Talk:Labor history (discipline)

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"Many times blood has been shed for the sake of advancing the cause of union."

More often, blood has been shed for the sake of *stopping* the union. --Richard Myers

[edit] Sub-article on U.S. labor history?

The amount of detail in the long section on U.S. labor history tilts the perspective of this article heavily towards being read as Labor history in the United States. I would suggest that these sections be moved to a new article with that name, and summarized here. I'd be inclined to help expand on the more general subject. / Alarm 10:00, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the extensive US Labor history should be moved to its own article. This article should be kept as a general/introduction article with summaries and links to regional histories, such as to the Australian labour movement article which would be equivalent to Labor history in the United States . The only exception to this would be perhaps any material not to lengthy of a comparative nature: comparing the labor history of US/Canada/Britain/Australia/Europe etc. --Takver 02:43, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Remove copied material

I reverted to a previous version because an anonymous contributor had added a huge amount of partisan content that was taken from another website [1] with no indication that it is compatible with the Wikipedia license. Furthermore, there was no attempt to clean up the content or integrate it into the Wikipedia system. AdamRetchless 13:23, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have removed a large amount of material which was the history of labour rather than labour history, that is to say it was a brief account of things that happened in the past, not an article about the study of labour in the past. This removed material could perhaps be added to articles on the labour movement in the US or the working class in the US or some similar article. Here it is:

== Labor history ==

Labor history begins with the development of waged labour as a system of social life, at a time between the Black Plague and 1830 in the United Kingdom. This slow process drew more and more workers into a system of alienated labour.

=== Initial organisations ===

The initial organisations formed by working people were conspiratorial like the army of General Ned Ludd or luddites. Work related organisations were labelled illegal combinations. These early unions were very transient, and were suppressed more often than not by mass arrests and massacres.

Throughout the last half of the Nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Eight hour day movement was a central focus for labour organisations.

=== Labor actions, historical tactics ===

A common tactic was striking, an especially effective strand of which was the sit-down strike which was first used in 1933 and became an effective measure.

== Politics and philosophy ==

Throughout the early part of the twentieth century, the great question in the labor movement was, craft unionism or industrial unionism?

=== Massacres ===

In Colorado, coal miners endured the Ludlow Massacre and the Columbine Mine Massacre.

==Labor history of the United States==

The history of organized labor in the U.S. begins in the mid-19th century. Unions received a major impetus from the New Deal and grew rapidly from 1935 to a peak around 1960. Since then unions membership has plunged in the private sector to about 8%, but grown in the public sectos. See Labor history of the United States

== Links to labor memorials ==

In the United States:

== Labor arts, music and culture ==