once again war threatens the world, the future of the planet and condemns the working classes to poverty. Once again, working classes must push hard to stop Ukraine/Russia war, NATO’s warmongering and the genocide of the Palestinian people. In this edition, we take on the urgency of the answers still to be built, of the workers’ movement that needs strength and of finding convergences with the youth for the climate emergency, with anti-fascists who fight against growing authoritarianism, with anti-racism on all continents, with the defence of public services and radical gender equality.
From the past, we get examples in which the left and the workers’ movement have achieved significant victories against the war waged by the empires. This is the case of Marina Kabat’s text about the frustrated participation of the Argentine military in the Korean War in the 1950s. It is the example of the workers of the North of France and Belgium occupied by the troops of the Reich, of their struggle for better living conditions, and of the extraordinary resistance to the Nazi occupation, in a review of Steve Cushion and Merilyn Moss’ book, On Strike Against the Nazis. From the present-day, we publish a text by members of the workers’ committee of the Portuguese public television (RTP) where the field of labour struggles fully assumes the positioning on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
We also publish an interview with Michael Roberts where the path and thought of the British economist are a fundamental reference or thinking the world in which we live and the crucial alternatives to ensure the future.
A text on two recently published books, and presented at the 6th Conference of IASSC, is Buntu Siwisa’s contribution to this edition of the Workers of the World journal: Labour Revolt in Britain, 1910 – 1914, by Ralph Darlington, and Recasting Workers’ Power: Work and Inequality in the Shadow of the Digital Age, by Edward Webster are the two books that Siwisa talks to us about, showing us the evolution of capital accumulation and the continuity of exploitation, and how labour resists in strategies of organization and mobilization. In fair tribute to Edward Webster, who passed away in March 2024, we republish a text by Karl von Holdt, originally published in The Conversation. Eddie Webster was present at the 6th IASSC Conference, last February, presenting his book.
Resisting, organizing, mobilizing is the enormous urgency of the present to which this issue of Workers of the World intends to contribute on the reflection and response capacity of class internationalism.
2023
December
This edition of Workers of the World is entirely dedicated to The Role of Women in Workers’ Struggles and Social Protests: Historical and Contemporary Explorations. In it, Geert Van Goethem writes on the importance of the women’s movement in Aden’s (Yemen) national liberation struggle in the mid-twentieth century; Marianna
Haug reflects on the legal framework of domestic labour from the theory of social reproduction; Giovanny Simon Machado analyses social rights from the Soviet propaganda present in Brazil between 1950 and 1964; Anna Paraskevopoulou discusses the contribution of women tobacco workers to the Greek labour movement during the interwar years; Vassilis T. Georgakis examine women’s collective action during the period 1915-1916 on the issue of the cost of living and food shortages.
Paula Varela’s article inaugurates a new section of translated articles in the journal, originally published in other languages and which we publish in English. In it, the author proposes a reflection on social reproduction struggles under neoliberalism from the point of view of Social Reproduction Theory.
On the eve of the 6th International Association on Strikes and Social Conflicts Conference to be held in Cape Town, South Africa, 5th-7th February, with the generic theme Strike Activity in the 21st Century: Implications of the Recent Global Upsurge, the Workers of the World journal is proud to integrate a network
October
2021
October
This tenth issue of Workers of the World – International Journal on Strikes and Social is being published after a long time hiatus for which the pandemic situation and its procession of miseries is partially, although not solely responsible. However, we would like to associate this “renaissance” of our journal with the full recovery of Sjaak van der Velden, member of our Editorial Board, who for many months struggled with Covid 19 and its effects, for a long and healthy life.
2018
May
This issue of Workers of the World comes out after an interruption of one year, for which we want to apologize most of all the organizers of its dossier and the authors who have contributed with articles. We hope it won’t happen again, and the upcoming IV Conference of the International Association on Strikes and Social Conflicts to be held in São Paulo, Brazil, between 10 and 13 July 2018 will certainly make the necessary arrangements to guarantee its continuity.
2016
July
This issue of Workers of the World signals the beginning of a partnership with DuEPublico, the Documentation and Publishing Division of the University of Duisburg-Essen, which will from now on shelter our online journal. As a result of this partnership, Professors Norbert Meder and Patrick Eiden-Offe, from the University of Duisburg-Essen, have joined our Editorial Board.
2015
November
The seventh issue of Workers of the World – International Journal on Strikes and Social Conflicts is a special issue built around the dossier “Labour Activism in the Middle East and North Africa”. The guest editor responsible for this issue is Peyman Jafari, a researcher who teaches global politics and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Amsterdam.
June
This sixth issue of Workers of the World – International Journal on Strikes and Social Conflicts is being published in June instead of the beginning of 2015 mostly because of the difficulties its dossier, “Resisting War in the Twentieth Century”, has experienced. Themes as peacekeeping, ‘nation building’ or even post-war reconciliation can hardly be considered as ways of resisting war. Some of our invitations regarding resistance to war in Portugal and its former colonies, the former Jugoslavia or Israel could not be met, at least now, and finnaly some of the submitted articles were not considered fit to print, at least as they were when submitted. In the end only three articles have ‘survived’ the scrutiny of our evaluators.
2014
July
The fifth issue of Workers of the World – International Journal on Strikes and Social Conflicts is dedicated to “Conflict in the contemporary rural world. New interpretations of an old problem”, and it has Histagra (Research Group on the Agrarian and Political History of the Rural World, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain), as guest editors.
January
This is the fourth issue of Workers of the World – International Journal on Strikes and Social Conflicts. Differently from what we might start calling ‘usual’, this issue is not thematic (as the previous one – and the next, which will be dedicated to “Conflit in contemporary rural world: new perspectives on an old problem”, and it doesn’t have a dossier either. This is for a very good reason – authors from different continents keep providing us with a constant flow of article proposals which can’t wait (too much) to be published.
2013
May
This special issue of Workers of the World is entirely dedicated to global labour history. To prepare this special issue, we’ve invited as guest editor Christian G. De Vito. Christian graduated in History from the University of Florence and obtained his PhD in Contemporary History at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. He is an honorary fellow at the International Institute of Social History (IISG), member of the editorial board of the International Social History Association (ISHA) newsletter, co-chair of the Labour Network of the European Social Science History Conference (ESSHC) and member of the board of the Societá Italiana di Storia del Lavoro (SISLAV). As you will see, he did a terrific job as editor of this issue. You are invited to read his introduction, “New perspectives on global labour history”.
January
You are looking at the second issue of Workers of the World – International Journal on Strikes and Social Conflicts. Workers of the World is the journal of the International Association Strikes and Social Conflicts (http://iassc- mshdijon.in2p3.fr/), born of the International Conference Strikes and Social Conflicts, held in Lisbon, UNL, on 16-20 March 2011. During the last year the Association kept growing and has now the participation of three dozen academic institutions from Europe, Africa, North and South America.
2012
June
In this first issue we have a dossier on Strikes and Revolution, with articles by Alice K. Pate, Kevin Murphy, Michael Seidman and William A. Pelz. We also have articles by Richard Roman and Edur Velasco on a century of strikes in Mexico, Verity Burgmann and Meredith Burgmann on the Australian builders labourers in the 1970s and Anna Koumandaraki on the controversy in the Greek trade union movement over a state-centred approach to labour movement theory.