All the workers employed by a company no matter where their work site is, or what the nature of their job is.
During the first decades of the 20th century, Spain saw the rise of several radical left and right groups that continually vied for power against the largely ineffectual civilian government.
On the left the groups included the socialist Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) and its more radical rival the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT).
In Houston, the largest cleaning companies paid their janitors an average of $5.25 per hour and did not provide health benefits. Meanwhile, in other cities the average salary for a janitor position was between $10-20 an hour and family health benefits were provided. The Service Employee’s International Union (SEIU), under the leadership of its president, Stephen Lerner, utilized the Justice for Janitors Campaign, which involved over 200,000 janitors in more than 28 cities across the United States, to fight to improve the working conditions and benefits for these workers.
During the 1950s, Honduras was characterized by a large gap between the few rich citizens and the many poor laborers. In 1952, Honduras held its first ever agrarian census. The wealthy landowners, who only consisted of 4.2 percent of the total population, owned an astonishing 56.8 percent of the arable land in Honduras. Meanwhile, the poor farmers of Honduras, who made up 65.1 percent of the population, only owned 15.7 percent of the arable land. To make matters worse, the wealthy landowners who possessed the majority of the land did not use it effectively.
As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
- James Oppenheim (Used as the rallying cry for the movement)
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) formed the Local 399 shortly after World War II. The Local 399 was a labor union for janitors which had reached its peak in the 1970s, but was struggling in the 1980s. During this time, the Local 399 fought for higher wages for its members, which motivated cleaning contractors to invest in nonunion options. The cleaning industry was extremely competitive at the time and as a result of this emphasis on nonunion cleaners, membership in the Local 399 had fallen from approximately 5,000 members to only 1,800.
The Soviet forces that liberated Poland from Nazi occupation after World War II installed a government under which workers, employed by state-owned businesses, could not organize or represent themselves. During the 1970s, frustration with the one-party system grew and by the end of the decade, the Polish economy was near collapse.
On June 30, 1980, the government announced a 'reorganization of meat distribution' which resulted in an immediate 60% price increase and greater difficulty in obtaining meat.
In the late 19th century, Russia’s autocracy, led by a Tsar (also czar), came under increasing attack. Alexander II was forced to liberate the serfs, but he was still assassinated in 1881 by a group called The People’s Will. His heir, Tsar Alexander III was badly shaken by this and launched a massive crackdown. In 1894, Nicholas II became Tsar and attempted to make a number of liberal reforms. For most, however, the reforms didn’t go far enough. In addition, a disastrous war with Japan from 1904-1905 shattered confidence in the Tsar’s ability to rule.
During his first seven years as president of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic led the country into several wars with Croatia and Bosnia and isolated it internationally. While he spent money on the country’s secret police and military, unemployment reached as high as 50 percent before 1996. Citizens led several anti-war and pro-democracy campaigns in the early ‘90s, but failed due to lack of outside support. Opposition groups continued both violent and non-violent struggles against the regime, but neither was having any success.
The general strike in Ådalen, Sweden, in 1931 was part of a much larger industrial struggle between the Swedish Employers’ Federation (SAF) and the Swedish Union Federation (LO), a struggle that had been continuing since the late 19th century, if not longer.
Workers in the British colony of Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, bore an increased workload to support the war effort during WWII. As extraction of mineral resources increased, employees of Rhodesia Railways worked upward of 65 hours per week to transport the minerals to ports on the Indian Ocean. While white European railway workers had strong unions representing them, black African employees received inferior treatment and lower pay grades than whites.
In December 1936, autoworkers at General Motors' (GM) plants across Michigan staged multiple sit-down strikes, the longest of which lasted 44 days. The workers originally demanded that GM recognize their union, the United Autoworkers of America (UAW) as the sole bargaining agent for all GM employees. The autoworkers also demanded that GM end all discriminatory practices against its workers and relax efforts to speed up production.
In 2004, Valero, the largest independent oil refiner in the United States, bought a refinery plant on the coast of Aruba. The workers of the refinery were a part of the Independent Oil Workers Union of Aruba. In September 2006, they signed an agreement to become members of the United Steelworkers International Union. At this time, Jay Jeffries, the lead negotiator from the United Steel Workers, met with Ray Buckley, vice president and general manager of the refinery, to discuss a new contract for the refinery workers.
In April of 1899, employees of the Niagara Silver Company organized a new union branch: The Metal Polishers, Buffers, Platers, and Brassworkers' International Union of North America, Local No. 155. About 100 workers of the company were part of the union, with fellow employee George Furniss as President. W. A. Jameson, manager of the Niagara Steel Company, appeared before his employees on May 19 and advised against membership in the union.
Qatar is a small independent emirate in the Middle East, north of Saudi Arabia, that has been ruled by the Al-Thani family since the mid-1800s. Nearly 850,000 people are citizens of Qatar, though thousands more are immigrant workers, who make up three-quarters of the workforce. 96% of the population lives in the cities, and the most populated city is the capital city of Doha.
New Caledonia, a French territory in the South Pacific, contains approximately one quarter of the world's nickel resources, and the nickel mining industry has long been a central aspect of the small island's economy. In 2005, unions on the island caused repeated disruptions to the nickel supply chain, some in protest of working conditions, others as the result of a national divide between those who wanted further mineral resource development in the country’s north, and still others who wanted development to be focused in the south.
On February 14, 2011, Rwandan textile workers began a 6-day strike to protest unfair labor practices instituted by new management. More than 500 workers at UTEXRWA, a local textile firm, went on strike in response to a multitude of negative changes instituted by a new factory manager, Trivets Deepak, 3 months prior to the beginning of the strike.
Following a breakdown in negotiations over a collective bargaining agreement, severance pay, and job security, over 100 employees of Air Vanuatu went on strike on August 22, 2005. Workers in Port Vila and Luganville stopped working at 4:30 am, forcing the small airline to cancel all its domestic and international flights. The workers demanded arbitration of their grievances as a condition for ending the strike.
During the first week of August 1944, employees of the Philadelphia Transit Company (PTC) effectively shut down the city's transit system, defying both the federal government and their own union. The strike, which lasted for six days and halted much of the city's war production, was in response to a PTC decision to promote eight African Americans to the position of trolley car driver. Throughout the decade leading up to this "hate strike," African Americans had demanded that the PTC hire them as bus and trolley drivers, motormen and conductors, and station cashiers.
In 2009, China became the world's fastest growing automobile market. One corporation that contributed to the market's remarkable growth was Honda Motor Corporation. Honda, a Japanese corporation that first entered China in 1999, had four car plants in China. In 2010, sweeping labor unrest spread throughout China and workers at Honda's four car plants seized the opportunity to seek out higher pay and better working conditions.
In 2006, countries in the Persian Gulf region were experiencing an economic boom, including Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. The total value of new construction exceeded $200 billion in that year alone. In order to sustain such rapid growth, 10 million migrant laborers lived and worked in the region, coming from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. Working conditions were poor. Construction work was dangerous, employers would take workers’ passports, and minimum wages were often not paid in full or were withheld entirely.
By 1924, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) was administered and occupied by the British government as an official British protectorate. While the Colonial Office headed administration, a group of interconnected companies financed by Britain, South Africa, and the United States came to control what became the ‘Copperbelt’ in Northern Rhodesia. Copper was becoming more valuable due to increased demand for electrical components and motors and regional deposits were easy to extract and profitably attracted investors.
The cargo division of Swiss Federal Railways (SFR) had repeatedly been suffering financial deficits for a few years and even changed top management. On March 6, 2008, SFR announced a major restructuring plan that involved shutting down its maintenance workshops; more than 400 jobs were to be cut as a consequence. 126 jobs were to be cut in the town of Bellinzona, Switzerland. These workers represented SEV (Transport Workers’ Union), UNIA (an active trade union in service industries), and Transfair (a Christian trade union).
Ranked as the world’s fourth best brewer, Carlsberg Brewery held a 163-year-old tradition that its workers could enjoy free beer from refrigerators located around work sites throughout the day. Typical workers consumed three bottles of beer a day, excluding those consumed during lunch hours. The only restriction was “that you could not be drunk at work. It was up to each and every one to be responsible.”
By the early 1990s, President Hastings Kamuzu Banda of the
Malawi Congress Party (MCP) had been president of Malawi for thirty years, ever
since the country transitioned out of colonial rule. At the time, Malawi was a
single-party state in which political parties were illegal.
On February 12, 1968, sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, began a labor strike to protest unfair wages, unsafe working conditions, and the city’s refusal to recognize their sanitation workers union.
