Preliminary Programme

Wed 24 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Thu 25 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Fri 26 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14.15
    16.30

Sat 27 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

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Wednesday 24 March 2004 14:15
O-3 LAB01 Workers in Economic Crises: Problems and Prospects
Room O
Network: Labour Chair: William Kenefick
Organizer: Peter Archibald Discussant: Carrie Lane Chet
Peter Archibald : Looking for the Silver Lining: Hamilton workers' successes in the 1930s and recent recessions
Usually, threats of layoffs, wage reductions and other cutbacks during economic crises provide workers with new incentives to struggle against their employers. However, the same crises also make it difficult for workers to prevent or lessen the impact of such cutbacks. Nevertheless, some workers in Hamilton, Ontario had small but ... (Show more)
Usually, threats of layoffs, wage reductions and other cutbacks during economic crises provide workers with new incentives to struggle against their employers. However, the same crises also make it difficult for workers to prevent or lessen the impact of such cutbacks. Nevertheless, some workers in Hamilton, Ontario had small but remarkable victories in the 1930s. They won strikes; maintained some control over workingconditions; disrupted and de-legitimated local governments; or influenced them considerably within the official political process. These successes resulted not only from the unevenness of the Depression and the objective circumstances faced by workers, but by workers' apparent ability to recognize the effectiveness of various strategies and alter them accordingly, or to invent entirely new ones like the "sit-down" strike. During recent recessions workers have sometimes faced new and perhaps still more formidable odds, such as being contractually-limited rather than "permanent" employees, the threat that their plants will be closed permaneently, and neo-liberal governments both shedding their own employees and decreasing relief from unemployment. Yet, here too workers in Hamilton and elsewehere have had some success.
How can one explain such "small victories"? In both periods, "real" leverage has been more important than organization, mobilization and militancy per se. Being able to stop production by striking, or by boycotting products, is still crucial, but so is being able to disrupt gobvernance from without, and to de-legitimate, divide, and threaten governments with electoral defeat from within. In recent recessions as well as in the 1930s, an admittedly dangerous but sometimes successful strategy for workers has been to form coalitions with employers or governments, coalitions that have allowed qualified "win-win" outcomes rather than an outright "fight to the death". Recently, coalitions across national boundaries between workers and other activists have also hindered the "flight" of capital and governance.
As analysts as well as activists, perhaps our methodological strategy should now be to focus upon exceptions to the rule (cases where workers have had some success) rather than the rule itself (the dismal prospects for a majority of workers). Perhaps this will help us make the exception become the rule. (Show less)

Meg Luxton : Getting By in Hard Times: The Challenges of Neo-liberalism in Canada, 1980-2000
This paper examines how Canadian workers, in their unions and communities, have responded to major attacks on their standards of living and their working conditions in the 1980s and 1990s. While the paper focussed on a case study from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, it argues that the general trends shaping workers' ... (Show more)
This paper examines how Canadian workers, in their unions and communities, have responded to major attacks on their standards of living and their working conditions in the 1980s and 1990s. While the paper focussed on a case study from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, it argues that the general trends shaping workers' lives in Hamilton, are widespread. Three major trends have emerged internationally over the past twenty years. More women and especially mothers of young children have entered or stayed in the paid labour force, reducing the amount of their time available for unpaid caring labour. This trend is found in most regions of the world and is reflected in the increased numbers of female labour migrants At the same time, social welfare programmes have been cut back in almost every country where they existed as neo-liberal economic policies came to dominate government practices, forcing cutbacks to state support for social reproduction. Employers have forced concessions from most workers, generating lower wages, longer hours, fewer benefits and more insecure employment. The result is that in Canada, as in many other countries, there is an emerging crisis of social reproduction.
Many individuals and families are having a harder time making ends meet. In the paid labour force, most workers are working longer hours, many union contracts have traded benefits previously available for job security, many more workers are not covered by contracts and have no benefits, and incomes have stagnated or even declined. At the same time, child care remains difficult to find in many countries. One measure of the way these changing economic dynamics are translating into a crisis of social reproduction is the declining birth rate, currently the lowest in Canada's history and one of the lowest among the OECD countries.
In this context, getting by is difficult and workers organizing, resisting and fighting back face serious challenges. (Show less)

Stephan Vanfraechem : Dockers' solidarity and inter-port competition: incompatible ?
In contemporary studies (both academic and popular) on dockers and dockers militantism the dockers’ solidarity is always stressed on. This has generated the ‘romantic’ image of the docker who is – regardless of nationality or speciality – standing strong against external threats in whatever form. An international organisation like the ... (Show more)
In contemporary studies (both academic and popular) on dockers and dockers militantism the dockers’ solidarity is always stressed on. This has generated the ‘romantic’ image of the docker who is – regardless of nationality or speciality – standing strong against external threats in whatever form. An international organisation like the International Transportworkers’ Federation (ITF) put this dockers’ solidarity forward as an important ‘weapon’ or counterpart for the intense competition between the major ports (e.g. ‘There are no rivalries so intense as seaport rivalries’). This increasing competition put a lot of pressure on costs (for cargo-handling but also official taxes...) and labour-organisation. In this paper I would like to make an objective analysis of this dockers’ solidarity. Is it myth or reality ? Does the intense competition between Northern European ports (Antwerp, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Bremen and Le Havre) also threaten this dockers’ solidarity or must we conclude that this dockers’ solidarity never really existed ? After a short introduction that is focusing on forms of international solidarity during the interwar years (i.e. the ITF-campaign against fascism), I am merely focusing on the 1950’s and 1960’s and especially the introduction of the 5-day week in Belgian, Dutch and German ports. Purpose of this paper is to examine whether there really is room for a social-economic form of this dockers’ solidarity in the specific competitive atmosphere of the Northern European ports (Show less)



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