Year: 1997
Type: article
Abstract: The first European Social Science History Conference was held in Noordwijkerhout, the Netherlands on May 9-11,1996.The Conference was organized by the International Institute of Social History and modeled on conferences hosted by the American Social Science History Association.Panels were organized into networks, covering such topics as Family Strategies and Changing Labor Relations; Labor; Nations and Nation-Building; Political Movements; and Women/Gender, among others.Scholars in these fields convened under the direction of a network chair during the conference and were encouraged to exchange and develop their ideas between conferences, which are scheduled to be held biannually.One session on "Labor Relations and Worker Militancy" included papers by Eric Nijhof (Utrecht University) and Kristian Falk (Stockholm University).Nijhof's paper offered an interesting comparison of union organization among dockworkers in Hamburg, Le Havre, London, and Rotterdam at the turn of the century.Nijhof found that union organization was highly unstable in each port, rising and falling with the outcome of each strike.Falk's paper examined forest workers in Sweden who organized an unusually successful and durable revolutionary syndicalist union.At its peak, according to Falk, the union had 30,000 members, achieved higher wages for its members than a competing reformist union, and was the only syndicalist union in Sweden to survive after World War Two.Another panel examined state and trade union responses to immigration.Amsterdam University was well represented by Louise Reitbergen and J. Roosblad.Both presented papers examining the response of Dutch trade unions to immigrant workers in the Netherlands.Simone Goedings (European Institute) offered a fascinating background to current efforts to deregulate labor markets in Europe.She traced these efforts back to the 1950s, when Italy tried to export its unemployment to the other members of the Common Market.Two intriguing papers were presented at a panel on "Determinants
Authors: Alan Draper, Philip Scranton
Language: English
Topic: Labor Movements and Unions
Subfield: Public Administration
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W1997344724