Πριν από 150 χρόνια O William Thornton, Δημόσιος Λειτουργός και Νομομαθής, δημοσίευσε ένα επιστημονικό άρθρο στο φιλολογικό περιοδικό Fortnightly Review με στόχο την υπεράσπιση του δικαιώματος των εργαζομένων για συλλογικές διαπραγματεύσεις για τους μισθούς και τις συνθήκες εργασίας. Ο Thornton χρησιμοποίησε φιλελεύθερα επιχειρήματα στη βάση της ισότιμης μεταχείρισης των εργαζομένων έναντι των εργοδοτών, οι οποίοι όντας ευάριθμοι ήταν σε θέση να επιβάλλουν την άποψη τους στην ανοργάνωτη μάζα των ανειδίκευτων μισθωτών. Απέναντι του ο Thornton είχε την εδραιωμένη, εδώ και εννιά δεκαετίες, αντίληψη περί ενός δήθεν «Σιδηρού Νόμου των Μισθών» ο οποίος καθιστούσε ανέφικτη κάθε συνδικαλιστική διεκδίκηση με δεδομένο το ύψος του κυκλοφορούντος κεφαλαίου που προορίζεται για μισθούς σε κάθε επιχείρηση. Η Κλασική Πολιτική Οικονομία από τον «Πλούτο των Εθνών» (1776) παρέμενε δέσμια μιας θεωρητικής γενίκευσης που στηρίζονταν στην παρωχημένη αντίληψη της προβιομηχανικής περιόδου, όταν οι μισθοί προκαταβάλλονταν στην αρχή της παραγωγικής διαδικασίας ώστε οι εργαζόμενοι να επιβιώνουν μέχρι την ολοκλήρωση της. Κατ’αυτήν την έννοια οι επιχειρηματίες-παραγωγοί δέσμευαν ένα μέρος του κεφαλαίου τους –το περίφημο «απόθεμα μισθών» wages fund- το οποίο θεωρούνταν σταθερό μέχρι το τέλος της παραγωγικής διαδικασίας και τη διάθεση των προϊόντων στο εμπόριο. Αυτή ήταν η βάση της άρνησης κάθε δυνατότητας συλλογικής διεκδίκησης υψηλότερων μισθών και η συνεπακόλουθη απαγόρευση κάθε συνδικαλιστικής δράσης.

 

Για καλή του τύχη, ο βασικός εκπρόσωπος της Κλασικής Πολιτικής Οικονομίας το 1867 ήταν ο Ανεξάρτητος Βουλευτής του Westminster, και Πρύτανης του Πανεπιστημίου St Andrews, ο πιο αναγνωρίσιμος οικονομολόγος της εποχής του, ο John Stuart Mill, πρώην συνάδελφος του στην «Εταιρεία Ανατολικών Ινδιών». Ο Mill, που επαναλάμβανε συνεχώς στις έξι προηγούμενες εκδόσεις των «Αρχών Πολιτικής Οικονομίας» το ίδιο δόγμα, χρειάστηκε μόλις 3 σελίδες για να αναγνωρίσει το «λάθος» του με μια λιτή φράση: «το δόγμα που διδάχθηκε από όλους τους οικονομολόγους (εμού συμπεριλαμβανομένου) που αρνούνταν ότι η συνδικαλιστική δράση δύναται να αυξήσει τους μισθούς …αυτό το δόγμα στερείται επιστημονικής βάσης και πρέπει να τεθεί στην άκρη» (CW, V: 646). O τελευταίος των Κλασικών, ο Καθηγητής John Elliott Cairnes επιχείρησε να ανασκευάσει, ένα χρόνο μετά το θάνατο του Mill, το 1874, την υπαναχώρηση αυτή με έναν τρόπο που χειροτέρεψε την κατάσταση, αφού μετέτρεψε το απόθεμα μισθών σε ένα απλό λογιστικό μέγεθος του Εθνικού Εισοδήματος. Ο δρόμος για τη νομιμοποίηση του Συνδικαλισμού άνοιξε με την απόρριψη του δήθεν «Σιδηρού Νόμου των Μισθών» την ίδια χρονιά και εντελώς ανεξάρτητα από την καταλυτική επίθεση που εγκαινίασε η δημοσίευση του Κεφαλαίου, το 1867.

Σκοπός του κειμένου είναι να παρουσιάσει την εργασία, υπό το πρίσμα της οικονομικής επιστήμης, και στη συνέχεια να συζητήσει ζητήματα έμφυλων διαφοροποιήσεων στην εργασία, με την έμφαση να δίνεται στα μισθολογικά, υπό το πρίσμα ετερόδοξων θεωριών, κατά τη διάρκεια του 20ου αιώνα έως τις ημέρες μας.

Η εργασία ως μέρος της ανθρώπινης συμπεριφοράς έχει απασχολήσει επί μακρόν διάφορες επιστήμες, και από αυτό φυσικά δε θα μπορούσε να ξεφύγει η οικονομική επιστήμη. Η συζήτηση έχει ξεκινήσει ήδη από τον Αριστοτέλη, έχει συνεχίσει στην εργασιακή θεωρία της αξίας, και πλέον είμαστε στο σημείο που κυριαρχεί η οριακή εργασιακή θεωρία, με ό,τι αυτό συνεπάγεται σε όρους οικονομικούς, κοινωνικούς, κ.λπ.

Οι κλασσικοί οικονομολόγοι θεωρούν ότι η αξία χρήσης των αγαθών είναι αναγκαία προϋπόθεση για την ύπαρξη οικονομικής ανταλλακτικής αξίας. Κάνουν χρήση αυτής της υπόθεσης για να εξηγήσουν τη λειτουργία της οικονομίας στο σύνολο της και δέχονται ότι πίσω από την αξία χρήσης των αγαθών, υπάρχει η ενσωματωμένη εργασία που χρησιμοποιήθηκε για να παραχθούν αυτά τα αγαθά. Θεωρούν ότι η τιμή της εργασίας (γνωστή ως κόστος εργασίας, για τις επιχειρήσεις, και ως μισθός για τους εργαζόμενους) είναι κάτι που σχετίζεται όχι μόνο με την οικονομική δραστηριότητα, αλλά και με τις ισχύουσες κοινωνικές νόρμες, σε κάθε υπό μελέτη κοινωνία. Συνεπώς, η τιμή της εργασίας δεν μπορεί να καθορισθεί από μόνη της, αλλά απαιτείται να συνυπολογίζονται και οι προαναφερθείσες νόρμες.

Από την άλλη, το νεοκλασικό υπόδειγμα, κραταιό στην άσκηση κοινωνικής πολιτικής, ιδίως την τρέχουσα περίοδο της κρίσης, αντιμετωπίζει την εργασία ως εμπόρευμα, του οποίου η τιμή διαμορφώνεται στα πλαίσια του ελεύθερου ανταγωνισμού, με τους παράγοντες της προσφοράς και της ζήτησης (εργοδότες και εργαζόμενοι) να καταλήγουν σε ισορροπία. Αυτό το υπόδειγμα χρησιμοποιείται για να δείξει τι πρέπει να γίνει στην αγορά εργασίας, ώστε να επέλθει ισορροπία κατά Pareto. Είναι όμως έτσι;

Σε ό,τι αφορά στην Ελλάδα, οικονομικοί και κοινωνικοί παράγοντες καθυστέρησαν την πορεία εκβιομηχάνισης της οικονομίας. Αυτό επηρέασε την ισορροπία στην αγορά εργασίας και είχε ως άμεσο αντίκτυπο, ζητήματα μισθιακών διαφορών να εκφραστούν πολύ αργότερα, μόλις στις αρχές του 20ου αιώνα μαζί με τα πρώτα κύματα ίδρυσης βιομηχανικών μονάδων. Όλοι οι ερμηνευτές καταλήγουν σε μία εξαρχής διαφοροποίηση τόσο της συμμετοχής γυναικών στην αγορά εργασίας όσο και των μισθών τους.

Με το παρόν θα αναδειχθούν αυτά τα ζητήματα και θα γίνει απόπειρα ερμηνείας τους.

From the emergence of a relatively organized labour market, it became clear that this market is different from the rest due to the special nature of labour as a “commodity”. Unlike other “commodities”, labour has a soul. Thus, in order to understand how the labour market functions, we should take account of other factors and mechanisms, apart from the pure market mechanism. Such factors are the social norms, which influence – inter alia – the wage levels and workers’ behaviour, psychological factors affecting the effort and motivation of workers, as well as labour institutions such as unemployment benefits or trade unions. The recognition of the significant role of all these factors was one of the main reasons that for decades, instead of the neoclassical tradition, the so-called Institutional Economics had prevailed in the economic analysis of labour markets.

This paper seeks to examine the relationship and the interaction between institutions and the labour market in the light of the ideas of the first generation of institutional economists. The latter regarded economy as a nexus of institutions and argued that, besides price mechanism, institutional and non-market factors such as proprietary rights, professional and trade associations, traditions, customs, etc. play an important role in the functioning of an economy. They also contend that markets operate typically under the imperfect competition regime. Finally, they expressed the belief that the economic concept of welfare, in addition to the criterion of effectiveness and satisfaction of consumer desires, should include issues concerning e.g. the human “self-development”, justice and workers’ well-being.

One very interesting and little studied aspect of the debate in the last quarter of the 19th century between the supporters of a gold standard currency and the proponents of bimetallism or a silver standard was that relating to competition between “civilized” laborers in the West and cheap labor from silver countries, especially those in Southeastern Asia and Hispanic America. According to the gold standard advocates, wages paid in “honest” gold money would serve the best interests of both the agricultural and laboring classes, which were otherwise in danger of pauperization. This, they claimed, was due both to the diminishing purchasing power of silver money, and to the advance of speculation provoked by an overabundant currency connected with the free minting of silver. On the other hand, their opponents argued that a scarce gold standard currency, coupled with a shrinkage in the volume of money relative to the increasing population and business that accompanied it, would enhance the value of the unit of money, enrich creditors at the expense of the producing majority and lead to falling prices, falling wages and a lower demand for labor. In tracing the debate over the danger that competition from cheap Southeastern Asian labor posed to western industrial districts, I shall attempt to connect it with the nature of Asian markets, monetary flows from East to West, and western economic and military intervention in the area.

To carry out the above investigation I will draw on a wide-ranging array of material, consisting of tracts, pamphlets, essays, reprints, etc., from the microform service of the Firestone Library at Princeton, and from public archives in France and Great Britain. I shall also use reports from western ambassadors, consuls and business representatives from China, Japan and India, and material from congressional and parliamentary committees in the USA, Great Britain and France for the period between 1880 and 1914.

This paper aims to present parts of my ongoing research on the institution of Argentina´s labor attachés established under Peron´s governments in the period 1946-1955. Argentina became the third country – after United States and Great Britain – to establish the office of Labor attachés in its diplomatic missions abroad. The establishment of those “plebeian” diplomatic attachés who undertook the communication with the organized labor movement in their host countries – being generally treated with distrust not only by the foreign governments but also by the traditional diplomatic circles of their own country – went along with Peron´s political priorities who based his political program on generous concessions to the working classes and the privileged relation he constructed with trade unions. On the other hand this institution was related to the post-World War II international context: the development doctrine that dominated in the Western world, the shift to industrialization, the new power relations in the relations of production and the recognition of organized labor as political partner within the confrontational Cold War context.

My research is based largely on the archive of Argentina´s Labor attaché who exercised his duties in Greece during the 1950s. The material included in this archive contains interesting judgments about the situation and labor conditions of the working class in our country and it illuminates the methods of those special diplomatic attachés. Among their basic tasks were the construction of communication channels with the delegates of the local labor movement, the diffusion of Peronism´s social policies and the exportation of know-how and technical expertise in matters of trade union organization, labor legislation and social policy. Certainly, their broader aim was to influence local trade unions in favor of the Third Way position that characterized Peron´s international agenda. In this way they tried to counterbalance the communist influence on the trade unions but also compete – especially in hot zones as Latin America – with United States´ labor diplomacy that aimed, though special training programs, at the formation of an acquiescent working class. Independently of the practical effects of this labor diplomacy, the very establishment of such an institution and the presence of labor attachés show how during the 1950s labor policies became a battlefield of political and ideological control at an international level.

In the 1960s, facing intense labour conflicts at home and an increasing pressure from the East-Asian industries, companies from Western Europe and from the United States made their move towards Eastern and Central Europe. They encountered the states in the region confronted with an accute lack of resources to sustain their economic growth and developmental aims. My paper investigates the incorporation of the Romanian car industry in global commodity chains in the last decades of state socialism, with a focus on the changes in labour regulations that accompanied it. I narrow down my research to the emergence of joint ventures between the Romanian state and multinational corporations in the late socialist period. I chart the changes in labour legislation, bilateral agreements, import-export contracts, wage negotiations, and patent transactions involving the Romanian state and Western companies in the 1960s and in the 1970s. More concretely, I follow the case of Citroen, which started the negotiations with the Romanian state in the 1970s and opened the Oltcit car factory in Craiova in 1981.

Car industry has been used as a showcase for the process of transition from Fordism to flexible capitalism from the 1970s onwards. Nevertheless, little attention has been given to how (and when) this transition unfolded in East-Central Europe. An exploration of the integration of the Romanian car industry in global commodity chains offers a valuable angle from which we can better apprehend alternative paths to neoliberal globalization. Most importantly, my research provides an analytical space in which block concepts like “Fordism”, “neoliberalism”, “state socialism”, or “postsocialism” can be historicized and problematized as encounters between different logics of accumulation, scaled political rationalities, managerial cultures, and workers’ everyday struggles for planning and sustaining a “future”.

Recently, scholarly literature emphasized the need to put global conflicts and interdependencies at the centre of labour analysis. I will show how what happened to workers in a “workers’ state” or to “postsocialist” workers could not be separated from what happened to labour in other parts of the world. In the 1970s, the lives of the Romanian workers were shaped by processes that also impacted French workers’ life course. While on the one hand it left many French workers without jobs, it simultaneously produced pockets of highly skilled and better paid industrial workers in Romania. Consequently, one of the aims of my paper is to unpack the epistemological consequences of overlooking these historical connections in our understanding of state socialism and postsocialism and to argue instead for the necessity of exploring “entangled worlds of labour” and their corresponding social imaginaries.

The economic crisis of the 1990s and the economic reforms that followed have led to increasing inequalities in Cuba. Within official Socialist discourse these reforms are necessary precisely in order to safeguard Socialism. Certain activist critiques of growing inequalities hence foreground how the reforms have gone so far as to make racism -- the phenomenon Cuban Socialism claims to have eliminated - a serious problem again. The flow of dollar remittances - made possible with the legalization of the dollar in Cuba - for instance tends to end up among self-identified "white" Cubans. The percentage of black workers in the tourism sector is declining precisely as jobs in this sector are becoming more lucrative. And due to the reforms, students from historically poor (/black) families today have less chance of pursuing higher education than their parents did, thus re-"whitening" the middle-class.

In principle this anti-racist framing of the problem of inequality has the potential to launch a less easily silenced and more radical critique of the direction of change in contemporary Cuba. During my fieldwork in Havana in 2014-2015, I however discovered that black activists struggle to connect their anti-racist discourse to the way blue-collar workers - including black workers - experience the growing inequalities around them. Amongst the employees of the municipal garbage services, inequalities were still interpreted primarily within the Socialist discourse, with "foreign dollars" as a main culprit and racism as something experienced only as a problem in the field of romantic relationships.

In this paper I investigate the disconnect between the workers' Socialist perspective and the activists' anti-racist perspective. I situate my explanation of why workers are disinclined towards a more radical racial framing of the problem of their increasing marginalization - why they seem caught in a similar "anatomy of patience" as described by Sarah Ashwin (1999) for Russian blue-collar workers during transition - in the continuing anchoring of workers' economic and social lives in the Socialist enterprise system, even as this system is substantially being hollowed-out. Workers need to continuously engage in the secondary, private economy in order to survive, and yet often they depend for this moonlighting on the resources and connections of their official workplace. As racialized inequalities increase in the private economy, workers persist in directing their anger and frustration primarily at malfunctioning and corruption within the Socialist enterprise system.

This proposed paper builds upon selective outcomes of a three-year research project: An Introduction to the Occupational History of Turkey via New Methods and New Approaches (1840–1940), funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) (Nr. 112K271), which was completed at the end of 2015. In our project we have curated, digitised, coded and analysed occupational and demographic data from Ottoman surveys and Turkish population censuses to contribute to an emerging digital research infrastructure in economic history. I will present the results of our analysis of an extensive dataset (including occupations, ethno-religious affiliations, occupational and total incomes of in total more than 80,000 Ottoman city dwellers in 24 cities shown in the map below, extracted from an 1845 Ottoman tax survey). We have coded ethno-religious affiliations and occupational titles, to be able to conduct a numerical and qualitative analysis to assess the validity of the ethno-religious division of labour argument for the mid-nineteenth century Ottoman Empire.

We still lack the data and sophistication of technique to reach firm conclusions on the relationships among ethno-religious affiliation, employment opportunities and levels of earnings in the Ottoman Empire. By taking the examination of ethno-religious division of labour hypothesis in the Ottoman historiography to a state of art spatiotemporal level, our results show that ethno-religious affiliations were major determinants of occupational choices and economic performance of urban Ottoman subjects in the mid-nineteenth century. However, their effect cannot be examined based upon ceteris paribus assumptions.

Istanbul was the biggest city of the Ottoman Empire and as the seat of the government and the army was in constant need for products and services. This made the Ottoman capital a magnet for the people of the periphery, both Muslims and non-Muslims, who were in pursuit of work and better life conditions. The examination of these migration networks has attracted the interest of scholars, who have pointed out not only the importance of common origins for the settlement in particular neighbourhoods of the capital, but also their influence in the occupational specialization of people.

In my paper, I intend to discuss evidence from an Ottoman register compiled in 1821. This records the male Greek-Orthodox dwellers mainly of Beşiktaş, a coastal settlement on the Bosphorus strait, that was part of wider Istanbul and was administratively attached to the district of Galata. The compilation of this register along with others of the same period, is part of an attempt of the Ottoman government to record the capital’s Greek-Orthodox population after the beginning of the Greek War of Independence. The source provides rich information for the professions and working space of the Greek-Orthodox inhabitants, as well as their origins, allowing the examination of the aforementioned assumptions regarding the influence of networks for the settlement in specific areas and the taking over of certain professions. As a result, we understand that Beşiktaş was for many of its inhabitants the place where they also worked, while many others worked far from their homes, for example at the hans and markets of the historical peninsula, a fact that made their commuting through the Bosphorus or the Golden Horn necessary. Apart from these, the register provides information for the marital status of those registered, the type of their property and occasionally for their family and labour relations. As a result it can also provide evidence on the importance of father’s occupation for the offspring’s choice of profession and also the importance of profession in kinship relations.

According to the above, we can get a glimpse of the professions of the Greek-Orthodox dwellers of Beşiktaş, as well as of the labour networking regarding people and space. The parallel examination of corresponding registers, such as one compiled during the same period for the area of Tatavla, may offer a more complete picture of the labour market in Istanbul and the integration of the Greek-Orthodox people in it.

My lecture is devoted to the simple Jewish artisans and day laborers in Salonika, and depicting their world within the society where they lived, the Greek Christian society of Salonika, during the Great Depression. Based on the lists of applicants for immigration certificates from the British Mandate between 1930-1935, and on statistics compiled by the Jewish Member of Parliament, Mentsh Ibn Shanji in 1936 about the Jewish professionals in the city, I propose an updated picture of the Jewish world of work between the two World Wars. The common picture portrayed up until now by most historians shows that the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Greek nation state brought about an immediate economic decline for the Jews of Salonika. The research presented here indicates that above and beyond the great damage the Jews of Salonika suffered during the fire of 1917, the status of the Jewish working classes declined mainly from the mid 1920s. This picture was not unique to the Jews, and was part of the overall impact of global processes, and the Great Depression on Greece as a whole and Salonika in particular.

The proposed paper examines the socio-demographic profile of the urban self-employed class in Northern Greece during the late 1930s, suggesting that it can be fruitfully addressed from the perspective of “productive aging.” It thus looks at the interaction between age, ethnicity, and family status amongst Northern Greek entrepreneurs between the wars. Official records categorizing entrepreneurs as self-employed, I focus on the natural sample of self-employed firm owners who requested loans from a Jewish bank in Salonica during the mid-1930s.

Demographic analysis of this group can shed light especially on its members’ age, in a period of low life expectancy. After drawing the demographic profile of the self-employed firm owner, I compare the demographic profile of the Greek and Jewish self-employed class, thence proceeding to determine whether age is associated with self-employed status. I address such questions as: Is there a correlation between the social status of self-employed migrants/veteran Greeks/ethnic minorities and their age? To what extent did the intergenerational support of older parents in financing and tutorship of their children affect older adults’ motivation and opportunity for continuing to engage in productive activities?

I also discuss whether the 1930s’ Greek entrepreneur’s profile can offer some answers to contemporary problems. Should governments encourage small self-employed business ventures, replacing automatic retirement with continued work (if feasible) assisted by younger family members? While many countries having already implemented pension reforms, can incentives related to productive aging be introduced today in Greece and neighbouring states with a similar family structure and demographic patterns? Can the mid-1930s serve as a paradigm for new policies and institutional support capable of indirectly stimulating small-scale self-employed older adult entrepreneurs to continue engaging in productive activities?

Many countries have already implemented pension reforms. Can incentives related to productive aging be introduced today?

The episodes surrounding the introduction of the first automatic cigarette making machine in Greece in 1910 have occasionally been touched by Greek historiography. Such attempts are characterized by a pervasive opinion on technology and especially production machinery. According to this opinion, production machinery tends to function smoothly after its introduction. Human labor is replaced without a hitch by ‘machinery labor’ and production is continued as before, albeit with a much greater ‘efficiency’.

The Varkas’ family automatic cigarette making machine that arrived in Piraeus in May 1910, was a rather different case. By turning to the history of the development of such machinery, as well as to the history of cigarette making work processes, we can point out the existence of various technical as well as political dysfunctions. By turning to the story of the introduction of Varkas’ cigarette making machine in Greece, we can point out that its owners were aiming less at the efficient production of cigarettes and more at the assertion of workplace control.

Such an approach is not without its broader historiographical connotations. Since the mid 1920s, such prominent Greek scholars as Xenophon Zolotas, have attributed the ‘backwardness’ of Greek industry to the ‘lack of technically competent workers’, meaning workers with a deep knowledge of productive processes. The case of the Greek cigarette rollers is precisely a case of such ‘technically competent workers’. Consequently, by studying the introduction of the first automatic cigarette making machine we can endeavor into the nature of ‘technically competent workers’ in Greece in the beginnings of the Twentieth Century, we can discern the methods by which such workers were dealt with, and we can rethink prevailing opinions concerning the causes of Greek ‘industrial backwardness’.

Το οπλισμένο σκυρόδεμα εισάγεται στην ελληνική κοινωνία στην αρχή του 20ου αιώνα. Εποχή που συμπίπτει ιστορικά με τις διαδικασίες συγκρότησης επαγγελματικών κοινοτήτων των ελλήνων επιστημόνων-μηχανικών. Επιπλέον, η χρήση του νέου υλικού διευρύνεται από το 1920 και εξής, όπως αντίστοιχα συνέβη την ίδια περίοδο στην Ευρώπη και στις ΗΠΑ. Στην ανακοίνωση θα παρουσιαστούν όψεις των διαδικασιών συνδιαμόρφωσης της ειδημοσύνης με την καινοτομία (θεωρώντας ως τέτοια το οπλισμένο σκυρόδεμα)  και εξειδικεύοντας στις σχέσεις της τεχνικής εργασίας με τις ειδικές ανάγκες μερίδας του κεφαλαίου, όπως αυτές συμπαράγονται στο ελληνικό πλαίσιο την περίοδο μελέτης. Η παρουσίαση θα εστιάζεται σε τέσσερις θεματικούς άξονες που θα αναδεικνύουν συνθετικά: τις διαδικασίες τυποποίησης και παγίωσης της τεχνολογίας του οπλισμένου σκυροδέματος σε θεωρητικό και σε πρακτικό επίπεδο(i)· τις διαδικασίες διαμόρφωσης της ειδημοσύνης των μηχανικών με το νέο υλικό και της συγκρότησης τεχνικών και άλλων επαγγελματικών κοινοτήτων ή θεσμών γύρω από αυτό(ii)· τις επενδυτικές και επιχειρηματικές επιλογές του κεφαλαίου στη χημική βιομηχανία, με έμφαση την τσιμεντοβιομηχανία(iii)· την οργάνωση της τεχνικής εργασίας και την εξ αυτής διαμόρφωση των αντίστοιχων ιεραρχιών στη βιομηχανική παραγωγή και κυρίως στα εργοτάξια(iv).

Στο πρώτο μέρος της ανακοίνωσης θα παρουσιαστούν προσπάθειες  σύνθεσης της ιστορίας της τεχνολογίας και της ιστορίας της εργασίας, όπως αυτές αποτυπώνονται στην ανάδειξη της εργασίας που κατέστη αόρατη εξαιτίας της ηγεμονίας της ιδεολογίας περί τεχνολογικού αυτοματισμού. Το επίκεντρο θα είναι η μελέτη του φαινομένου στην περίπτωση των τεχνολογιών της πληροφορικής και των τηλεπικοινωνιών. Θα παρουσιαστούν αντιπροσωπευτικά παραδείγματα από την ιστορία της αθέατης εργασίας στην παραγωγή πινάκων υπολογισμού, στην τηλεγραφία και την τηλεφωνία, στη μισθοδοσία εταιρειών, σε έρευνες επιστημόνων και κατασκευές μηχανικών, καθώς και στον προγραμματισμό. Η παρουσίαση του τρόπου με τον οποίο η εργασία αυτή κατέστη αθέατη θα συνδυαστεί με μια εισαγωγή σε εργασιακές διακρίσεις και ταυτότητες, από την μεσοπολεμική  διαμάχη μεταξύ analysts και computors της εποχής των μηχανικών και ηλεκτρικών διατάξεων στην μεταπολεμική αντιπαράθεση μεταξύ  coders και programmers της ηλεκτρονικής. Θα γίνει επίσης μια εισαγωγή στον τρόπο με τον οποίο ταυτότητες κοινωνικού φύλου συνδυάστηκαν με εργασιακές διακρίσεις  που βασίστηκαν στη διαφορική χρήση τεχνικών διατάξεων. Στο δεύτερο μέρος της εργασίας θα παρουσιαστούν αντίστοιχες περιπτώσεις από την εμπειρία στην Ελλάδα, περιπτώσεις που εντοπίσαμε στη διαθέσιμη δευτερογενή βιβλιογραφία αλλά και περιπτώσεις που βασίζονται σε υπό εξέλιξη έρευνα σε πρωτογενείς πηγές. Θα γίνει μια επισκόπηση ζητημάτων από έρευνες που διεξάγονται με συμμετοχή του ενός εκ των συγγραφέων της ανακοίνωσης (Τύμπας) και εισαγωγή στην διδακτορική έρευνα του δεύτερου (Παναγόπουλος), η οποία εστιάζεται στην αθέατη εργασία που απαιτήθηκε για προγράμματα μαζικής ψηφιοποίησης κειμένων και εικόνων.

Based on 90 semi structured interviews to blue collars in an Italian multinational metalworking/engineering industry (between 2012 and 2013) and an ethnographical analysis focused on generations and knowledge transmission in the firm, the work I want to present in this conference focus on the evolution of the Italian working class.

Thinking about the great Italian industry forces us to see it with the eyes of the past. Because we are no longer speaking of the large-scale industry, and we are no longer speaking of blue collar jobs and class consciousness. The factory, therefore, is and remains a great laboratory of social products, the set of technical requirements and relationships, either hierarchical or friendly, which determine the fate of the company and the very lives of the people.

It’s because in the factory, with work as the common denominator, people meet people that they would not have the occasion to meet elsewhere, in a hard, laborious and conflictual context that however generates self-fulfillment for the joint development of a product that ends up in the global circulation of goods.

Youth people of today, however, are culturally distant and different from their parents more than their parents were from their grandparents, and this implies not only a problem of forms of communication, but also the change of the overall social relations and a different placement of actors in the production system.

The reference values change as well, with the discredit for politics and the shared objectives.

Long gone are the days when the leadership of young people has been promoted, both in the firm and outside. In the loss of centrality of the large factory, with the crisis of the value of work and the increasing popularity of its instrumental conception, adult worker generations of today are struggling to conceive their own sunset having built behind their youth affairs a mythological hagiography.

Losing the possibility of transmission of the heritage of their profession-work (think of the peasant dimension where generations lived and worked together), both in the family context and in the industry one is now obvious the distance between the reference values and the significant decrease of educational power of adults and seniors.

The majority of the eldest interviewed in the industry have this idea clear, because for the young blue collars both the loss of the technical authority (the work has completely changed becoming the automation more present) and empathy between generations are certain.

This paper deals with the issue of the transformations of labour forms and labour relations that have been engendered by the reconfiguration of the Italian industrial sector in behalf of subcontracting networks. In Italy the process of outsourcing has spread since the Nineties - notably following the enactment of the Law No. 192/1998 - along with the rising of new forms of global capitalism that are based on the flexible restructuring of large companies. On the one hand, this paper provides an overview of the work fragmentation and the reshaping of the industrial order in Italy with the aim of outlining new interdependent relationships between leader companies and satellite industries. Particular emphasis is placed on the application of the “Jobs Act” - recent labour law reforms - and the progressive weakening of the National Collective Agreement (CCNL), in order to show how these factors have impacted the industrial sector. On the other hand, the present paper draws on the specific case study of the Fiat-Chrysler factory located in Melfi (South of Italy), in the attempt to explain how the upper-level activities of the state within the industrial process are linked to local changes. It focuses on the transformations of the subcontracting chain, that is a key element for the functioning of the integrated factory in Melfi, with the purpose of showing how the perceptions and redefinitions of labour are changed over time. By using an anthropological perspective, the present study examines work fragmentation along two dimensions: the organisation of production and interpersonal relationships. With regard to the first dimension, it looks at the hierarchical organisation of the automobile district in Melfi, and describes the evolution of the relations of dependency and autonomy existing between the Fiat-Chrysler Company and her subsidiary industries. Besides, this paper shows how different forms of labour and wages within the subcontracting chain affect the working relationships, the workers’ identity, the level of union membership and the workers’ engagement in collective struggles. The analysis of this dimension is very useful in understanding the existing fractures within the category of metalworkers, but also in laying bare the weaknesses of the integrated system of production, which tends to introduce more flexible and precarious working conditions in the subcontracted industries as well as in the parent company.

This paper illustrates and compares various forms of informality in China under the socialist planned economy and the current neoliberal market economy. During the former period, informality was created as the spontaneous yet hidden product of “sneaky” grassroots tactics against the state’s stringent control of labor quota, or the intentional product of “rational” or “irrational” developmental strategies by the state in order to realize the most efficient and sometimes the quickest forms of socialist capital accumulation. It existed in a quite marginalized form as the “out-of-plan worker,” while the state played a rather fluctuating, paradoxical and sometimes contradictory role in its promotion or criminalization. In contrast, during the present stage of flexible capitalism with China being a key player, informality has become the most dominant form of labor. With the dismantlement of the formal and permanent SOE labor force, a vast flexible labor force has been created under the collusion of the state at different levels and the various manifestations of capital. Here, the peasant migrant worker emerged first under the particular “production system of peasant migrant worker,” which provided cheap labor for the growing export-oriented manufacturing industry. Later, a sector of former SOE workers, squeezed out of their old factories, joined the cohort of peasant migrant workers. And later still, as a response to China’s efforts to upgrade its industrial structure and provide new modes for global outsourcing, highly educated college graduates emerged as low-income, precarious, white-collar workers, drifting in China’s big cities and caught within the interwoven mesh of the state policy of Hukou and extra exploitation by capital. In tandem with this enlarging informality is the shrinking and concentration of formality only to the most privileged sectors in China, such as jobs in monopolistic and highly protected central-level enterprises and of course, numerous governmental jobs. The formality and security of these jobs—and the usual accompaniment of those factors, wealth—is, like China’s economic miracle, predicated upon and guaranteed by the existence of this vast floating mass of informal laborers in China. Hence is the new configuration of informality and formality in contemporary China’s labor structure. 

Industrial labor’s history contains two inextricably bound aspects, the history of the entrepreneurs and that of employment. We think that entrepreneurs and employees develop their activity in extremely different local contexts and that the deep structures we can spot in, explain the differences in economic behaviors.

Our approach follows a first way, quantitative, based on available statistical series of enterprises and forms of employment concerning the between two wars period, the period of after war reconstruction and the recent period of crisis and comparing them as far as possible with those of the other European countries to define the specificities of Greece. The labor’s world in Greece is characterized by a high rate of non-salaried employment, by small-sized companies and auto entrepreneurs, by legal forms ensuring manager’s independence, by the importance of family “gendered” employment according to sectors or branches of industry.

In a second way, qualitative, more subjective, we revisit the anthropological researches made in Greece and more widely on Mediterranean Basin. It is less a question of presenting the result of a specific research, than to organize a debate on the deep determiners of the economic behavior. We refer to the works made by Tillon and Bourdieu, those realized around the EKKE in the 60s (Campbell, Friedl) and later by Tsoukalas, Avdela, Papastefanaki and many others. They emphasize the central role of the family unit, not only as the place where social values are formed and reproduced, but also as the base of economic activity and entrepreneurship. The small rural property they describe, thus appears as the matrix of the industrial small company. It shapes the economy of many activities, as well as the relationship between enterprise and State.

The main scope of this paper is focused on how commercial revolution evolved during the period of 13th century in Flanders. Already in the beginnings of 11th century, we can trace the growth of a network of towns that gradually acquired multiple rights through comital or ecclesiastical charters and evolved into centers of trade and textile industry. Gradually the woolen cloth of Flanders transformed into an internationally exported product. There was a division of production between cities, in an effort of internationally keeping a specific share of the market and domestically to regulate labor. Flemish ports, at least before the expansion of the German Hansa were often staples for the arrival and the export of certain products. At least by 1213 (according to surviving sources) there was a sort of a trade partnership between a series of towns, all within the limits of the ancient archbishopric of Reims (the so called “Hansa of 17 towns”, in which towns such as Arras, Amiens, Aubeville, Reims, Cambrai, Gent, Bruges, Ypres, Lille and Douai had major significance). In this announcement we will try to make a brief presentation of the nexus of economic relations within the towns of Flanders. The main relationship to be defined is that between the merchant oligarchy (labelled by early 20th century historians as “patricians”), which rarely even owned the means of textile production, and the –then still politically weak or rising –guilds of textile artisans. We also will try to analyze some phenomena, that have a lot of common characteristics with modern day “strikes”, as were the riots of 1280, that ended up even in the executions of textile artisans. In general the high accumulation of textile economic activity in Flanders (in some cases almost half the population was occupied in textile-related activities), turned this county into one of the first “victims” of the prolonged 14th century of European crisis. The participation of artisans into clearly political conflicts, such as the “Franco-flemish” war of 1297-1304, is a clear indication of the diversity and complexity of interrelation inside Flemish towns.

Footnote references will be drawn mainly from the following sources
ADN - Archives Départementales du Nord
AGR - Archives Générales du Royaume (Belgique)
OGVFS – Oorkonden van de graven van Vlaanderen, Fonds de St-Genois

Secondary sources

Armstrong, Lawrin, Ivana Elbl & Martin M. Elbl (επιμ.), Money, Markets and Trade in Late Medieval Europe, Essays in Honour of John H.A. Munro, Λέιντεν, 2014

Blockmans, Wim. “Inclusiveness and exclusion: trust networks at the origins of European cities”. Στο Theory and Society, Vol. 39, No ¾, Special issue in memory of Charles Tilly (1929-2008): Cities, States, Trust, and Rule (May 2010), σελ. 315-326

Blom, J.C.H., Lamberts (επιμ.), History of the Low Countries, Νέα Υόρκη, 2006 (1999)

Boyer, Robert, « Historiens et économistes face à l’émergence des institutions du marché », Annales 2009, τ. 3, σελ. 665-693

Carolus -Barre Louis, “Les XVII, une hanse vouée au grand commerce de la draperie”, Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 109e année, N. 1, 1965, σελ. 20-30

Chorley, P., “The cloth exports of Flanders and Northern France during the 13th century: A Luxury Trade?” στο The Economic History Review, New Series 40, 3 (1987), σελ. 349-379

Cohn Jr, Sam.K., Popular Protest in late Medieval Europe, Μάντσεστερ, 2004

Derville, A., “Les élites urbaines en Flandre et en Artois” στο Actes des congrès de la Société des historiens médiévistes de l’enseignement supérieur public. 27 congrès. Ρώμη 1996, σελ. 119-135

Derville, A., Villes de Flandre et d’Artois (900-1500), Βιλνέβ ντ’ Ασκ, 2002 Duby, G., Le Dimanche de Bouvines: 27 juillet 1214, Παρίσι, 2005 (1973) Duthilloeul, H.-R., Douai et Lille au XIIIe siècle, Douai, 1850

Edwards, J., Ogilvie, S., “What lessons for economic development can we draw from the Champagne fairs?”, Explorations in Economic History (2012), p. 1-18

Epstein, S.R., “Regional fairs, institutional innovation, and economic growth in late medieval Europe”, Economic History Review, XLVII, 3 (1994), p.p 459-482

Espinas, G., Les origines du capitalisme, Sire Jehan Boinebroke, patricien et drapier douaisien (?-1286 environ), Bibliothèque de la société d’histoire du droit des pays Flamands, Picards et Wallons, Lille 1933

Greif A., Milgrom P., Weingast B.P., “Coordination, Commitment, and Enforcement: The Case of the Merchant Guild”, The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 102, No. 4 (Αυγ. 1994), σελ. 745-776 Grenier, J.-Y., L’économie d’Ancien Régime. Un monde de l’échange et de l’incertitude, Παρίσι, 1996 Guerreau, A., “Avant le marché, les marchés: en Europe, XIIIe –XVIIIe siècle (note critique)” στο Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 6 (2001), σελ. 1129-1175 Guyotjeannin, Ο. (επιμ.), Population et démographie au Moyen Âge, CTHS, Παρίσι 1995 Johnstone, Hilda (επιμ.), Annales Gandenses : Annals of Ghent, Λονδίνο, 1951 Lopez, Robert S., The commercial revolution of the Middle Ages, 950-1350, Cambridge University Press 2005 (1971) Masche, Erich, “La Mentalité des marchands Européens au Moyen Age” στο Revue d’histoire économique et sociale, Vol. 42, No. 4 (1964), σελ. 457-484 Mazel, Florian, Histoire de France, Féodalites 888-1180, dirigé par Jean-Louis Biget, Παρίσι 2014 (2010) Munro, John H. “The Weber Thesis revisited –and revindicated?” στο Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, Histoire (depuis l’Antiquité) –Geschiedenis (sedert de Oudheid) 51, 2 (1973), σελ. 381-391 Nicholas, D., «Structure du peuplement, fonctions urbaines et formation du capital dans la Flandre médiévale», στο Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 1 (1978), σελ. 501-527 Nicholas, D., “Of poverty and primacy: Demand, Liquidity, and the Flemish Economic Miracle, 1050-1200”, στο The American Historical Review 96, 1 (1991), σελ. 17-41 Nicholas, D., Medieval Flanders, Λονδίνο 1996 (1992) Ogilvie, Sheilagh, Institutions and European Trade Merchant Guilds, 1000–1800, Κέμπριτζ 2011 Ogilvie, Sheilagh, “The Economics of Guilds”. Στο Journal of Economic Perspectives, τ. 4 (2014), σελ. 169-192 Pinol, J.-L. (επιμ.), Histoire de l’Europe Urbaine, τ. 1-2, Παρίσι, 2003 Pirenne, H., Histoire de Belgique, τ. 1-6, Βρυξέλλες, 1929 Pirenne, H., Economic and Social History of Medieval Europe, Λονδίνο 2012 (1933) Pounds, N.J.G., An economic history of Medieval Europe, Νέα Υόρκη, 2013 (1974) Van Bavel, B., “The medieval origins of capitalism in the Netherlands during the Middle Ages”, στο Low Countries Historical Review 125, 2-3 (2010), σελ. 45-79 Warnkoenig, L.A., Histoire de la Flandre et de ses institutions civiles et politiques, jusqu’à l’année 1305, τ. 4, Βρυξέλλες, 1851

This research concerns the operation of brickworks in Athens during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It focusses on a community of people from the island of Kythnos (Aegean Sea, see East Mediterranean) who had a long and prominent presence in the industry. This includes both owners of brickworks and their workers. Their presence in Athens following the establishment of Athens as the capital of Greece (1834), has been linked to the periodical annual immigration (between May and September) of men and young boys, from Kythnos to Athens, in order to work in Athenian brickworks. Gradually part of this population settles down in Athens which often results in the creation of new brickworks. The whole process of moving from Kythnos to Athens lasted almost one and a half century.

This paper investigates the starting point of that process, the likely causes and a variety of perspectives and factors. It reveals the mechanism of an almost ignored phenomenon, by focussing on this local network of labour. Parameters such as the working conditions, the everyday life of workers and the relations between them and their employers are examined by taking into account the existing social links (relationship, friendship etc.) which derived because of their common birthplace. The employers' support system and the dependency of the workers on their employers underline a paternalistic model.

The impact of the specific network was still important even after 1920, when gradually more and more brickworks were active on an annual basis. Questions such as a) to what extent the brickworkers’ struggles and their participation in strikes were affected by social and family links and b) what was the role of the examined network of labour in competition between small and big firms (which took place in 1930’s), will be taken into consideration.

This paper is based on research in a range of sources, including a series of interviews with people involved with brickmaking during the past, as well as relevant articles in newspapers and magazines of that time and unpublished documents from archives such as the archive of the National Bank of Greece and E.L.I.A.

“The old goldsmiths and silversmiths, who are still mainly situated in Nicosia, on a road stretching from the heart of the bazaar to the Agia Sophia Mosque, have little to do and their craft is gradually dying out. How can even the most masterful Cypriot handcraft compete with the machine works imported from Europe to the market of Cyprus? People now prefer buying the cheap fake wares, while the wealthier islanders [prefer] genuine, imported European jewellery.” (Ohnefalsch-Richter, M. 1913: Griechische sitten und gebräuche auf Cypern, Berlin: D. Reimer, 280).

In the above passage, the German Magda Ohnefalsch-Richter pessimistically outlines the new conditions and change-inducing processes, which prevailed in the labour market of "traditional" gold- and silversmiths, as well as Cypriot artisans in general at the end of the 19th century. When Cyprus became part of the British Empire in 1878, the island’s integration in the western capitalist system was accelerated. The gradual evolution of socio-economic structures, the participation in the networks of colonial trade, the changes to the local market brought about by the influx of industrial products, and the massive, easier and faster circulation of ideas, technological know-how, objects and people were characteristic traits of the new era, which affected the modus operandi of local crafts and defined developments in the labour environment of Cypriot artisanal professionals.

Despite the gloomy predictions expressed in the introductory passage by Ohnefalsch-Richter, in the period from the beginning of the British rule to the Second World War the Cypriot gold- and silversmiths continued to practice a workshop-based craft, which enjoyed a long tradition on the island and survived by still satisfying the needs of locals for valuable objects. The silversmiths and goldsmiths of the time remained handicraft artisans, and they largely preserved traditional structures in the production and distribution systems of their wares. Despite the above, these craftsmen claimed their position in the local market with dynamism and flexibility. The successful outcome of their endeavours is documented in the British period governmental statistics, which show a steady increase in their numbers.

By focusing on the paradigm of gold- and silversmiths, the present study aspires to explore labour conditions in the framework of the early modern Cypriot market. Data from archival sources, oral testimonies, the Cypriot press and the existing literature are combined to shed light on various interrelated topics, such as the organization and spatial distribution of workshops, the internal professional hierarchies, the work of itinerant craftsmen and the integration of foreign artisans, the specialization and division of labour, and the distribution and payment systems. The examination of these topics allows the reconstruction of the multi-faceted economic, social and other relations between craftsmen and the Cypriot society, as well as the documentation of the strategies followed by craftsmen for their successful integration and adaptation to the early modern market. The new data, resulting from this study, is expected to reveal unknown aspects of the history of labour in Cyprus.

 

The announcement derives from archives of Athens Press Workers Union (Αρχείο ΕΕΤΑ/ΕΤΗΠΤΑ). The purpose is to make known the terms and conditions of labour in Athenian Press in the period between 1950 and 1967. The division of labour varies and depends on the magnitude of the shop, the production conditions, the amount of products, the relationship between employers and employees. All these factors are influenced by political, social and financial conditions that are taking place in post civil war Athens. Even though we can indentify various skilled workers in a printing-office, the Athens Press Workers Union recognize only four of them: the compositors, the linotypists, the machinists of linotypes machines and the pressmen of cylinder presses. For example, the workers who distribute types are hidden behind the term “compositor” and the stereotypists by the term “pressman”.

The typographical labour is conceived as “masculine” one, so the exclusion of women from Athenian press was obvious. The absence of threat by women workers taking men’s jobs has as a consequence not to cultivate in a significant degree of practical or ideological statements against the entrance of women to the trade by contrast with those which were recorded in other countries.

In 1950 the Athens Press Workers Union signs the first labour agreement in the history of the Union with the Union of employers. The “Protocol”, as it was called, just like the agreements that will follow (1952, 1958 and 1964), even though they did not have legitimacy, both sides (employees and employers) were trying to implement them. The agreements in 1950 and 1952 will give the opportunity to Athens press workers to “legitimate” the five-hour-work, the cost of living wage adjustment, the payment of wage on Sunday even though it was not a working day, the defining of minimum wage for five-hour-work. The working hours varies based on the number of printed pages (of the newspaper or magazine), the technical equipment, and the productivity of the workers. So in Athenian press we can find a press worker who is occupied for three hours, another one for ten hours and both of them may receive the same level of payment. The importance of five hours working day is relied on the fact that the amount of production is based on the number of printed pages. The Athens Press Workers Union, a closed-shop, provides the Athenian press with the appropriate working stuff and at the same time has control over the production process. These two conditions ensure the high level of wages that press workers receive. The amount of wage may be two or three times higher than that of the rest industrial workers. In post civil war Athens the Union is well known as an aristocratic one, that’s why many labourers, even from other trades, pursuit their entrance to the Union.

Tobacco became the most important export for Greece’s economy after the Balkan Wars. Until then, the Greek state’s intervention in the political economy of tobacco had been limited to taxing this very profitable product, and preventing its smuggling. The territorial expansion of the country, the population exchange with Turkey and the vagaries of international tobacco markets created the conditions, in the interwar period, for a higher level of intervention in this branch of the economy. Such interventionism manifested itself in the form of new regulations, welfare schemes, scientific research and the promotion of tobacco in foreign markets. The stakes were high: the tobacco industry boasted the country’s most combative labor movement; recently settled Asia Minor Greeks depended on tobacco for the viability of their small plots of land, and tobacco exports contributed an important share of Greece’s inflow of hard currency and tax revenue. To make things even more complicated, Greece had to compete for export markets with Bulgaria and Turkey, whose labor costs were lower.

The purpose of this paper is to describe, and explain, how the work of tobacco farmers and urban workers changed in the interwar period. In other words: how did capital’s inveterate interest in increasing profits through the reduction of labor costs manifest itself concretely in this particular case? The existing literature has already pointed out that the introduction of the leaf processing procedure known as tonga, more labor efficient than the more traditional alternatives, created unemployment and the de-skilling of the remaining jobs. This, in turn, was the cause of labor unrest. It has also been pointed out that the state made it compulsory for farmers to process their product in a certain way before selling it to tobacco merchants. What has not been explored in depth is what made these changes in the commodity chain possible, both in terms of their intellectual conception and their contested, and incomplete, practical implementation.

I shall argue that the following factors played important roles: a) The concentration and backward integration of foreign cigarette industries; b) the institutional expansion of the state, and c) the increased organization of tobacco merchants as an interest group, and d) the labor movement.

During the first years of the 1950s the American cigarette industry dominated almost the entire world. That decade a new smoking product, the filter-cigarette, appeared as a result of the grave concern that was put forward by different health institutions concerning the harmful effects of smoking. The spreading of the filter-cigarette in the post-war era provoked technological changes in the cigarette industry. The largest American and European cigarette industries entered a new phase of modernization: renewal of mechanical equipment -the cigarette-filter machine was the major innovation- and the adoption of new methods of labour organization on the whole.

The technological developments that are noticed in the cigarette industry across Europe after the end of World War II, as well as the increasing business interest regarding the scientific management, forced the upgrading of the role of the “experts” who dealt with working conditions, health and safety in the workplace. The measurements and the recordings, the analytical study and the classification of the employees by the “experts”, alongside the matter of precautionary measures in the factories are linked with the demand for the increase of productivity and scientific management.

In Greece, the largest cigarette industries aware of those changes taking place internationally in the branch, sought to modernize their technological and mechanical equipment. In order to respond to the new circumstances and smoking habits that occurred in Europe during that period and gradually adopted by Greek consumers, they acquired new machinery; the most significant technological innovation was the cigarette-filter machine as was the case in most cigarette factories in Europe. Besides, the Greek cigarette industries looked for methods of scientific management aiming to achieve the increase of productivity. In this context, it seems that the status of “experts” –engineers, technical consultants, managers and doctors of occupational medicine- was raised.

In this paper, we draw our attention on the issue of the effects that technological and organizational modifications had on labour and their effects on the construction of social relations in the workplace, through a comparative approach between Greek and foreign cigarette industries. The investigation of attitudes, discourses and practices of “experts”, as well as the stance and the rhetoric of employees and labour unions, regarding the issues raised above, constitutes the main goal of this paper.

The requirements of transformation of Hungarian economy created at the end of the 19th century. Into this development had to introduce the mining, which support raw materials and energy for the industry. The location of the industrial are basically determined by the geographical conditions, the raw material sources, the possibilities of the transportation. Because of these conditions came off different industrial centre in Hungary during the 19th and 20th century. The biggest centre was the capital city and the nearby villages, where the machine producing and the food industry concen-trated, but the iron and metal, the chemical industry and the brickmaking were important too. After the capital the biggest region was the developed in the middle part of north Hungary, along the valley of Hernád, Garam, Ipoly and Sajó rivers. Here concentrated the ore mining and the iron melting, while the big iron and steel companies were established at the north par of this area in the lignite recess for example: in Diósgyőr, Nádasd, Salgótarján, Ózd. Mining had a great impact of these areas, while changed the natural environment, the picture and size of the settlement (as for the building type of the houses, the buildings with new functions, which didn’t exist before), the constitution of the society of the village or town; the working, shop-ping and entertaining facilities, reach of the health and insurance system, the relationships between the people or the other villages.

As for the society of miners there are a lot of company monograph, but in most cases they are written by engineers, who emphasized the technical background mainly. But these books are very important and basically. On the other hand there are also ethnographical, geographical and nowadays cultural anthropological works dealing with miners.

Unfortunately the historians haven’t focused on miners in their studies, or not in a deep examination. In my opinion basic researches need and the interdisciplinary point of view. During my present research in connection with my dissertation, I have been dealing with the iron ore miners in Rudabánya (Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county, Hungary) – iron ore mine existed here from 1880 to 1985, - on the basis of workers registers (1889, 1890, 1916), which contains the name, the date and place of birth, the occupation of the workers’, how long worked, and in addition to in the other register contained the spouse name, birth date, or the marriage date and the children too. This database contains 5,287 workers datas, so it can be demonstrated their occupational content, their origin as for place or religion, and the family pattern as well.

The history of civil service during the period of British colonial administration in the Ionian Islands and Cyprus is a generally unknown chapter in the existing bibliography despite its obvious significance for debates on the relations between ‘colonizers’ and ‘colonized’. This paper aims to present the findings of the research conducted so far about the number of civil servants, the scale of their wages, the division of labour and the broader issue of colonial policy on civil service in regions under colonial – or semi-colonial – rule. The paper compares the two islands states / administrative regions to draw conclusions on the type and practices of the colonial administration in each possession. The aim is to demonstrate the percentage of the budget and public spending on wages of civil servants in the context of the policy on self-governed colonies that should pay for their own expenses; we also aim to highlight the experience of those working for the colonial state. The paper shows the extent to which policy on wages was elastic and dependent on public revenue and external trade and will correlate the amounts spent on wages with funds spent on public works. The issue of salaries and public finances in general was one of the most controversial and hotly debated during the colonial period. We aim to contribute to discussions about the size and importance of the public sector in the British Mediterranean and examine the relation between policies on salaries and attitudes of Ionians and Cypriots towards the colonizing power during the period of British rule. 

The recent thorough study of the case of large land estates and factories of Christakis Zografos and his ancestors in the western Thessaly (mid. 19th- mid. 20th century), specifically focused on the enterprising visions and financial- developmental objectives of their founder, has contributed so far in a first grounded argumentation against some well-known, durable myths around the role of Diaspora's’ landlords in the 1881 Thessaly.

The basic elements of the production system, developed in the large land estates, are considered already known, however, a series of important issues concerning the “stagnant", traditional institution of sharecropping must be reconsidered: was it the dominant form of cultivation in the thessalian land estates? To what extend did it differentiate within the same zone of farming (or did it leave space to co-exist with other types of labor), distinguishing in terms of income for the sharecroppers from half up to two thirds of the agricultural input (misakariko, tritariko)? The uses of land, the composition of grain production, the organization and the forms of labour (waged or flat-rate farm servants), the yields, the encouragement of technological innovation etc. are all matters that will be examined in interaction with the societies under question, as well as their imprint in the societies themselves and the rural economy.

The idea and development of industrialization in the land estates of Christakis Zografos, exploiting in the first place sugar beet and rice and in the second place, cotton and the incorporation of model cattle activities (horse-breeding, production of dairy products etc.) as well, are usually faced with bewilderment, as the marginal activities of a "case-exception" of a standard rule.

The paper also seeks to investigate if, based on the current financial and political conditions, the creation of a vertical industrial farming and commercial exploitation in Thessaly, constituted a rule or a deviation and which factors it was influenced by.

In the framework of this paper will try to present the course of production and productivity in Balkan countries and these of Eastern Europe in the framework in their transition from a centrally planned economy to the economy of market and capitalism. In this sense will try to interpret the causes of reduction of production in these countries, at least in the first years after the collapse, while at the same time will try to comprehend the way, but and the degree this process was made aw well as, how the state enterprises absorbed the reduction of production because of the rapid reduction of employment. So. We will trace the course of production from 1990 till today. So, in the same framework will try to present the special conditions and the significant consequences which are created in the societies of Balkan countries and the corresponding countries of Eastern Europe. This means that we will focus on the course of restructuring of these economies and on how the productivity of labour in the mentioned countries contributed to this course. We will combine the evolution of productivity with the employment and we will analyze the evolution of productivity in these countries of Balkans and Eastern Europe, altogether. In addition, this evolution became known as “development without working positions”.

In this sense, these countries were confronted with the markets and the open trade. Their problem was their competitiveness and consequently, in this framework, the absence of reforms created conditions of negative balance abroad exchanges. Finally, we will ascertain which policies were followed so as to confront the problem of production and productivity in these countries.

The most widely accepted narrative about the long-term history of slavery in Ottoman lands rests mainly on a supply-side story. According to this, military and diplomatic factors reduced the inflow of slaves from the seventeenth century onwards and, consequently, exorbitant prices turned slaveholding into a luxury inaccessible to all but the top economic elite. Using evidence from probate inventories of the city of Bursa and its hinterland from 1460 to 1880, the present study examines this narrative in light of two variables: the incidence of slave-ownership and prices. Our findings point to a very long-term decline in slaveholding, as expected, and indicate that by the time of the government attempts to end slave trade in the nineteenth century, slave-ownership was already a marginal practice in this important provincial center. However, we also find a decline in real prices starting in the eighteenth century, which is unexpected. On the one hand, from a supply-side perpective, the decline in average prices appears linked to increasing preponderance of African slaves within the slave population. On the other hand, examination of the slave-purchasing power of the wealthy and their consumption/investment preferences suggests that demand for slaves, too, was declining at the same time as slave prices declined also relative to alternative labor costs, i.e., wages. These observations point to the need to bring in factors other than prices to further analyze the withering of slavery in Ottoman central lands.

Unlike other countries, the Brazilian state has created institutions and actions against unfree labour. Unfree labour additionally is a topic that appears in popular media as well as in scientific research. Poverty is mostly claimed to be the only factor rendering people vulnerable for promises of labour recruiters, while the intersection between class and race is denied.

In this presentation racism is seen as a structural element of unfree labour and demonstrated using the example of Brazil. Two factors play a big role in this intersection: structural racism (1) and racism as a theory of legitimation (2).

(1) Imagined races influence the chances of having a good education, segregate the job and the housing market etc. Black people in Brazil are more likely to be poor and have lower upward-mobility chances. As these structures are also mirrored in unfree labour formation most of unfree labourers in Brazil are black, even though the skin colour does not constitute a factor for labour recruiters or estate owners in choosing labourers. Subsequently, slavery as not only a historical predecessor of unfree labour in Brazil but also society as a whole, with its clear segregation regarding origin and skin colour, contributes to this division regarding unfree labour.

(2) In racializing poor people, they get ascribed specific characteristics. These mostly legitimize their position as subordinated as well as their poverty. In Brazil it could be argued, that the category of the peão de trecho (migrant labourer) is being racialized. This group of subaltern labourers, uprooted from their homes, are seen as totally irrational people who don’t possess the ability of planning their future, but who are, with guidance, potentially good labourers. Physical disgust is also often expressed, together with alleged alcohol problems. Therefore, it is often not the labour relations that are seen as highly exploitative, denying the peões de trecho access to basic recourses, but their characteristic traits. Additionally, structural factors are negated, making poverty a problem of merit and not of chances. So, racism serves to explain inequalities in a way that their victims are themselves responsible for their disadvantages, because of their alleged characteristics or lacking diligence. Using the example of unfree labour in Brazilian agriculture, this presentation will present racism and racialization as a structuring factor of the labour market as a whole.

During the colonial period, the government modernised the forest economy by re-engineering the forest landscape in large scale. As part of increasing its forest productivity, on the one hand, it manufactured the mountain landscape by erecting new metal roads, constructing bridges, conducting surveys, setting up of permanent boundary lines, and clearing forests to bring down the forest resources from the government owned forests. On the other hand, the state indirectly forced the Kanikkaran (Kani) tribal community to work getting unpaid in the government forest plantation to increase the green productivity by raising the commercially invaluable woods in the forests. Kanis practised shifting cultivation in the mountain forests to raise food-crops primarily for their livelihood, without claiming ownership over the cultivated forest tracts. Colonial documents portrayed Peninsular India as rich in forest wealth and inhabited by ‘uncivilized’ folk. Forest officials noted that the Kanis were responsible for forest degradation because of their primitive agricultural practices. They highlighted how the Kanis’ rain-fed agricultural practices, while effortless, were also callous because they involved ‘clearing the jungle or forest and cultivating a patch with dry crops for a year or so and then abandoning it.’ The Forest Department started to depict the community in a negative light and confined them to a particular area to practice their traditional agriculture which was often derided as ‘primitive’ and ‘destructive’. It did not permit the practice of burning trees on the grounds of protecting the catchment area of Tambraparni river system. In the Papanasam forests, the Kani community constituted a prominent source of labour in the regeneration works. From being characterised as a ‘regular curse’ and ‘shiftless creature,’ they soon began to be seen as ‘useful labour’ after being brought into the fold of plantation labour. They often changed their habitation within the interior forests due to the nature of their traditional agriculture. It projected Kanis as a ‘regular curse to the district’ and blamed them for paying ‘no tax or land revenue of any kind’ and asked the community to adopt more settled agriculture with ‘the permanent interests of the country than the destruction of timber-bearing tracts.’ This paper critically analyses the green production by engaging the archival documents to recover the unwaged labour history of marginalized Kani community.

My aim is to give a summary about the altering role and altering value of the work in the everyday life of Hungarian industrial workers in the twentieth century. This question is important because the political and economic conditions of worker’s being had been changed several times in Hungary in the 20th century. Through the example of the Factory of Metallurgy Ózd (this was one of the largest heavy industrial factories in the twentieth century Hungary, with 15 thousand workers), I also would like to show the development and the function of the working class the dynamic start at the beginning 20th century till the fail at end of the 20th century.

My paper consists of three parts.

In the first part I give a short overview about the structural changing of the Hungarian and local working class in Ózd.

In the second part I analyse the role of work and the labour relations on the factory level and in the private life among others from the aspect of prestige, value-system and the social connections. I'd like to investigate which factors were influenced the changes of individual work positions. What was the role of the different type of human, cultural and political capital in the life and social mobility of working class before and after WWII, before and after the communist takeover and in the process of post-communist transition? Which were the main characteristics of the relationship between the work and workers in these periods? The changing of worker’s identity is also very interesting question.

In the third part I study and compare the division of labour in the everyday practice of work and in the family circle and I try to show the main characteristics of the everyday life strategies of different worker groups among the market economy’s conditions, under the state socialism and after.

During its expansion in first half of the 20th century Bata company spread its activities and factories in dozens of the countries in the Europe and World. Start of the production in factories was followed by building of the company towns, which were constructed to fulfil the vision of the ideal industrial town. In those company towns workers were supposed to find suitable accommodation, enhanced cultural and social life and overall improvement of the life conditions. Amongst the other Bata towns constructed in Europe, in France, Netherlands, Switzerland, England, Poland, Germany and elsewhere, the largest Interwar investment of the Bata concern in Europe was the factory and company town in Borovo, in today’s Croatia. In Borovo, in spirit of the industrial paternalism, thousands of workers gained good wages, health care, education and housing. In exchange was expected loyalty, obedience and everyday life of the workers was almost completely controlled by their employer. For the workers, which came mainly from the undeveloped, rural areas, this was the enormous change in their lives. In our paper we will analyze everyday life of the workers in Borovo and how they adapted to the transition from the traditional to modern life in industrial world. Among the other aspects of the everyday life we want to analyze the housing conditions, educational system, education of apprentices, health care system, sporting and cultural activities, organized travel and touristic activities. Another aspect of our paper is analyzing influence of the company town on the rural areas around Borovo.

The sphere of analysis concerning my discourse includes settlements in the north of Hungary. They are located in the north of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county, in the area that attracted labour force to the former Metallurgical Works of Ózd. The most considerable stratification of society of the rural and poor noble population that lived in the settlements neighbouring Ózd, which was inhabited since the Middle Ages, happened when in the former industrial town the demand for the labour force of the gradually expanding works extended and changed the society of the neighbouring villages. After 1945 the process continued and it attracted the inhabitants of the settlements located within a 50 km radius to take part in industrial employment. Metallurgy which offered a secure, permanent living as well as mining which was typical of the region formed labourers and miners from the native peasants living close to migrating workers and sometimes created dynasties of workers through several generations. The employment of women came to the fore in time: apart from housekeeping which was demanding the girls and mothers could do heavy manual work, so they appeared on the labour market as earners as well.

The analysis of the industrial, building, transport and trade sectors, and within these the categorization according to profession and position provides an opportunity to monitor, compare and draw conclusions from the changes that took place after the socialistic era and the years following the change of regime. The formation of manufacturing industry and the working class in the industrial sector took place even in the second half of the 19th century, however, escape into mining had similar effects on impoverished masses of former peasants especially in the first waves of stratification. From the second half of the 20th century these phenomena became common nationwide, the world of rural societies changed, at the same time the stratum of industrial workers included new elements. Accordingly, the participants of labour market showed a complex image. Looking through their groups according to employment a significant stratification among the generations can be noticed within a short period of time. The intra- and intergeneration analyses represent the importance of industrial employment, the break-up of the traditional peasant world, the changes in lifestyle, the trauma caused by the cutback of heavy industry as well as the disappearance of traditional social groups (e.g. peasantry, industrial workers). In the early 21th century we can notice the gradual downtrend of labour market as well as the revaluation of the service sector despite the decreasing demand. The transition from Socialism into a market economy created insurmountable problems in several regions, mostly in the fields of economic restructing, employment, unemployment and social composition. The picture is especially depressing in the northern region of Hungary, in the once flourishing settlements relying on mining and heavy industries, which had provided them with certain livelihood. The study focuses on villages surrounding the city of Ózd, where the survival and sustenance of the population was directly threatened by closure of factories, plants and mines in the area. The common features of these settlements often include social restructuring, negative migration due to manifold reasons such as demographic processes and the lack of employment opportunities, deep poverty and subsequent social ghettoisation, the gradual deterioration and disintegration of cultural and educational facilities, and last but not least, a hopeless vision for the future.

This proposal is based on primary sources from German archives and fits in the second thematic axe on labour markets. It focuses on the organization and development of the migration flow from Mediterranean countries to Western Germany during the early post-war period, with particular regard to the Greek example. This migrant flow took place after official interstate agreements (i.e. of March 1960 for the Greek-German agreement) and those emigrants got to be known as “guest-workers” (Gastarbeiter).

The migrant workers believed that the German Federal Republic would offer higher living standards to themselves and their children. In reality however, their lives were determined by the needs and interests of the country of origin and the host country.

Athens hurried to unburden the country from a labour force it could not absorb in order to reduce the unemployment rate and to start receiving money transfers, while Bonn had to cover the industries’ growing need for manpower.

The main difficulties arose from the fact that both governments did not take into account the human factor: indeed, the migrants of the 60’s could only entry the host country with a special permit and work wherever they would be placed and with any remuneration, whilst their families went through a difficult period of separation, material deprivation and social discrimination, living –at the beginning- in not always decent collective accommodation facilities.

With the justification of a provisory situation, German services avoided to grant the migrant workers any kind of political rights. Bonn was especially eager to avoid any injustice towards German workers. The German commission in Greece could give out only those workplaces which would not be destined to the national working forces. The foreigners’ law of the 28th April 1965 itself mentioned that the residence permit could only be handed out if the presence of the migrant would not harm the interest of the German Federal Republic. The foreign worker was placed only in work places considered of lower value by the employer.

Even the term “Gastarbeiter” had a negative connotation. When after 1970 the Federal President Gustav Heinemann and the Chancellor Willy Brandt proposed to eliminate the discriminations against the guest-workers, their proposal confirmed the situation even more.

The fall of the communist regime in Albania in 1990 initiated a continued wave of immigration of Albanian population that it is still ongoing. The political and social instability, poor economic conditions and changes in government brought the largest flow of Albanian migration in modern times and favored by cultural, linguistic and geographic vicinity and low emigration cost it was mainly directed to neighboring countries of Italy and Greece. In 2010 Albania was granted with visa-free travel to the Schengen area and this also affected the crossing of the borders and the circular migration across the land border between Greece and Albania was for many years, one of the most significant irregular migratory flows across the EU’s external borders.
Due to the poor economic and living conditions in Albania the labour market in Albania it is still vulnerable and affects the on-going migrant flows from Albania to the most developed labour markets of other countries. Migrant flows are directly linked with labour market development especially level of unemployment and poverty.
Because of the economic crisis of the last years there is observed a change in the migrant flows moving direction and a new community is present, the return migrants. Albanian emigrants have returned because of the global financial crises of 2009 which hit the labour market in the main countries of destination for the Albanian migrants. Lack of jobs, informality in economy and labour market supply the Albanian migration flows which are the main “suppliers” for flows of economic migrants. An increased number of returns migrants are now seasonal workers in Greece and seasonal self-employed at similar positions in Albania. Their savings are invested in small companies in Albania mainly in the agricultural, trade and consumption businesses. The general consensus is that there are noticed two interconnected aspects: the personal success, involving social and economic security for the migrant as an individual / family members in the local community and the second aspect is the contribution they bring to the economic and social development in the country.

Return migrants give a new impetus to the labour market development and technology advancement and they can be a real stimulus to the development of local community where they invest their savings on small businesses, use their gained skills and know how, create jobs and change the labor market.

The title chosen for this paper reflects my interest in addressing the structural, social and economic changes that have occurred in Portugal, between 1953 and 1979, which comprises the final phase of the Estado Novo dictatorship and the first years of the transition to democracy.

Portugal was in 1950 a society with an economic structure of agrarian base, which had a fast growth of the tertiary sector until the final 1970’s. In this period there was an increase in state intervention through the implementation of development plans and international guidelines, which conditioned the movements of population and consequently the labour market. To access this reality I will analyze how professional training contributed to this restructuring process, allowing the workers a professional and geographical mobility required first by the accelerated economic growth of the 60’s and then by the preparations for entry into the European Economic Community.

Based on informative material pertaining to 1351 cases of undocumented migrants this research is the outcome of long term field work and collaboration with the services, translators and interpreters at the Greek Council for Refugees. The main bulk of the material was supplemented with interviews.

The research subjects are individuals, mostly (95%) from the East, Asia and Africa. They arrived in Greece between 2000 and 2009 (that is before the crisis) and are part of the “second wave of migration” ¹ for which we don’t have information. Mainly male (83, 5%) single (77%) and very young, 30% of them have fled their countries as unaccompanied minors.

My goal is to examine their fleeing “strategies” (funding of voyage), their travelling “strategies” during their long-term movement for months or years, and especially their “labor strategies” (survival strategies to be exact) after their arrival in Greece. Within our country, these strategies -continuous moving and precarious employment -occur in the “gaps” of economy. On the margins of both the formal and the informal (black) labor market they outline an idiosyncratic “labor market” whose offshoots end in formal economy. The absence of institutional regulations has formed “grey zones” as far as the migrants' illegal departure, moving, arrival, and illegal employment and residence are concerned. Lacking any kind of intervention policy, this “free” labor market is actually composed of lending, smuggling and employment networks. Based on social correlations of power and social acquaintances, the remunerations of these illegal workers have no uniformity: they may be variously compensated in food, accommodation and a cash “allowance,” or paid fully in cash, depending on the customs of the area, on the type of labor provided (construction, agriculture, cleaning jobs…), on the employer, and on the special characteristics of the worker. These are fragmented job markets where migrants strive to secure their survival, but also to reduce their cost of living with a view to saving money in order to pay off their smugglers or wire money back home.

My research is obviously concerned with the current situation as a paradigm of the shattering of labor relations and the emergence of ruthless labor market/s. Yet and despite differences it is also intriguing to observe it as a model of survival strategies employed by the very poor in a historical context- the late Middle Ages, the Modern times, and the early years of the Industrial Revolution in western Europe- but also of the internal migration of the very poor to the cities (rural-urban migration).

---

[1] The first wave consisted of citizens from the former Socialist countries

The wave of strikes that shook up the Ottoman Empire in September 1908 as a result of the Young Turks’ Revolution and the consequent spread of liberal ideas, also moved the employees of the «Smyrna-Aidin Ottoman Railway Company», among others. Going on three successive strikes during September-October 1908 the employees put forward their demands strongly, paralyzed the local economy, and finally divided public opinion in Smyrna on the rightness or wrongness of their claims against the company. The latter, belonging to British interests and under British management, after its initial surprise, made clear its unwillingness to grant extensive concessions to the workers.

The third strike by the employees was called in a polarized climate. Within a period of 15 days, the military occupied part of the railway line, two members of the Board of Directors arrived from London hastily to support the General Manager and find a solution, and the British Consul engaged in shows of armed force against strikers, and one human life was lost in a climate of general excitement. Under these circumstances, the ending of the strike was achieved only thanks to intervention by third parties. The government spokesman Fuad Bey put an end to the strike by imposing an amicable settlement and mutual concessions.

The strikes of the employees of the Smyrna-Aydin Railway Company originally showed the need for the establishment of an association of workers and coordinated action in pursuit of their claims. The latter, purely financial in nature at first, soon became personal, as they focused on the dismissal of the British General Manager Barfield and of the Heads of the Departments, compatriots of his. Secondly, the common language used in the formulation of the workers’ requests in all three Ottoman railway companies demonstrated their mutual solidarity and interaction. However, the most decisive factor in the evolution of events was the relationship among the employees and specifically the divergence between senior officers, on the one hand, and the middle and lower-ranking staff on the other. Finally, the specific ethnic origin of the instigators and leaders of the strike reveals the widespread unrest among the Greek working classes in the early 20th century.

Since 1893 the Kassandra Mines in NE. Halkidiki (part of the Ottoman Empire at the time) were owned by a French-ottoman company called “Société Ottomane des Mines de Kassandra” which had its headquarters in Costantinople. However after the Treaty of Peace of 1913 between Greece and Turkey this territory was considered Greek soil, so according to Greek law every company should be of Greek interests in order to be operational in the area. This was established in 1922, whilst in 1927 the rights of these mines were purchased by the “Greek Société Anomyme of Chemical Products and Fertilizers” (Anonymē Hellēnikē Etaireia Hēmikōn Proiontōn kai Lypasmatōn – AEEHPL) founded in Athens in 1909, in order to use the iron pyrite extracted there in its own fertilizers.

On January 1929, the 5th miners went on strike. The strike lasts for an entire month and it is the first of a long series of strikes in this decisive year. The cause for the strike springs from the company director’s decision to dismiss the president and members of the local Union. The company maintains an extremely severe attitude against the strikers, whereas the news reach up to the highest rankings such as the Minister of National Economy and most probably the Prime Minister Venizelos himself. On February the 1st, the Laurium miners go to strike as well and after a while the workers at the Elefsis’ factories join the strike.

Some pending questions can be summarized to: Which are the miners’ demands/requests? What is the Company’s policy against the strikers? What is the position assumed by the General Governor of Macedonia and what was the official policy of the government on the subject? Which role the Workers’ Center of Thessaloniki, of the General Federation of Greek Workers (GSEE), of the Miners’ Union of Kassandra engaged? Which is the role of the local police force? Where do the local communities stand regarding the movement? This presentation aims to answer them by delineating the financial and political circumstances of the era. In this effort, there is an abundant use of the local and national Press of the time, as the journalists write down daily the single facts of the strike, as well as other secondary sources about the working movement in Thessaloniki and in Halkidiki

Our basic objective in this paper is to examine the labour relations and the employment structures in the Greek countryside during the first third of the 20th century. Initially, a geographical categorization will be attempted since a first variable which should be taken into account concerns the differentiation of the labour relations among both regions and provinces. In this attempt one of our basic tools will be the agro-economic studies published in the 1930s. Besides the spatial grouping, a time subdivision based on the voting of the agrarian reform of the 1923 and the subsequent changes in the structures of the rural societies is also necessary.

Moreover, in this paper we will attempt to identify the interconnection between the labour relations on one hand and the type of agrarian mobilization, the development of the collective action and/or the emergence of new socio-political agents active in the rural societies on the other. Accepting that the nature of those relationships was one of the main reasons behind the outburst of social protests we will try, − taking into account the geographical differentiation and turning points in the course of time – to look for the basic features of the agrarian mobilization during this time its change over time and the reasons behind its escalation or decay.

Finally, approaching the mid 1930s, when a remarkable outburst of mobilizations was observed, the following question may be asked: was there a dramatic deterioration of the living and working conditions as compared to the following decades or on the contrary there were a number of other reasons which could explain this change in the rate of agrarian mobilizations and the gradual radicalization of the collective action which seems to continue over time and not be limited to a spatial geographical zone?

Keywords: Labour Relations, Agricultural Production, Agrarian Mobilization, Land Reform

The imposition of time discipline and the crystallization of the division between work and leisure, processes related to the capitalist transformation of society and labor in Western Europe, were historically the product of struggles which took place both in the terrain of practices at the workplace, as well as in the wider terrain of ideas on time and its use. Similar developments in South-eastern Europe are usually approached, in the framework of modernization and orientalist narratives, through the prisms of socio-economic backwardness and cultural difference, which would be gradually overcome through the transfer and application of concepts and ideas from the West. The purpose of the proposed paper is to critically review the state of research on the ideas and perceptions of time and labor in Greece and the Balkans (18th-19th c.) and raise new relevant research questions on the basis of concrete examples, predominantly from the scholarly production of the period.   

In the wake of the “Young Turks” revolution (July 1908), the Jewish, Bulgarian (Macedonian), Greek and Turkish socialists set up the “Socialist Federation”. The mouthpiece of the federation was the newspaper “El Journal del Lavorador” that appeared at the beginning in four languages: Judeo-Spanish (henceforth Ladino), Turkish, Bulgarian and Greek. Later on, because of censorship problems, the name of the newspaper was changed to “La Solidaridad Overadera” and “Avanti”.

Until 1912, Turkish served as the language of political power, and from 1912 onwards it was Greek, but Jewish economic and social discourse was conducted in Ladino. After the Balkan Wars and the annexation of Thessaloniki to the Greek nation-state, the heads of the “federation” understood that there was a connection between rights, status, political power and language, and that political hegemony and political rights, in a world in which discourse and power were almost synonymous concepts, were connected with control over language.

In 1913, a series of articles were published in the socialist newspaper “Avanti” dealing with the question of the language that should be used by the socialists. After bitter arguments, Ladino was chosen as the language of social discourse for the workers who were members of the “federation” – the Jewish sector.

Besides the political and economic debate over which language the Jewish workers should speak and write, arguments were also held about the concepts of 'Cultural capital'. While Pierre Bourdieu referred to the function of cultural wealth, the world of material content and knowledge which gave social superiority to those who possessed it, in creating and maintaining inequality, the federation in Thessaloniki tried to create a socialist cultural capital that would be a substitute for bourgeois linguistic and cultural wealth. The lecture deals also with the Jewish Communist party Theater and the use of Greek.

In this lecture I shall examine the process of creating a language and social identity among the Jewish workers during the early years following the establishment of the “Socialist Federation” through its bulletins – “el Journal del Lavorador”, “La Solidaridad Overadera”, and “Avanti”.

During the fourteenth century, the English guilds managed to impose themselves in the civic councils and gain political and economic control over the urban communities, by promoting their influential members in the civic hierarchy. The redistribution of power from landlords to merchants, forced the majority of the world of labour to join in a guild in order to ensure their job positions, which were already threatened. Despite the fact that the new social and political structures contributed to the increase of urban wealth, they equally caused the migration of those labourers who were now considered as surplus workforce. In addition to the hostile conditions of everyday life after the plague, such as the decrease of food products and the subsequent phenomenal rise in market prices, famine and the riots, the diversification in trade and manufacture, increasing numbers of peasants and artisans moved to the cities which, as their markets became saturated, could not provide jobs for them.

The financial austerity, the incapacity to express their dissatisfaction and the need to come up against their work problems favored the establishment of groups and brotherhoods within the guilds, promoting the necessity for “solidarity and protection”. The ideal of solidarity, which was propagated through the use of biblical texts and ecclesiastical sermons, was a rallying point for the world of labour and one of the most prominent arguments to assert new rights and maintain traditional privileges. Artisans and tradesmen used the biblical drama and the civic rituals to highlight the significance of labour and their professional “pride” and status: the kind and honest city dweller, Christian and laborer. Theatre was one of the means to promote their claims in the new urban society.

This paper focuses, firstly, on the various strategies of promotion of the ideal of labour solidarity through the biblical drama and the “mystery plays”, funded and staffed by members of urban guilds. Secondly, it highlights their arguments on stage and in their workplaces. Thirdly, it deals with the reaction on the part of employer/power groups and fourthly, it examines the gradual transformation of the conditions and work relations in the English towns during the 14th and 15th centuries.

The proposed paper offers insights into the history of coal miners in England on the basis of a distinct source of information, namely broadside ballads. During the revival of this hybrid source, in the nineteenth century, the traditional ballad themes of previous centuries were reproduced while more contemporary themes, such as working in the coal mines, were also introduced. The significance of examining work issues through this genre of popular culture lies in the exposure of underlying stereotypes, which are revealed through this kind of primary source, as well as in the diversity of information that sheds light on the collier profession through a different perspective. This paper has two main aims, to examine: a) the human side of colliers and their experience in the coalmines, as evidenced through broadside ballads; and b) gender stereotypes associated with this specific type of work as well as relevant social implications. For this purpose public opinion presented in broadside ballads, and dominant discourse, as expressed in the legal framework and contemporary press, are juxtaposed and examined against the background of secondary literature.

The paper draws on nineteen original broadside ballads dealing with the collier profession. Their numerous variations and reprints, which were published between 1784 and 1910, were also examined. A considerable number of the original broadside ballads that were examined, approximately one quarter of the sample, refers to real events and, more specifically, to fatal work accidents. The broadside ballads on this topic provide useful information on the circumstances surrounding the accidents, thus maintaining their validity as historical events. Nevertheless, the topic of accidents, whether fatal or not, is a common one in ballads and cannot be invariably linked to actual incidents with the outmost certainty. References to the difficulties and hazards associated with coal mining are commonly found. Moreover, various economic and political issues are highlighted; and, in at least two of the examined broadside ballads, there is a clear reference to coal cost as well as collier wages. Similarly, the stereotypes that emerge through broadside ballads are of great interest. The majority of the ballads examined concerns, notably, male workers. Female and child labor are not represented to an equal extent. Hence, the examination of relevant ballads, as case studies, can lead to valuable insights on gender issues.

This paper discusses who the ‘economic actors’ were and where in early modern society they operated. Were they all adult men operating from ‘within’ their households?

Tentatively, the paper seeks to establish a conceptual model that does justice to realities that are poorly represented both by modern economic models, where the economic actor is a free and anonymous but implicitly male individual driven by self-interest, and by standard accounts of early modern households as governed by patriarchal economic actors. Instead of these models, the paper advocates a model that takes into account the importance of gender (marriage) and generation (master/servant relationships and parent/child relationships). Moreover, such a model should take into account the permeable character of early modern households and the widespread use of representatives and intermediaries in economic and social life. According to such a model, agency should not be conceptualized as being concentrated in (a few) individuals operating ‘inside’ households; instead, agency could be spread out across household borders in long chains of delegation. In a similar way, transactions did not happen at well-defined moments but were spread out over time. As a consequence, the idea of self-interest, or one interest, behind economic transactions becomes difficult to sustain.

Theoretically, the discussion will be based on ideas about the household as an open unit (Eibach) and on ideas about the importance of personal trust.

Empirically, the paper will discuss:
• Spouses acting as representatives of each other;
• Servants and children acting as representatives of their parents/masters/mistresses;
• People from different households acting as representatives and intermediaries for each other;
• Chains of delegation in the credit market;
• Other forms of vicarious acting.

The aim of the paper is to try to compare, at European level, family and gender roles in craft workshops, during the early modern period. The comparison, based on the existing historical literature and on new archival sources, will stress the differences and similarities across Europe in order to highlight the role played by women’s work in the evolution of European economies and urban labour markets.

Many factors play specific roles in that analysis, but especially:
• The role of guilds and the existence –or not- of female or mixed guilds;
• Juridical traditions about women’s -and especially wives’- rights in property matters;
• The role of apprentices and servants in urban society and the access –or not-- of girls to technical training;
• The access of women and men to labour makets;
• The more general evolution of the urban economy and the role played by women’s work in this process, notably: the exclusion or inclusion of women from socially recognised activities; new job opportunities in the context of the globalization and the development of new forms of consumption; and the ‘migration’ of urban industry to the countryside in the context of protoindustrialization.
• Economic relations between members of the family in craft workshops and particularly the role of unpaid work in the context of the urban market economy.

In this paper we start to re-think migration by assessing existing work on population movements in various geographical contexts. Most work on early modern population movement is about male labour migration, notably journeymen, soldiers, sailors and vagrants within Europe, and transatlantic migrants. It appears that those travelling across the Atlantic, either voluntarily or as bonded labour or as slaves, were largely although not exclusively male. This framework has made it difficult for historians to see the significance of female migration, although work has begun on the pre-1800 period.

Our meta-study of existing research from a comparative perspective pays special attention to regional differences in light of claims about northwest European difference in marriage rates, marriage ages, and labour force participation. While a relatively small number of people moved for religious motives and for marriage, the vast majority of movement was for work. If long-distance and overseas migration was primarily male, the more common shorter distance rural-urban migration was probably predominantly female. Men came, and often left again; women moved to cities and stayed. A common feature of many early modern cities in Western Europe is that women outnumbered men.

The early modern urban economy offered women often more economic options than the countryside. It is well known that women moved to cities in search of domestic service jobs. But in the developed urban labour market women could also earn an income as money lenders, as wage labourers or journeywomen in industrial and public service sectors, and as retail or wholesale traders. In-depth research on particular cities suggests that the draw of employment in manufacturing, in commerce and in transport may have influenced the female labour market as much as the demand for household service.

European cities of both the north and the south had relatively low marriage rates and late marriage ages. But in any event marriage appears to have been only one of many factors in determining female labour market participation in the early modern period. By re-conceptualizing economic actors to include women, investigating the complexity of urban labour markets, it is possible to understand their prominence in labour migration in a new light.

This paper aims to offer some insights of the organization and reproduction of maritime labour force in the Greek-owned merchant fleet during the second half of the 19th century, based on the case of the island of Spetses, the second most important maritime center and place of registration of the Greek state. Shipping, an international industry par excellence, has been inextricably connected to the growth of international trade. Especially after the Industrial Revolution, it was the main vehicle of market integration and capitalist expansion contributing to the creation of the new world economy of the second half of the 19th century. In the Greek case, shipping has presented an unprecedented growth and transformed into the main international carrier of grain trade from the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black sea to the main markets of Western Europe along the 19th century.

One basic question that arises from the above is how the internationalization of Greek owned shipping has affected the organization of the maritime labour market. One logical scenario would be the acceleration of maritime labour market's transition from the pre-capitalistic, fragmented and localized forms depended on the maritime communities towards modern institutionalized structures subordinated to the demands of international competition. However, evidence drawn from the island of Spetses reveals that, throughout the 19th century, the crews employed in the sea going vessels were "extracted" almost exclusively from the small local maritime market, organized around a set of informal institutions, social relations and customary practices embedded in the local maritime community and adapted to the specialized needs of the local industry.
Nepotism, social networks and hierarchies and control which characterized the organization of life at shore were transmitted into the life at sea. Paternalistic management intertwined with accumulated debt, emerging from a system of advances on their payments, ensured the reproduction of maritime labour, both abundant and cheap even compared to western European ports. The prevalence of this organizational structure persisted till the end of the 19th century, when the diffusion of the technology of steam completely transformed the organization of seafaring and the local maritime communities.

This paper is based on newly found archival material from the island of Spetses: the Archive of the Koutsis family, one of the most important shipowning families of the island of Spetses and the lists of the National Guard for the year 1868. The Koutsis business archive records the crews of the family's ships, their names, position and salaries for more than 24 journeys randomly distributed during the period 1858-1870. Additionally, the business correspondence between the ship's captain and the shipowner provides valuable information on the conditions of the work onboard and the relations between during voyages. The lists of the National Guard provides information on the occupational profiles, the marital status and age of all the male population of the island, a source useful to the reconstruction of the local maritime community.

The great power of Greek islands/maritime centres, as history has proved, was the maritime culture that seafaring tradition nurtured in the islands of the Ionian and Aegean seas that since the 18th century to the 20th century ran and managed ships, large sailing ships, steamships, diesel ships. Greek seamen are notorious for their attachment to their island and the most important maritime islands in the "production" of seafarers in the 20th century were Cephalonia, Ithaca, Andros, Chios and Kassos. Maritime culture and pride in being the "best" became part of the productivity and efficiency of Greek shipping. Maritime culture is highly important generally in maritime business much more important that in any other kind of business. It is part of the nature of shipping, where small groups of people spend their lives in small floating societies thousands of miles away from the company's headquarters and their line of communication with the world is the office; if it is "their" office, then they do the job as best as they can.

Aristotle Onassis neither came from an island nor his family had connected with the shipping businesss. Through his close friend and collaborator Costas Gratsos he got in touch with the seafaring population of Ithaca that provided excellent crews with valuable know how for his ships. Ithaca, with centuries of maritime tradition, was a seafarers' hotbed. In the post-World War Two period, Ithacan prominent shipowners, however, did not continue their shipowning activities to the extent they had done before. Therefore, Onassis found available experienced crews, and Ithacan seamen became the mainstay of Onassis’ vessels on board and ashore. One of the traditional methods in Greek shipping to keep a close connection of the office with the ship is that many Departments of the shipping companies, like the Crewing Department, the Marine Department, the Operation Department or the Technical Department are manned by ship masters and ship engineers who have served at sea for a number of years in the company. The most able ones are hired eventually to serve in the offices. This tradition has been followed in the Onassis group of companies from its very beginning.

What is highly interesting, however, is to see how Onassis reinvented the maritime culture of the island of Ithaca to a corporate business culture. He re-invented the traditional bond of a Greek shipping firm to the seafaring population of a Greek island, to the bond of a global shipping group with its employees. It is this transition that this paper will attempt to investigate. It will be based on some seafarers' testimonies, interviews with Onassis' employees and seamen and the Onassis Business Archive of the Onassis Foundation.

One of the major factors in the rise of Greek shipping during the 20th century was the Greek seamen. In the 1920s there was an increase in the number of Greek seafarers working on all types of Greek ships by raising the number of 15,000 before the First World War to 30,000 on the eve of the Second World War. During the interwar period, especially after the 1929 crisis, working conditions in Greek steamers deteriorated, resulting in the organization and trade union activity of seafarers on board ships. The purpose of the announcement is to analyze the working conditions on ships and how to engage in trade union movements over them during the 1930s.

The crew is ranked in labor for bridge, engine and general service personnel. The part of their residence reflects the hierarchy on board. Sailors and heaters at the lower level of the hierarchy stay on the bow, the so-called ship's crackle, where there is tight space and vibrates vigorously when the ship is at sea. The non-commissioned officers, craftsman, architect and carpenter reside on the back of the ship with intense engine noise. In the middle of the ship in superstructure are the officers and the radio broadcaster. At this point is the dining room of the officers, while the crew is eating separately in a space under the deck, in the "cabin of the harbor".

Lower crews faced shipping occasionally and not professionally. On the contrary, professional sailors were the officers, non-commissioned artisans, hard-boys, carpenters. The economic crisis of 1929-1933 also hits shipping. Wages are falling, unemployed are rising, conditions are getting worse. Shipbuilders call them "caves", "floating iron prisons", "Greek coffins". The food is getting worse, the hours of work exhausting, the "unusual", the places of residence with problematic hygiene conditions. Many sailors became tuberculous.

The average number of Greek crews ranged from nineteen to twenty-eight, In Norwegian thirty-six. Reduced staff resulted in increased work and shifts. Each sailor and heater performed six hours rather than a four-hour shift at the wheel and the boiler room respectively, while they had to work another six to eight hours to maintain the usually elderly ship. So it could reach 12-14 hours a day. In 1930, half of the ships did not have radio stations, while 1/3 did not have a cook, since the ship was carrying out the work. In addition, 90% of the ships had neither rulers nor third engineers. The reduction in crew composition combined with wage cuts in the first half of the 1930s reduced the Greek ship's labor costs and consolidated Greek shipping on the Atlantic ocean streets.

The archival sources for the work and life of seafarers are ship's logs, seafarers' correspondence, nautical and other documents, as well as published or non-testimonies of seafarers themselves in the maritime press and archive material, from Naval Associations, Such as the Pan-Hellenic Naval Federation. Valuable archive material for the trade union activity of seafarers is provided by the Archives of the KKE(Greek Kommunist Part).

Στα μέσα του 18ου αιώνα, η εγκατάσταση -Ηπειρωτών κυρίως- καποτάδων στη Βενετία έχει πλέον αποκτήσει χαρακτηριστικά μονιμότητας. Οι τεχνίτες και οι πραματευτές, έμποροι ενός νέου είδους πανωφοριού, της μάλλινης κάπας, προσέφεραν ένα ανταγωνιστικό προϊόν για τα χαμηλά κοινωνικά στρώματα, τους ναυτικούς, τους στρατιώτες και τους ψαράδες, το οποίο κατέκτησε σταδιακά τις τοπικές αγορές.

Εξετάζουμε τη δραστηριότητα των ελεύθερων αυτών επαγγελματιών παρακολουθώντας την κίνηση των αγορών: την αύξηση της αγοραστικής ζήτησης σε συνάρτηση με την επέκταση του δικτύου, την είσοδο νέων εργατικών χεριών από συγκεκριμένες τουρκοκρατούμενες ελληνικές περιοχές στο επάγγελμα, το άνοιγμα νέων εργαστηρίων ή την επέκταση των παλιών και σε άλλες ιταλικές πόλεις όπως στην Τεργέστη, στην Ανκόνα, στη Μεσσήνα• επίσης, στο άνοιγμα των καποτάδων, εκτός από την τοπική αγορά της Βενετίας, σε νέες αγορές, όπως για παράδειγμα στην φημισμένη εμποροπανήγυρη της Senigallia.

Κορύφωση της επαγγελματικής ανέλιξης των καποτάδων της Βενετίας ήταν η δημιουργία εμπορικών συντροφιών. Στο πλαίσιο αυτό θα επισημανθεί και η ίδρυση της επαγγελματικής συντεχνίας των καποτάδων, της Arte dei Greci Capotteri (1764). Πρόκειται για τη μοναδική ελληνική επαγγελματική συντεχνία της Βενετίας. Θα εξετάσουμε τις συνθήκες ίδρυσης, τον τρόπο οργάνωσής της δίνοντας έμφαση στην εσωτερική δομή και λειτουργία της, όπως ακριβώς αυτή διατυπώνεται στο καταστατικό της (Mariegola). Επίσης, θα προσπαθήσουμε να αναζητήσουμε τους τον ορίζοντα των σχέσεών της με το βενετικό κράτος αναφορικά με τη υπερκείμενη νομοθεσία, τις επαφές με τα διοικητικά όργανα επίβλεψης των επαγγελματικών συντεχνιών καθώς και τις φορολογικές αρχές.

Τέλος, ιδιαίτερη αναφορά θα γίνει στα αρχεία των καποτάδων. Τα αρχειακά τεκμήρια που έχουμε εντοπίσει μας δίνουν τη δυνατότητα να ανασυστήσουμε πλήρως όχι μόνο τις επαγγελματικές τους δραστηριότητες αλλά και τα αρχεία που παρήγαγαν οι καποτάδες στο πλαίσιο αυτών των δραστηριοτήτων, τόσο ως ελεύθεροι επαγγελματίες στα εργαστήριά τους όσο κι ως οργανωμένη επαγγελματική συσσωμάτωση.

Αντικείμενο της εισήγησης είναι η προσέγγιση, η ανάλυση και η επεξεργασία ανέκδοτου αρχειακού υλικού, το οποίο εντοπίστηκε στα βενετικά αρχεία αναφορικά με τις εργασιακές σχέσεις στην Κέρκυρα κατά το δέκατο έκτο και το δέκατο έβδομο αιώνα. Ειδικότερα, μελετώνται και κωδικοποιούνται δικαιοπραξίες που αφορούν συμβάσεις εξαρτημένης εργασίας, συμβάσεις παροχής υπηρεσιών, παρεπόμενες εργασιακές συμβάσεις.

Τα χαρακτηριστικά και η ταυτότητα των αρμόδιων για την εργασία θεσμικών φορέων δικαίου, οι κυρίαρχες περί εργασίας αντιλήψεις, το κοινωνικο-οικονομικό προφίλ των συμβαλλομένων, τα χαρακτηριστικά του προσυμβατικού σταδίου-οι συνθήκες σύναψης των συμβάσεων, το αντικείμενο της εργασίας, οι συμβατικές αμοιβές και τιμές, αλλά και ο βαθμός απόκλισης αυτών βάσει των ισχυόντων, κατά την εξεταζόμενη περίοδο, συναλλακτικών ηθών, οι εργασιακοί χώροι, οι συμβατικές ρήτρες, οι λόγοι τροποποίησης, συμπλήρωσης, ακύρωσης αρχικών συμβατικών συμφωνιών αποτελούν τα βασικά εξετασθέντα θέματα αυτής της μελέτης.

The paper will first examine the main characteristics of labour within the guilds, since, as in the rest of the Ottoman Empire, they dominated the landscape of the urban economic activities in the region during the period examined. It will enquire into issues such as the regulation of craftsmen’s labour activities by the guilds and by the Ottoman state, the composition and recruitment of the work-force, subcontracting labour within and outside the guild, the working conditions and some aspects of the craftsmen’s business practices. On the basis of a closer examination of the available sources, the paper will at the same time try to demonstrate that manufacturing beyond the guilds was an important element of the economy in the region. Although in many cities there were a few craftsmen or people engaged in services who were not guild-members, from a quantitative point of view the main “concentration” of non-guild labour could be found in proto-industrial manufacturing. Therefore our research will focus on ‘free’ labour in proto-industries, which in the central part of the Ottoman Balkans developed both in a rural and in an urban environment. The sources testify that part of the producers engaged in proto-industries were organized in guilds: this was usually the case of the urban woolen cloth weavers, tailors and braid-makers. The producers of the raw materials for these industries, as well as the carpet-weavers and rose oil distillers, were however ‘free’ workers. We should also take into account the fact that in many textile proto-industries in the region the basic unit of production was the urban or rural household. It is particularly important to examine in this respect women’s economic activities, since women from the central Balkans could not enter the guilds but were the main working force in silk-reeling, wool spinning and performed also other economic roles. The role of migration, as a phenomenon which had an important impact on the characteristics and dimensions of the labour market in the region during the period examined will also be considered. On the basis of the analysis of concrete cases of conflict or of cooperation between guild and non-guild labour on the other hand, the paper aims at demonstrating that the interactions between the guilds and ‘free’ labour were not always of opposition but could also be complementary.

The paper deals with industrial child labour and thus with children working in the industrial sector, in “Old” , late nineteenth and early twentieth century Austria as well as in the new interwar Austrian national state. The term “children” refers to minors under 14 or 15 years of age, namely to schoolchildren. The paper draws on official state sources such as the factory inspectors’ reports published yearly since the early 1880s and the 1908 “Survey on Child Labour in Austria”, an impressively extensive and elaborate survey conducted through school authorities, as well as on contemporary studies and autobiographical documents. In the period under examination children appear to have been of continually decreasing and generally restricted, even of minor importance to the industrial sector. Yet, they still played a crucial role in branches, where work has been mainly or exclusively organized on a household/family basis (f.e. in brickmaking), and/or in domestic industry, which had survived intensive industrialization in many ways, and indeed made a strong reappearance during periods of crisis. Children, boys as well as girls, undertook mainly auxiliary, but still crucial, tasks and their working conditions did not always comply with child labor laws. In regard to child labour, issues of labour organization, gender, household functioning and payment systems will be addressed.

The Société de Protection des Apprentis et des Enfants Employés dans les Manufactures (SPAEEM, Society for the Protection of Apprentices and of Children Working in Factories) was a French association founded in 1866 by a group of people mainly belonging to the middle-class and mostly catholic. In 1868 its public utility was officially recognized by the government.

Most of the members of the SPAEEM were entrepreneurs and politicians who wanted to protect their middle-class and entrepreneurial interests and privileges and to limit the negative consequences of industrialisation, both in terms of social order and of economic pre-eminence of France. In order to achieve this aim they committed themselves to protecting young workers of French factories mainly through lobbying and through the action of some specific committees. These bodies supported private initiatives in the fields of religious and primary education and of vocational training, defended and helped children in the case of industrial accidents or of disputes with employers, spread knowledge of working procedures and machines useful to reduce accidents, placed apprentices, etc.

While works on the economic and social consequences of the industrial revolution and on the use of children in factories are numerous, there are not pieces of research completely or mainly focusing on the SPAEEM.
The journal published by the SPAEEM every year is one of the most rich sources to study this association. As a matter of facts, this journal provides pieces of information on the SPAEEM through reports on meetings of the Association and on the activity of its committees, lists of its members, awards that it had received or given, etc.
The journal of the SPAEEM is also a source of knowledge of transformations that took place in France and abroad[1] between the 18th and the 20th century in terms of conditions of production, division of labour, wages, technology, labour policies and laws, social protection, migrant flows, awareness of social problems, social movement, etc. Information on these subjects is provided through, for instance, studies conducted by the SPAEEM or by other associations and bodies on working conditions, on the use of children in industry, on other associations similar to the SPAEEM, on exemplary ways of organising apprenticeship and work in France or abroad, on laws already passed or under discussion.

________________________________

[1] The SPAEEM was in contact with other similar associations, both European and American. Moreover, in its journal there were frequent reports on foreign children working in France and on other countries as regards the use of children in factories, labour policies, other existing associations for the protection of workers, etc.

Almost 1,5 million refugees from Asia Minor, Pontus and Thrace fled to Greece in 1922 as a result of the defeat of the greek army by Ataturk’s troops. Around 85% of the refugees were women, children and elderly in total precarity and were provided with humanitarian aid, without this being enough for their survival and settlement. The historiography had shed light to the efforts of the state and the charity organizations to deal with their urgent needs, but paid little attention to their own struggle to survive and the strategies they used. There was an interest from the part of historians and anthropologists for the folklore the refugees inherited(e.g. Renée Hirschon’s “Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe: The social life of Asia Minor refugees in Piraeus”) or for their economic, political and social importance for the backward greek society of the time. In this presentation, we attempt to investigate alternative narratives in a bottom-up perspective and give voice to the refugees themselves, the unprivileged and the marginalised. Based on oral history interviews conducted in the late 1990s-early 2000s by researchers of the Historical Archive of Greek Refugees in Salonica we try to gain insight at the experience of refugee child labor and the challenges that it posed to the individual and its family. The questions posed in our research have to do with the living and working conditions of the refugees in general and children in particular in the urban setting of Salonica. We also investigate what form of subjectivity was created through refugee child labor and how the narrators deal with it. Our conclusions is that the entrance in the labor market in such an early age as 8 or 9 years old had crucial impact in the education of the children which was lacking and in their position in the hierarchy of the family, while they were sometimes heads of the family or had to care for the nurture of their siblings. They were endowed with an ethos of hard work and service for the sake of the others and they were called to face challenges to which they either submitted or -in most of the cases- they resisted and invented alternative ways in what seemed to be one-way street. They were discriminated against on the base of their age, their origins, their social class and their gender. They lived marginalized in the poor suburbs around the city and they worked in the margin of the labor market without insurance, quite invisible. Through their memories we follow how this experience of hardships formed the individuals, their worldview and dictated their survival strategies.

At the end of the nineteenth century, coal constituted approximately one-half of the cargo trafficked in the Port of Barcelona. In 1896, a company was formed which would mechanise the unloading of this material. The introduction of machines implied the practical disappearance of some of the port trades, as was the case of the harbour-boatmen (lancheros), as well as an important reduction of the number of jobs. In the face of mechanisation – and persistently during 20 years – the workers deployed an important repertoire of protest actions aimed at combating mechanisation. Even so, the petitions, legal recourses, strikes, boycotts, and sabotage were unable to remove the coal-unloading machines. In this communication, I analyse the reactions of a worker collective – that of the coal unloaders – before the crises caused by the introduction of machines and the different discourses formed around mechanisation. Likewise, this analysis compares the events in the Port of Barcelona with the effects produced by the appearance of machines in other European ports during the same period.

At the beginning of the 1920's, in the port of Thessaloniki, most of the dockers were Jews, whereas Greek-Thessalonikians were in a minority - having just being integrated in the docks.

However, according to the Zionist historiography, very soon this initial Hellenization of the docks accelerated, being augmented by Greek refugees from Turkey in 1922 and 1923, so that the Jewish dockers were outsted from the docks.

My presentation rejects this crisis discourse of total removal, and brings an alternative version of a common struggle of Jewish and Thessalonikian-Greek dockers against the government efforts for the absorption of Greek refugees in the port, and I will be discussing, among others, the following questions: what were the common interests of the local dockers (Jews and Thessalonikian-Greeks) in their struggle against the newcomers ?

To what extent did this internal solidarity reach?

This paper aims to present the characteristics, changes and innovations in regards to stevedoring at the Port of Thessaloniki from 1923 until the 1970s. During the Interwar the vast majority of port workers was not employed on a daily basis and was dependent by contractors and sub-contractors.
The operation of the Free Zone of Thessaloniki (FZT) in 1923, served both an attempt to Hellenize and partially nationalize port operation. In practice, in 1930, we have the withdrawal of the French company that operated the port since the late 19th century and its replacement by the Thessaloniki Port Fund (TPF). The FZT tried to take the contractors’ system under its control while we have the intensification of the contradictions amongst the local and the refugee workers. At the same time the government is trying to keep the profession of stevedoring closed by controlling the number of stevedores while it reinforced its corporatist character.

The issue of labor management recurs in different ways during the post-war era. The port operations resumed during the civil war. This defined the political and cultural character of the new workforce that succeeded the Jewish port workers in stevedoring.

Contracting work as a traditional, vertically integrated pyramid labor management and control system safeguard the proper functioning of the port in turbulent times. However, the reintroduction of the contracting work system was considered to reproduce pathogenies for a streamlined organization of port labor and for the port management and operation. The merger of the FZT and TPF into the Free Zone and Port of Thessaloniki (FZPT), in 1953, and the upgrade of the port at an international level came to depend on the removal of the various contractors. At the same time pallets and forklifts were introduced in port operations significantly changing the stevedoring process.

In 1970, the FZPT was renamed at Thessaloniki Port Authority. This is not a typical renaming. On the contrary, this was the completion of a “modernization” course in respect to the institutional transformation of the organization of port labor. For this reason alone the foundation of the new organization is considered to be a breakthrough. The old model was revoked. This model was heavily based in various forms of private business activity with the various port organizations initially having an administrative role and later on a dual role, both administrative and in respect to port labor. The traditional contracting work system was repealed with a series of decisions while all other port organizations were dissolved and the State through the Thessaloniki Port Authority directly took charge of stevedoring.

The proposal for paper focuses on the policies for handicraft in Italy in the early years of the Italian Democratic Republic, the fifties of the XX century. Since the first legal measures at the beginning of this century, the Italian legislator has met with obstacle, owing to the features of this particular field of labour. The handicraft is, in fact, hard to define because of the bivalence of the craftsman, both entrepreneur and worker, and for the ambiguity between handicraft and small industry. The really crucial step for this subject is in the fifties, when State, parties, representative bodies of employers and workers had to develop new policies after the failure of the corporate fascist attempt.

During the thirties the corporatism, aimed to reconcile the different instances of the working world, had been intertwined with the intervention of fascism in social policy, with the purpose of limiting the effects of the economic crisis and strengthening the consensus, rather than introducing and guaranteeing new social rights. In the handicraft, these choices had led to shelve the main legal requests by the representative body, the Fascist Federation of Handicraft: specific collective agreement, legal regulation of apprenticeship, license craft. The fascism chose a political reconciliation in the interests of different economic categories, in particular craftsmen and industrialists, which was realized in different ways: the incorporation of the Federation of Handicraft into the Confederation of Industry, the restriction of the size of craft businesses, the creation of a “Public agency for handicraft and small industries” (‘ENAPI’). While this attempt failed in reaching the development of the two sectors, it was successful in the social field, because it assured the small manufacturers of the State’s interest, even if this interest was just occasional assistance.

After the second world war, the new democratic representative organizations claimed a legal definition of craftsman and craft company, starting an intense debate on their character as well as social and economic function. At the same time, they reconsidered some issues previously discussed and demanded other rights for craftsmen and their families, such as health services and pensions. These claims interbred with the interest of new political parties – not only the government one (Christian Democrats), but also others – for the middle class, that was considered as essential asset toward social integration. Therefore, in the second half of the fifties, the government passed some important laws, which defined the new labour policies and social protection for handicraft, although they did not constitute a coherent policy and left some problems unresolved.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the issue of master’s authorities in labour disputes through the industrial arbitrators - the institute of conciliation of labour conflicts born in Italy in the late nineteenth century. In Italy the law passed in 1893, later compared to the other European countries. The law applied only to manufacturing enterprises and favoured selected categories of workers. The causes of arbitrators were articulated according to the diagram of the process or through various degrees of judgment. Their argumentation’s devices and evidences from witnesses simulated those of the courtroom by means of the physical presence and direct comparisons of the parties. Those causes are a source particularly useful not only to identifying the regulatory mechanisms that governs labour relations, but also to understanding the figures and characters of the workers, their arguments, conceptions, models of behaviour, their professional and personal identity. In this paper I analyse the judgments of Florentine labour arbitrators in the early twentieth century. The city of Florence was a particular social and industrial environment, different from the one of many Italian great and medium cities at the same time.
It is a fascinating and complex subject that would require to quote in full the worker’s voices emerging from the disputes of the Florentine Arbitrators. In this paper I will focus on a few exempla, which illustrate the best specific cases of the practices and protest against the master’s authority on some key issues.

The term ''work'' derives from the Latin word - labor, which is well known at all today as it indicates the condition of being occupied to the so-called ''employee''; in the sense that, from an economic and legal point of view, the one who works and spends time (typically on behalf of others, and for a public employer, or for a private employer) in exchange to obtain a profit, which is generally to a monetary nature.

The labor has been developed in various forms and ways, in different states of the earth, although in a specific way such as slavery.

The first organic laws in the field of labor law, In Italy, have been approved after 1904. The fascist regime of the time has affirmed some regulations that dated from the mid-twenties.

Albania, before 1939, has been under King Zog regime, which approved the Civil Code and Commercial one, under the spirit of French and Italian legal system. The other fields were ruled from the legislation inherited from the Ottoman Empire.

In 1939, with the union of the two crowns of Italy and Albania, this branch of law was introduced for the first time in Albania.

The labor law and the right of association, known as ''the corporate model '', which was in force throughout 1939 in the Italian peninsula, exclusively for the Italian citizens was applied all over the Albanian territory for the next five years up to 1944, for the Albanian citizens, until the German invasion defeat this Kingdom.

Also, the labor contract, with embryonal elements and the right to strike of the employers will be mentioned, in order to offer a full legal framework during 1939 -1944.

This article aims to analyze from a historical and legal point of view the labor institutes, which were ruled and developed during the five years period of the United Kingdom between Italy and Albania (1939-1944).

Key words: labor, relation, employer, employee, United Kingdom Italian -Albanian.

The development of human rights and international law in general has influenced the development of international labour law, embodied in the International labour Organization, whose main goal is to set labour standards, develop policies and devise programmes promoting decent work for all women and men. International law aims to meet its mission and objectives mainly through domestic law. This is the reason why in the last years there is an increase in the international efforts to reinforce the role of domestic courts and authorities, making them responsible and capable about the implementation of labour law standards.

Member states in an international treaty are legally bound to implement it after the ratification, making this treaty applicable in the domestic legal system, especially by the domestic courts. International law and organisations are not interested in the legal tools a specific country chooses for implementing the international obligations. The most important for a country are the results the country reaches while observing the required standards.

Albania has been a member of the ILO since 1920, with a detachment between 1967 and 1991. As a result the Albanian state is engaged in the respect of the principles and legal norms of this organization. Given the numerous problems that Albania poses regarding the respect for the employee’s rights, the paper aim is to examine whether law enforcement authorities in Albania respect the international standards on labour law, focusing primarily on the resolution of the employment contract. This objective will be achieved through analyzing the discrepancies between domestic legislation and international labour law, international organizations recommendations and by the examination of the courts’ decision on labour relations statistically speaking and in terms of content.

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, women in Latin America entered the labor market in large numbers and their occupational segregation in the workplace diminished. However, segregation has not completely disappeared and there appear to be persistent on wage inequalities. Although research on inequality in Latin America shows heterogeneity among countries, there is a general persistence of overall inequality in the last decades of the twentieth century. However, these studies have not incorporated gender as an indicator of these results. It is therefore motivating to measure the impact of gender inequality on global inequality over the period.

This paper inquires about the impact of the increase of women’s participation in the labor market on gender inequality. The results are based on the reconstruction of the activity rates of women in the labor market in Latin America from 1950 to 2010. The hypothesis that guides this analysis is that the gender wage gap is a main factor in explaining persistent global inequality and, at the same time, that women’s incorporation into the labor market promoted a combination of different processes of inequality. The wage gap was high in contexts of less significant presence of women in the labor market, while the incorporation of women into the workforce, which may have helped to reduce this trend, generated another source of inequality through the segregation of the labor market.

This paper presents an analysis of the evolution of nominal and real wages of workers in the city of Buenos Aires between 1903 and 1960. Based on the information available in official documents issued by the National Department of Labour, series of wages and prices are built. Wages series of skilled and unskilled workers allow us to calculate and observe the "skill premia". Historiography on the subject is profusely for other regions, but no yet on Buenos Aires in the first half of the twentieth century. Furthermore, the differences between the wages of men and women with qualification, the so-called "gender gap" and the wage differential by age are calculates and analyzed. The wage gap by gender and age is an almost unexplored topic for the period. Finally, this work allows insight into the reality of wage workers in an important period of Argentina's economic history, and its relationship with economic and political context of the twentieth century.

This paper seeks to compare the effect of gendered perceptions of labour on women's presence in the workforce in early 20th century colonial India as nascent industry sprang up in several parts of the country and towards the end of the 20th century. We compare the entry and exit of women workers in the mill industry of South India in the first half of the 20th century with the informalisation of labour in the fish processing industry, whose workforce was predominantly women, in the last decade of the last century.

Regulation of women's work by means of protective laws that sheltered them from hazardous work and mandated benefits such as creches at the workplace and maternity benefits conditioned women's employment in multiple ways, ranging from how they were resented and mistreated by male workers and how organised unions debated and finally championed equal wages for equal work to how women got excluded altogether.

After Independence, protective laws and regulations grew in number and women's labourforce participation steadily came down. One way to cross the hurdle to womens largescael employment raised by protective legislation is to employ women on informal terms. This means walking the thin line, on the part of employers, between observing the law on contract workers and their benefits in letter and complying with the law in spirit. The fish processing industry that came up along the Indian coastline is a good example of informality at the workplace mediated by gender. Differences in gender perceptions across India's culturally varied regions explained why most workers in the fish processing industry hail from one single state, Kerala.

The current study addresses the work and economic inequalities concerning the female workers in the tobacco warehouses in connection with the labour legislation and the developments in the tobacco workers issue. The detailed processing (selection, classification and packaging) of the fine eastern tobaccos with the expensive local techniques (“basma” and “basi-bagli” of Eastern Mace-donia) was performed by custom only by skilled male workers, the “denkci”; contrary to Bulgaria, for instance, where it was performed by women only. The women-wives were used as assistants in most of the cases. This certain alloca-tion was built on the basis of the traditional family hierarchy and caused wage and position inequalities for women in this particular industry. The labour pol-icy, despite the protective measures also in favour of the female workers, did not provide actual social welfare. The laws were lacking and were not applied either, while the specific nature of this type of work and the pressing social needs of women exceeded any possibility of applying the law. The inequalities were maintained even after 1922, when ⅓ of the workforce was made up of migrant women, either widows or orphan girls, who resided permanently in the tobacco towns and were employed exclusively in the tobacco warehouses. Although they participated in the union assemblies, they appeared to merely comply with the management decisions without speaking or demanding for themselves. Besides, the tobacco workers issue (1919-1924) was rather related to the prohibition of exporting non-processed tobacco (which resulted in the detailed processing and thus the existing allocation in the workplace), than to the (non-) compliance with the labour laws. In fact, through that prohibition, the syndicalists claimed, apart from a high daily wage, a preservation of the established rights for the “denkci”-leaders of their unions. Through those rights, they achieved not only control over the labour process, but also ideological influence on the workers. From the General Confederation’s side, the tobacco workers issue was used as a means to reach their goals, such as the announcement of a general strike. Moreover, the fracture within the syndicalists along with the foundation of conservative organisations (1927) set new priorities; the Communist Party-controlled organisations politicised their struggle during the 1927-1928 strikes and claimed syndicalist-political freedoms, instead of eradication of the gender inequalities. The abolishment of the law prohibiting the exportation of non-processed tobaccos, the fluctuation of the international market in combination with the corporate trend towards the simplification of processing, and the increasing radicalisation of the tobacco workers shaped a clear change in the employer policy (end of the 1920s and especially during the 1930s): establishment of the “toga” system and, subsequently, systematic replacement of the male workers with female. The em-ployers-traders sought in the female hands not only economy in processing (considering that the female employees were paid a lower wage and thus they were preferred over men), but also a decrease in the social tension. With the extensive employment of women, the tobacco workers issue was evolved into a male unemployment issue. The tobacco workers of Kavala claimed in a 1933 strike their entry to the toga system as well as equal wage for men and women. Although the new law regulated the participation of male workers in the toga system (50% of the total number of employees in a warehouse), it provided lower daily wage for women (approximately ½ of the wage of a male worker), thus prolonging the gender inequalities, discrimination and competition. The equalization of the daily wages was legally established during the Interwar and the female labour remained “an underrated product” even after the participation of women in the 1936 strike.

SeaLiT explores the transition from sail to steam navigation and its effects on seafaring populations in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea between the 1850s and the 1920s. In the core of the project lie the effects of technological innovation on seafaring people and maritime communities, whose lives were drastically altered by the advent of steam. The project addresses the changes through the actors, seafarers, shipowners and their families, focusing on the adjustment of seafaring lives to a novel socio-economic reality. It investigates the maritime labour market, the evolving relations among shipowner, captain, crew and their local societies, life on board and ashore, as well as the development of new business strategies, trade routes and navigation patterns.

Maritime labour and shipping remains an understudied case of the transition from the premodern working environment of the sailing ship to that of the steamer, in a period of rapid technological improvements, economic growth and market integration. Therefore, the project will address a major gap in maritime historiography: on the one hand, the transition from sail to steam, and on the other, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, “the extended Mediterranean” according to F. Braudel.

The project examines in a comparative approach seven maritime regions: the Ionian, Aegean, Tyrrhenian, Adriatic and Black Seas, Spain and southern France. The research team composed of researchers and Ph.D. candidates from Greece, Italy, Spain, France and Ukraine will study unpublished sources: ship logbooks, crew lists, business records, and private correspondence. They will produce a collective volume, four Ph.D. dissertations, three workshops, one international conference and a website with an online open access database, an archival and bibliographical corpus and reconstruction of ship voyages on a web G.I.S. application.

The profession of ship engineer was born with the introduction of steam ships. These new professionals were essential on board, and during the first decades of their existence they were scarce and well paid. In Spain steam navigation began around 1817 but the profession of Maquinista Naval was not officially recognized until 1877. But recognition from the social and the academic point of view was slow, both on board and in land. After a first era of rejection, for decades, from the deck officers and the maritime traditions, a second level of rejection and resistance began. Resistance came from a general prejudice from academic institutions and naval authorities mainly. As a consequence, this profession was considered only a technical career and not a scientific one until 1980. Only then it reached the recognition as university level career. We will analyse this long and slow process, having in mind an equivalent process followed by military ship engineer officers in the Spanish Navy, who had to fight the same prejudices.

Since its creation in 1898, Palermo shipyard has represented a major production site in the Mediterranean area. Both a ship-building and a ship-repairing center, it lived its golden age after 1945, when thanks to its strategic position it became the most important shipyard for the reparation of tankers coming from Suez. Until 1970, it also represented the first private shipyard in Italy for amount of workforce, with about 6000 workers employed.

I have reconstructed the labour and industrial history of the shipyard using mainly archival sources (from the company and the trade unions archives), and considering the period between 1945 and 1970.

The results of my research can be organized in two parts. In the first, I describe the different kinds of work performed at the shipyard; the way technological changes affected them; the systems of payment adopted (in particular, the passage from time-wage to piecework in 1960); the working conditions in general; the main features of industrial relations.

In the second, I focus on the systems adopted by the company in order to lower the cost of labour and increase its flexibility. Through these systems, Palermo shipyard managed to offer shipowners extraordinary low prices and short processing times, thus winning the competition of its competitors in the Mediterranean (mainly, the shipyards in Malta and Skaramagkas).

The outstanding low cost of labour was obtained in three ways:

1. Through the so-called sperequazione salariale (wage inequality), sanctioned by national collective contracts, which established different minimum wages for different areas in Italy. In Palermo the minimum wage was much lower than in other Northern provinces, the cost of living being the same.

2. Assuming skilled workers but paying them as unskilled.

3. Through the illegal abuse of overtime.

The exceptional flexibility of labour was instead guaranteed through two strategies:

1. The illegal furniture of a large amount of workforce (around ¼) by subcontracting companies, mainly owned by the local mafia.

2. The large use of temporary contracts (more than ¼ of the total), which were illegally renewed different times, while they should have become permanent after the first renewal.

The shipyard workforce did not remain passive in front of these working conditions. Over the period considered, studded with fights and occupations, the shipyard's workers established themselves as the hard core of the labour movement in Sicily.

This element, as the others mentioned above, will be exhaustively explored in the final paper.

The controversy about the shops’ Sunday closing has always been present in Lisbon and other cities in the final decades of the nineteenth century. On the one hand, it was related to a liberal stance about the freedom of work and trade by the shopkeepers. On the other hand, it was encouraged by the demand for better working conditions by the clerks. But it was related also to the competitive economy of the retail trade, with the paternalistic view of the shopkeepers regarding labour relations in the shops and with a growing tension towards the regulation of economic activities by the municipal and central authorities. A study of a large city like Lisbon, which had about twelve thousand shops, on average, between 1890 and 1910, may shed some light on the clash between tradition and modernity, particularly with regard to labour relations and the links between economic interests and politics. More interesting it becomes when we can compare the Lisbon case with other European cities, such as London, Paris or Milan, or even outside Europe and as far away as Melbourne (Australia) or Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). The study is based on analysis of the documentation of Lisbon’s Shopkeepers Association, on legislation and newspapers. One of the conclusions is that the retailers in Lisbon, despite being quite liberal and sometimes even radical in their political stance, were very conservative regarding the management of human resources in the shops, and that had an impact on the way the Sunday rest was or wasn’t implemented in the city’s retail trade.

This paper constitutes a first approach to a so far unexplored topic in the Greek historiography. I'll begin, thus, by presenting the available evidence on the number of itinerant traders and the specific trades in which peddling was important.

Then, I'll discuss the reasons for the survival and reproduction of street vending, despite the proliferation of shops during the 19th century. These reasons include the gaps in the network of shops -particularly in the working-class neighbourhoods where the consumption of the poor was often not enough to support many shops; the nature of peddling as a refuge for the old and disabled who could not be employed elsewhere; and the limited mobility of women in the public space (particularly at certain points of their life-cycle) which meant that selling goods on their doorstep responded to a social need. Another important relative factor that will be examined is the patterns of relationship between street vendors and shopkeepers. In many cases it was competitive, with the shopkeepers expressing complaints and hostility. However, their relationship could be complementary and symbiotic, as many shopkeepers were suppliers (or even employers) of itinerant traders and profited from their activities; they could also sell, through the channel of street vendors, goods that had become stale or goods of poorer quality.

Which was, then, the status and the identity of the street vendors? Their labour was independent, but usually they had become hawkers seeking not autonomy but employment, which they could not find elsewhere. I'll present some of the answers given so far to the issue of the conceptualization of the condition and the class location of the itinerant traders, including lumpenproletariat; reserve army of labour; a “contradictory location within class relations”; "penny capitalists"; “a category without name” related to the informal sector of non-wage labour in periphery; peasants seeking to earn the monetary income that was necessary for the reproduction of their household, in a course of migration to the city.

I will focus on the differentiations within this social category that appear in the sources and on the different identities proposed or implied in various occasions, and I will argue that, despite their low prestige and earnings, there was a (probably small) fraction of street vendors that regarded themselves mainly as members of a retailing community, seeking to control the labour market and turning against their occasional competitors who hadn't a steady relationship with the "profession".

In interwar Austria “Hausieren” (peddling) was a derogatory term, often used to denounce all kinds of sales and trades practices without (or outside of) a fixed location. Such sales practices were highly contested. They were depicted as illegitimate competition or a nuisance, as profitable but also as beggarly earnings. They seemed to be uncontrolled and uncontrollable. Yet, these trades were anything but unregulated. Legally, there were a number of official trade categories (peddlers, salesmen, street vendors, delivering, itinerant sales and crafts etc.) which differed highly with respect to the permitted places, goods, modes and utilities of sales. In some cases permits could be acquired easily. However, some trades required an extensive evaluation of the applicant. Peddling for instance was supposed to be granted only in cases of extraordinary distress, to war invalids and war widows. Hence, although these trades did not require larger financial means or formal qualifications, such practices faced a number of legal restrictions.

These highly differentiated regulations for sales which seem so similar in many respects might not seem logical. However, the categories, terms, and conditions of trade can be understood as a historical outcome (and a subject) of struggles involving organizations of different trades, people trying to make a living, customers, and various authorities—all of them with different and sometimes contradictory agendas. At the same time, these also reflected the context of the emerging welfare state. Authorities became increasingly involved in more matters of everyday life. Certainly one could still try to make a living without their permission or in violation of the regulations, as was often done. Yet, it became less and less easy to get around the authorities.

In my presentation I will focus on the interaction between the authorities and people who tried to make a living from itinerant sales. Based on a systematic comparison of applications for trade licenses, I will describe how applicants made use of legal requirements and categories: the ways they approached the authorities (or tried to avoid them) with greater or lesser success, how they presented themselves and the trade they aspired to, and how they presented their rationales. I examine how decisions were made and how people dealt with the rejection of their applications by insisting on their rights, by appealing, or by trying to acquiring a different permit.

The paper considers the position of women garment workers in socialist Yugoslavia from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s, and the specificity of the “working mother” gender contract typical of socialism. On the basis of women’s magazines, official reports, factory newspapers and visual material, the paper focuses on female workers’ difficulty in combining paid and unpaid work, the so-called “double burden”. The paper also addresses female workers’ “triple burden”, that is, their widespread reluctance or inability to take part in political activities within the factory, in this case decision-making activities within the framework of Yugoslav self-management.

In the course of the preparation for the 13th Session of its highest political forum, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia launched a broad discussion inside all the party cells on the state of the party and society in 1984. The campaign was initiated among the growing awareness about the deep crisis of Yugoslav self-management institutions and the economy. This paper will give insight into the multifaceted grievances launched by the blue-collar workers inside the factories during the short span of time when the ruling party opened space for debate at the bottom and reveal workers' understanding of the ongoing crisis and the state of Yugoslav socialism.

This paper explores autochthonous understandings of the institutions of self-management on the Yugoslav factory floor according to workers in production. Some workers engaged enthusiastically with workplace institutions of self-management and the League of Communists of Yugoslavia while other workers kept participation to a necessary minimum or even avoided such activities. Based on oral history research amongst working class Belgraders and the qualitative analysis of factory documents, the paper expands on some of the ambiguous ways that one's position in social space and gender impacted upon participation and attitudes towards these institutions during late socialism (1976-1989).

This paper deals with the various forms of labor employed in the imperial estates (ciftliks), located in Mihalic region in modern day city Bursa, in the first half of nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire. Given the fact that these estates had been directly managed and financed by the Imperial Treasury, the availability of their accounting books, which were kept in detail on monthly basis, offers a great opportunity to scrutinize the coexistence of various forms of labor.

Inspired by the works of prominent Marxist historian Witold Kula, re-invitation of the duality within pre-capitalist economies, constituted both by natural and nominal elements, allows us to evaluate the overall economic performanceof the imperial estates, as enterprises. Methodologically, (i) this paper introduces the format of accounting books in which only the appointed imperial officers and permanent labor (bailiffs, shepherds, wage laborers etc.) can be referred in the category of labor expenses. In turn, (ii) through the reorganization of original information by adding seasonal and occasional workers into the general labor category, it becomes possible to see both variety and weight of labor with respect to monthly expenses or runningcosts. However, since this reorganization is based heavily on the availability of nominal calculations originally deriving from the very act of recording specific and apparent moments of labor exchange, apart from that, it is also possible to observe forms of concealedor hidden labor especially in construction- or repair-related activities. To conclude, echoing, at least analogically, the (in)formality in the contemporary economics, this paper tries to trace and question the coexistence of apparent and obscure forms of laborwithin the imperial estates in the Ottoman Empire.

The settlements dependent on the jurisdiction of the kadi of Selanik in the middle of the 19th century presented a variety of characteristics differentiating them from each other, not only in terms of geographical position, proximity to the city, altitude, climate and soil, but also, concomitantly, in relation to their role in regional economies: their position in dynamic local networks based on the cultivation of particular agricultural products, the role of animal husbandry, rural industry, transports and trade. At the same time, seen at the level of particular settlements belonging to a wider system of power relations related to local or central Ottoman administration and expressed in different forms of negotiated arrangements concerning surplus appropriation and control of means of production, the micro-economies of the structures recorded as ‘chiftliks’ also presented distinct forms of labour organization within the settlements they were formed.

With the study of two chiftlik settlements belonging to different geographies and regional economies we will try to present their socio-economic characteristics and attempt to relate their particular organization to local power relations and potential for negotiation, but also, primarily, to their geographical and regional-economic characteristics. In particular, by juxtaposing the structure of the chiftliks of Alakilise, which is also representative of the main pattern of organization of labour in the chiftliks of the region according to the temettüat registers of 1844, to the rather exceptional economic characteristics of the chiftlik-settlement of Zagliveri, we will attempt to set questions concerning the possibility of different itineraries originating from control of the land from the part of the chiftlik-holder in relation to the presence or not of particular local characteristics.

This paper aims at discussing the labour in çiftliks of Thessaly during the late 18th and the 19th centuries with an emphasis on nomadic Vlach tribes. Çiftliks, or estate properties, establish a significant part of the land regime in the region. These estates were organized under different institutional agreements as vakıf, malikane-mukataa, ayan property, or imperial estates (Emlak-ı Hümayun).

What makes the region more interesting is the symbiotic relationship between çiftliks and other land forms, and between agriculture and stock-breeding. Being a semi-mountainous region with moderate heights, the economic activities on lowlands and highlands were mutually dependent. Especially Western and Northern Thessaly were characterized with the highland nomad communities and their relation to the çiftliks. Therefore, the movements of nomads and the attempts for their sedentarisation have a key place in the agrarian labour of Thessaly.

Based on a research in Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivleri, and as a part of my ongoing PhD research, labour relations of nomads in and around the çiftliks of Thessaly will be examined through the cases from Tırhala (mod. Trikkala) , Alasonya (mod. Elassona) and Yenişehir (mod. Larissa). The archives are limited regarding the peasants; their focus is usually on the holders of the çiftliks, and the relations of çiftliks to the Ottoman state. Observing nomadic tribes from the documents is even harder than studying settled communities. Nevertheless, expropriation of the surplus, i.e. taxation, and legal disputes is applied in this study as a means of tracing nomadic labour. In rare occasions, some account books also provide detailed information on semi-nomadic Vlachs at çiftliks.

There are a number of questions raised with this research: What is the relation between sedentarisation of the nomads and çiftlikization of Thessaly? What were the reasons behind their sedentarisation? What were the details of their labour agreements in çiftliks? How was, if any, the balance between agriculture and stockbreeding sustained during this process? This paper aims at discussing the possible answers of these questions in order to shed a light on the history of rural labour in Balkans.

The çiftliks in the Balkans, Europe and in the Ottoman Empire have been studied for long time. Yet, it has been paid less consideration to the waqf çiftliks in the Ottoman land regime. In the waqf çiftliks several actors and institutions conflicting and interweaving each other entered into the scene. Still, we can decipher the agrarian organization in these çiftliks and trace changes in time.

In the paper I will focus on four waqf çiftliks in Mihaliç in Hüdavendigar vilayet, which is today’s Bursa during the 19^th century. They are Balıklı, Tepecik, Vasil and Akhisar çiftliks which belong to Mihrişah Valide Sultan waqf. Concentrating on these çiftliks in approximately 150 years time span, from the last decades of the 18^th until the beginning o the 20^th century, I will discuss how labor was organized in agrarian production. There were sharecroppers, wage laborers, waged herdsmen and tenant farmers in the çiftliks. Specifically, I will deal with the relationship between crops and the types of labor. On what ground did such a division sits will mainly be argued in my paper. And of course, there must have been stewards who organized these different types of labor. Within this structure, I will try to reveal the relationship between these different labor types. Accordingly, the çiftlik economy will be under scrutiny.

Fernand Braudel in La Méditerranée et le monde méditeranéen à l'époque de Philippe II observed, in the Ottoman Balkans, starting from the seventeenth century, the serfdom conditions aggravating and a re-enserfment process that he called “new serfdom” in large estates called çiftliks. This article will revisit the question of real serfdom or bondage to the soil by a special emphasis on its eventual evolution in the nineteenth century Ottoman Balkans. Indeed, the Ottoman historiography addressed the question quite indirectly. Scholars limited, generally, themselves by discussing on competing sources and causes of genesis of large estates called çiftliks, in which “new serfdom,” according to Braudel, took place. In this article we will however be interested exclusively in the labour relations found in the çiftliks. In such a way, the article will propose a fresh perspective to analyze economic and social transformation in the Ottoman Balkans: evolution of labour bondage to the soil and its place within the çiftlik agriculture in the nineteenth century. To do so, we will however first reappraise the question of bondage to the soil or real serfdom in the Ottoman and Balkan historiography.

As factual basis of Braudel’s argument on “new serfdom” was based on example of the nineteenth century Thessaly, corresponding to the Tırhala district in the Ottoman provincial administration, we will concentrate in the second section of the article on Tırhala first on the basis of Ion Ionescu de la Brad’s articles published in the Journal de Constantinople during the 1850s. We will then discuss the bylaw of 1862 regulating sharecropping relations in Tırhala on the basis of documentation found in the Ottoman archives. A comparative analysis with bylaws of other Balkan provinces will follow it in order to question survival of bondage to the soil in the nineteenth century Balkans. We propose that nature of social and economic transformation in the nineteenth century could be better understood by focusing on conflicts in agrarian labour relations. As we will argue in the article, cultivators’ quest to be mobile for subsistence needs and landlords’ quest to bind them to the soil for higher profits constituted one of the essential knots of such conflicts in Tırhala in particular and in the Balkans in general.

 

In contesting the claims of private ownership of landed estates covering villages in the Niş (in present-day Serbia) district in the middle of the nineteenth century, the peasants argued that they cultivated and possessed the land 'jointly and commonly'. This was a counter claim that questioned the very fundamentals of the existing property relations in the region, based on tenancy and sharecropping in landed estates owned mostly by urban landholders. The claim is interesting in that it did not counterpose small peasant holdings to large estate ownership but common use against private ownership. In the context of the agrarian traditions of the region predating the Ottoman regime, the aftermath of the Tanzimat edict which outlawed corvée, and in the proximity of the 1848 revolutions, the question is exactly to what type of a land use regime the peasants referred to when they claimed common use. This paper, based on a wider research about the peasant struggles against the existing political economy of the region in the mid-nineteenth century, explores peasants’ own understanding of their relationship to the land, which seemed to have been predicated on notions of common use and collective cultivation (i.e. zadruga), and actual land use and labour relations in an area where sharecropping and tenancy was the order of the day.

In the XIXth century Salonica, as one of the most important port cities in Eastern Mediterranean, had a rich hinterland composed of large estates, called çiftliks, in which commercial agriculture flourished. Moreover, an urban economy prospered with significant industrial sector whose staple and labour force depended largely to economic and social dynamics of its hinterland. The formation of working class in Salonican urban space is very well studied in the literature (Donald Quataert, Paul Dumont, Basil Gounaris). Nevertheless, the labour organization in the large estates of its hinterland and dynamics of labour between urban space and countryside are less studied subjects. In this paper, I will concentrate on the labour organization and relations in the large estates in the hinterland of Salonica in the XIXth century on the basis of research undertaken in the Ottoman Archives of Istanbul and Macedonian Historical Archives of Salonica. As sharecropping represented in the XIXth century the prevailing labour organization, corvée labour, debt bondage and bondage to the soil on the one hand, desertions and labour flights to another estate or to urban space on the other were not an exception in the large estates. Alongside this central theme, the paper will highlight the tensions inherent in the legal transformation of the period as reflected in the power struggles at the local context waged over the terms of the codified law and custom as well as over the form and nature of new legal and administrative institutions (courts, councils, commissions, etc.). The paper will stress that the peasants, sharecroppers as well as the local and absentee landholders were very much involved in the struggle over the terms of the law. This struggle centered both around rights on property and labour relations on the large estates.

Drawing from family papers and other primary sources, the paper considers the weight of salaried work and wage labour in the 19th century large landed estates of the island of Euboea, after it was ceded to the independent Greek kingdom in 1830 and its Muslim population was allowed to sell their properties before they emigrate. As far as is known, during the period between 1830 and 1910 agriculture in more or less all large landed estates, not only in Euboea but also in the plains of the opposite shore, where large-scale private landownership was also the rule, entailed leasing the land to local farmers and receiving in return either a share of their crops (i.e. sharecropping) or a fixed sum. As a consequence, the salaried workforce (usually called “servants” by the contemporaries) employed on a permanent basis at even the largest and best organised landed estates was negligible. Although the predominance of this model has often been attributed to high labour costs in the Greek countryside, surviving payroll accounts from landed estates of Euboea seem to suggest that, generally speaking, salaries were not peculiarly high; on the contrary, we can find alternative explanations for the very limited use of salaried workers from the archival documents studied, such as the difficulties (and the extra costs) associated with their effective supervision, their inferior productivity, the reluctance of many large landed proprietors to get more directly involved in the production process, and the persistence of traditional farming techniques. The permanently employed workforce, being evidently inadequate to meet seasonal or extraordinary labour needs, was bolstered by the hiring of day labourers when necessary. Since, however, in the Greek countryside specialised day workers were virtually non-existent, the landed estates of the island relied, as a rule, on smallholders of their districts in order to meet their workforce needs, paying them at times excessive wages. What emerges therefore is a pattern of interdependence between smallholder farmers on the one hand and large landed estate owners on the other, in which landed estates offered to smallholders of neighbouring communities opportunities of well-paid temporary employment to complement their meagre income. In a labour market with such structural characteristics, labour supply was not only expensive, but also unpredictable and unreliable, as the availability of this population of independent smallholders for day labour was conditional on the demands of farming in their own private plots.

The 1920’s was a decade of significant change in the greek industry as far as labour relations were concerned. The founding of GSEE (the General Confederation of Greek Workers) and SEKE (Labour and Socialist Party of Greece) during the last years of the 1910s and their connection to the local Trade Union Centers enhanced trade union activity and promoted workers’ demands for improvement in their life conditions.

Facing this new reality, industrial employers developed strategies of adaption to the new circumstances and control of the workforce in order to weaken the influence of trade unionism in the factories and raise their social status among the local society. Their decisions regarding the handling of the workers widely affected the public sphere: paternalistic methods in the workspace, philanthropic actions in favor of the weak, even the substitution of local or state authorities.

During the same decade, industry in Corfu, despite its problems, continued to be a critical factor in the island’s economy. The industrialists (mainly the Aspiotis and Desyllas families) had already been consolidated in the local community as important economic and political actors. Furthermore, their actions, in the shape of supporting the weak, mediating to solve workers’ problems and substituting services that were normally provided by the state (e.g. fire brigade) boosted their social profile and helped them pursue personal goals and ambitions in other social fields (e.g. politics).

This paper investigates 1) the impact of philanthropic and paternalistic strategies applied by the industrialists of Corfu in forming their public image and 2) the efficiency of these strategies in obtaining the consent of the workforce and the local community to pursue their professional and political ambitions. Moreover, the paper will examine the stance of the state, trade unions and local press towards these strategies. Main sources of research in this paper include the Trade Union Center of Corfu Archive, the Corfu Prefecture Archive, local and nationwide press and the Aspioti-ELKA Archive.

The historical analysis of welfare capitalism in Italy has a long tradition. Since the Seventies of twentieth century, the Italian scholars have examined in depth single case studies of corporate welfare (like the textile producers in Veneto and Lombardy, the Fiat in Turin, the Ansaldo in Genoa and so on) or they have attempted to outline the various patterns of assistance and charity that large corporations or rich entrepreneurs had made for their employees from the last decades of the nineteenth century to the half of the twentieth century (the “systematic paternalism”, the “total factory”, the “utilitarian welfare”, etc.). Little attention has been paid to retrace with accuracy which and how many facilities Italian firms made available for the welfare of workers and how they evolved over time. Such an inadequate consideration is certainly due to the difficulties to elaborate the different censuses on the corporate welfare that were made during the twentieth century by the Italian public administration and the Industrial Association (Confindustria).

Thus, the paper that I intend to present aims to reconstruct the evolution of various facilities of corporate welfare in Italy from the 1920s to 1960s, focusing on their territorial and sectoral distribution and trying to verify whether there has been a link between spread of care facilities and charities and different industrial relations patterns. For example, it is likely that the increase of sport and leisure services for workers, observed in the Thirties of twentieth century, has been one of the consequences of labour relations imposed by the fascist regime, that, in exchange for the wage compression and the ban of strike, provided organized forms of cheap recreation not reachable to the industrial workforce before.

The historical sources used for this study are three surveys on corporate welfare institutions made in 1923, 1933 and 1951 (the former carried out by the State Inspectorate of Industry and Labor, the later two by Confindustria), the proceedings of the Parliamentary Committee of inquiry on the conditions of workers (carried out from 1955 to 1958), the issues of the Confindustria’s review “L’assistenza sociale nell’industria” regarding the years 1927-40 and 1960-68.

The paper investigates the effects of redundancy benefits on the pattern of industrial relations and shop-floor workers' organisation in the two largest factories of the Italian automobile industry. The aim is to show how welfare handouts were not simply used as a form of income maintenance, but crucially served to counter industrial conflict and favour the demobilisation of plant-level union’s structures.

At the end of September 1980, the Italian carmaker Fiat resorted to temporary redundancy benefits (Cassa Integrazione Guadagni) for 24,000 of its employees in Mirafiori, the main factory of Turin. The decision came at the end of a heated conflict with the union and terminated with the capitulation of workers' representatives. The year after, in March 1981, Alfa Romeo, a publicly owned automotive company, made use of the same redundancy scheme for 6,000 workers in Arese, the main automobile factory in the area of Milan. In both cases, workers remained technically employed, but were prevented from entering the factory walls for long periods of time, in most cases for years.

Fiat and Alfa Romeo are often regarded – by scholarly literature and public opinion alike - as the embodiment of two different industrial relations models: the Turinese carmaker has usually had a more hawkish stance compared to Alfa Romeo, which instead pursued a more consensual bargaining strategy (Medusa 1983, Baccaro 1988, Berta 1998). The way these two companies made use of redundancy provisions, however, points at the existence of crucial similarities, underpinning the larger political economic context of the 1980s and the attempt to bring to a close the heated industrial conflict of the previous decade.

In both cases, the prolonged separation of workers from the factory drove a wedge inside the unity of the rank and file, breaking up ties of solidarity in the workplace and obstructing employees' collective organisation. Evidence from unions’ censuses and judiciary papers shows that redundancy was largely used to isolate union stewards and target “undesired workers”, namely the most politicised, but also the disabled and the elderly. Laid off employees were loosely organized in autonomous redundant workers committees but these were not recognised by the management and barely tolerated by very unions. This ultimately impaired the structure and representativeness of factory councils, jeopardising their capacity to negotiate the process of industrial restructuring in the car industry.

This paper aims to describe the role played by Lombard entrepreneurial milieux in elaborating an original organizational culture during the Reconstruction of Italian industry. In the first part, it focuses on the diffusion of American management thought in Milanese intellectual network, examining connections between these cultural transfers and Italian industrial psychology background. After the launch of Marshall Plan, in particular, the diffusion of an efficiency approach to the process of industrial restructuring, directed at increasing productive potential, stimulates entrepreneurial associations to consider carefully human relations theory. The echo of Elton Mayo's Hawthorne experiments results in a renovated attention to the centrality of human factor in productive processes, as witnessed by a number of coeval management studies, centred on the concept of factory community. During a phase characterized by an intense concentration of labour unrest, the reinforcement of sense of belonging to factory community is suggested by a fringe of Italian entrepreneurial reality as the only way to overcome trade unions oppositions. The analysis of organizational culture developed in Milan during the Fifties is based on a multidisciplinary approach, aimed at showing its common points with external sociological thought in the first phase of European economic integration. In the second part, the paper evaluates the entrepreneurial attempt to weaken labour conflicts in factories by adopting new communication practices: in particular, it focuses on house organs published in Italy in the Forties and Fifties – a topic that has not yet received the attention it deserves by Italian labour historiography. The analysis of a micro-economic environment acts as a link between two sections: the corporate identity construction which is promoted by directors of the Acciaierie Falck, a leading company in national iron and steel industry, is the focus of this paper. The examination of the corporate archives and house organ «La Ferriera» shows that prewar traditions of paternalism are reconsidered in light of human relations management methods. The attention to the creation of ceremonies – such as the annual gathering of retired workers association – directed at enhancing the sense of belonging to factory community, clarifies the significance of symbolic and emotional dimensions. The adoption of this approach aims to notice mythopoeic elements of the corporate identity construction, examining a point which has been minimally studied by Italian labour historiography.

Η εισήγηση προτίθεται να ιχνηλατίσει τις συνέπειες του πολέμου πάνω στην εργασία στις διάφορες φάσεις της περιόδου 1940-1949.

Σε μία πρώτη φάση, εκείνη του εξάμηνου ελληνο-ιταλικού και ελληνο-γερμανικού πολέμου το καθεστώς της γενικής επιστράτευσης σε συνδυασμό με την προσαρμογή της οικονομίας στις νέες συνθήκες επέφερε τις πρώτες σημαντικές ανατροπές στο εργασιακό καθεστώς και τις συνακόλουθες ισορροπίες που είχε διαμορφώσει η προπολεμική –ή καλύτερα μεσοπολεμική- περίοδος. Για ειδικά ιστορικούς λόγους οι ανατροπές αυτές είχαν στην Ελλάδα μικρότερες συνέπειες απ’ό, τι σε άλλες εμπόλεμες χώρες της Ευρώπης την ίδια εκείνη εποχή.

Στην περίοδο της ναζιστικής και φασιστικής κατοχής η εργασία βρέθηκε κάτω από συνδυασμένες πιέσεις εκπορευόμενες από τις καθαυτό στρατιωτικές ανάγκες των δυνάμεων του Άξονα, από την υιοθέτηση των γενικών περί εργασίας αντιλήψεων πάνω στις οποίες αρθρώθηκε η Νέα Ευρώπη και από τις περιπλοκές που έφερε από το 1943 και μετά η εμφάνιση της Ελεύθερης Ελλάδας, ανταγωνιστικής ως προς τις οικονομικές και παραγωγικές δραστηριότητες με τον ελεγχόμενο από την κυβέρνηση της Ελληνικής Πολιτείας και τους κατακτητές χώρο.

Στα αμέσως μετά τον πόλεμο χρόνια η κατακρήμνιση του κόστους της εργασίας – βασικό διακύβευμα των κοινωνικών και πολιτικών συγκρούσεων της Κατοχής και της μεταπολεμικής διαμάχης- αλλά και ο εξοβελισμός της εργασίας από τις καθαυτό παραγωγικές δραστηριότητες καθόρισε σε σημαντικό βαθμό τα κοινωνικά χαρακτηριστικά του εμφυλίου πολέμου.

Οι αρχές κατοχής είχαν ανάγκη από προσωπικό γραφείου, αλλά και να πραγματοποιηθούν διάφορα έργα στρατιωτικής υποδομής, να δουλέψει και πάλι η ελληνική παραγωγική μηχανή, ώστε να προωθηθούν στο Ράιχ οι πρώτες ύλες που είχαν εξασφαλισθεί με τις διάφορες ιδιωτικές συμβάσεις ανάμεσα σε ελληνικές και γερμανικές επιχειρήσεις και να συντηρηθούν οι γερμανικές μονάδες, οπότε άρχισε στρατολόγηση εργατών. Παράλληλα με τα γραφεία στρατολόγησης εργατών για τα έργα και τις βιομηχανίες της Βέρμαχτ λειτουργούσαν και τα γραφεία στρατολόγησης εργατών για τη Γερμανία και οι δύο υπηρεσίες ήταν σε ανταγωνισμό μεταξύ τους. Η ανταπόκριση των ελλήνων πολιτών το 1942, ιδιαίτερα τον Απρίλιο, πρέπει να ήταν σημαντική όπως δηλώνεται από το ίδιο το Οικονομικό Γραφείο, αν και κατώτερη των προσδοκιών υπό το φόβο των απειλών, παρασυρμένοι από την προπαγάνδα και κυρίως λόγω των άσχημων συνθηκών διαβίωσης. Οι δύο πρώτοι χρόνοι της Κατοχής χαρακτηρίστηκαν από τις στρατολογήσεις εργατών με ελάχιστη αμοιβή και από την προσπάθεια όσο γινόταν κανονικής λειτουργίας των εργοστασίων.

Από το καλοκαίρι του 1942, ωστόσο, άρχισε να ελαττώνεται ο αριθμός των ανθρώπων που ενδιαφέρονταν να στρατολογηθούν ως εργάτες για τα γερμανικά έργα, πιθανότατα επειδή μπορούσαν να ενταχθούν σε κάποιους από τους ποικίλους συνεταιρισμούς ή ίσως επειδή μπορούσαν να βρουν δουλειά με καλύτερους όρους από ό,τι ως στρατολογημένοι εργάτες τη στιγμή που το Ε.Ε.Α.Μ. κινητοποιούσε και κινητοποιούνταν από τους εργαζόμενους, πρώτα τους δημόσιους υπαλλήλους και ύστερα τους εργάτες σε απεργίες με τις οποίες διεκδικούσαν και πετύχαιναν να πληρώνονται ένα μέρος του μισθού σε είδος ή άλλα οικονομικά αιτήματα. Η παραγωγή και η εργασία παρέμεναν ένα διακύβευμα και ένα όπλο στα χεριά των εργαζομένων και η διαχείρισή της ήταν ένα ισχυρό σημείο σύγκρουσης ανάμεσα στους Γερμανούς, τις ελληνικές αρχές και αυτούς που κερδοσκοπούσαν από τη μια και τους εργαζόμενους με το Ε.Α.Μ. από την άλλη.

Ως απάντηση στη μείωση των στρατολογημένων εργατών πρωτοεπιχειρήθηκε στη Θεσσαλονίκη, η εισαγωγή του θεσμού της πολιτικής επιστράτευσης (υποχρεωτική εργασία), η οποία στη φάση αυτή αφορούσε εργασία στο εσωτερικό της χώρας. Εφαρμόστηκε με το κάλεσμα για απογραφή των αρρένων Εβραίων στην Πλατεία Ελευθερίας και έδωσε το έναυσμα για τα πρώτα αντιεβραϊκά μέτρα. Το Μαύρο Σάββατο ήταν η πρώτη απογραφή για «υποχρεωτική εργασία» στη Θεσσαλονίκη, μέτρο που θα προκαλέσει θύελλα κοινωνικών αντιδράσεων στη συνέχεια. Οι έλληνες εβραίοι που οδηγήθηκαν στα καταναγκαστικά έργα σε διάφορες περιοχές της Ελλάδας (3.500-5.000) έχασαν τη ζωή τους σε ποσοστό 12%.

Σκοπός της παρούσας ανακοίνωσης είναι να εξετάσει την εργασία στις βιομηχανικές επιχειρήσεις της κατεχόμενης Ελλάδας, με έμφαση σε εκείνες που συνέχιζαν να εργάζονται με σχετικά ικανοποιητικούς ρυθμούς, συνήθως αναλαμβάνοντας την εξυπηρέτηση παραγγελιών των κατακτητών. Στην ανακοίνωση θα εξεταστούν ζητήματα όπως εκείνο της ειδικής νομοθεσίας (επίταξη επιχειρήσεων, αυστηροποίηση αντιαπεργιακών μέτρων κλπ), των συνθηκών εργασίας που συναντούσαν οι εργαζόμενοι σ’ αυτές, της προσπάθειας αύξησης της παραγωγικότητας αλλά και των πράξεων αντίστασης που σχετίζονταν με τους χώρους εργασίας (εσκεμμένες καθυστερήσεις παραγωγής και απεργίες), καθώς και των ανταγωνισμό των αρχών κατοχής και των επιχειρήσεων στην προσπάθεια προσέλκυσης των εξειδικευμένων εργατών μέσω αυξημένων μισθολογίων και άλλων παροχών. Επιπλέον, θα αναλυθούν οι οικονομικές τομές των ετών 1941-44 και οι επιπτώσεις τους στην εργασία. Οι πολεμικές εξελίξεις, η σταδιακή ένταση της αντίστασης και οι έλλειψης καυσίμων και πρώτων υλών, δημιουργούν αρκετά σημαντικές διαφοροποιήσεις ώστε να μας επιτρέψουν να διαχωρίσουμε την κατοχή: α) στο πρώτο διάστημα γενικής αβεβαιότητας και φόβου της ανεργίας κατά τους πρώτους μήνες της Κατοχής, β) στη περίοδο της πείνας και της μισθολογικής εξαθλίωσης το 1942, η οποία όμως συνοδευόταν και από παρατηρούμενη έλλειψη εργατικών χεριών που με τη σειρά της απαιτούσε αλλαγή πολιτικής από πλευράς των κατακτητών με την προσπάθεια εφαρμογής πολιτικής μαστιγίου (αυστηρότερη νομοθεσία) και καρότου (αύξηση παροχών), τουλάχιστον σε ό,τι αφορούσε τις πλέον περιζήτητες ειδικότητες, γ) στην περίοδο της βελτίωσης των συνθηκών (1943 ως περίπου τις αρχές του 1944), αποτέλεσμα κυρίως της έντασης των εργατικών διεκδικήσεων και της δράσης του ΕΑΜ και δευτερευόντως της αύξησης της ξένης βοήθειας και της πτώσης του πληθωρισμού. Το 1944 η κατάσταση ήταν περισσότερο αβέβαιη, αλλά ξένη βοήθεια και η προσπάθεια της αδύναμης κατοχικής κυβέρνησης να «αγοράσει» την ανοχή – ή και την υποστήριξη – τμήματος της ελληνικής κοινωνίας σήμαινε πως οι συνθήκες διαβίωσης και εργασίας δεν θα επέστρεφαν στα επίπεδα των αρχών του 1942. Σε κάθε περίπτωση οι κάθε είδους ελλείψεις που παρουσίαζε η ελληνική οικονομία, ο πληθωρισμός, το ζήτημα της επιβίωσης και η συμμετοχή στην αντίσταση ήταν ζητήματα που απασχόλησαν εργαζόμενους και εργοδότες κατά το μεγαλύτερο διάστημα της Κατοχής.

Η κατοχική περίοδος στο νησί της Κρήτης έχει ορισμένες ουσιαστικές διαφορές από την ίδια περίοδο στην υπόλοιπη χώρα. Η μετατροπή της Κρήτης σε Φρούριο, όπως ήθελαν οι Γερμανοί, προϋπέθετε μια σειρά οχυρωματικών έργων και άλλων στρατιωτικών εγκαταστάσεων. Η υλοποίηση αυτών των έργων απαιτούσε την οργανωμένη κινητοποίηση του ντόπιου εργατικού δυναμικού. Άλλωστε, η έννοια του Φρουρίου –ή αλλιώς του Οχυρού– συνεπαγόταν και εκείνη του στρατοπέδου. Μια σειρά μέτρων που δεν επιβάλλονταν καθόλου, ή πάντως όχι με την ίδια αυστηρότητα όπως στην υπόλοιπη χώρα, πιστοποιούσαν αυτήν την κατεύθυνση. Ανάμεσά τους και η επιβολή υποχρεωτικής εργασίας για όλους τους κατοίκους ανεξαρτήτως φύλου, επαγγέλματος ή ηλικίας.

Η φύση της Μάχης της Κρήτης και τα πρωτοφανή αντίποινα που ακολούθησαν, δημιούργησαν μια ακραία κατάσταση μεταξύ του πληθυσμού και των κατακτητών, οδηγώντας φυσιολογικά στην πρόσληψη της υποχρεωτικής εργασίας ως άλλου ενός μέτρου συλλογικής τιμωρίας, μιας μισητής, αφόρητης και υποτιμητικής υποχρέωσης που ονομάστηκε εξαρχής «αγγαρεία» και που η αποφυγή της έγινε βασική μορφή παθητικής αντίστασης.

Στην ανακοίνωση αυτή θα προσπαθήσω να παρουσιάσω διάφορες πτυχές της «αγγαρείας» στην κατοχική Κρήτη, όπως στοιχεία για το μέγεθος και την έκτασή της, το ρόλο των επιμέρους κατοχικών και δοσίλογων αρχών και της τοπικής αυτοδιοίκησης για την επιβολή της, τις μορφές αντίστασης ενάντια στην επιβολή της, την επίδρασή της στις καθιερωμένες αγροτικές ασχολίες των κατοίκων και τους τρόπους διαχείρισης αυτού του πρόσθετου βάρους, τις αντιλήψεις για αυτήν και εντέλει μια εκτίμηση για το βαθμό επιτυχίας επιβολής του μέτρου και των αποτελεσμάτων του. Η έρευνα βασίστηκε σε πρωτογενές αρχειακό υλικό τόσο από την πλευρά των αρχών, της γερμανικής στρατιωτικής διοίκησης και των τοπικών αρχών, αλλά και των βρετανικών υπηρεσιών, όσο και σε μαρτυρίες των υπόχρεων σε καταναγκαστική εργασία, γραπτές και προφορικές.

Η μελέτη περιγράφει τον επαγγελματικό μετασχηματισμό της ελληνικής κοινότητας Βέροιας σε μια ιστορική περίοδο με πολιτικές, γεωγραφικές, εθνικές, δημογραφικές και οικονομικές ανακατατάξεις. Πρόκειται για μια συγκριτική προσέγγιση μέσα σε δύο διαφορετικά κρατικά πλαίσια, όπου οι συνθήκες της αγοράς και της εργασίας διαμορφώθηκαν μέσα σε ένα διαρκώς μεταβαλλόμενο περιβάλλον.

Η μορφή οργάνωσης της πολιτικής οθωμανικής εξουσίας και το νομικό και ιδεολογικό εποικοδόμημα, δεν είχαν βοηθήσει σε μια οικονομική ανάπτυξη ανάλογη της Ευρώπης. Ωστόσο, κατά το δεύτερο μισό του δεκάτου ενάτου αιώνα οι ελληνικές κοινότητες της Μακεδονίας δεν είχαν μείνει ανεπηρέαστες από τις οικονομικές και κοινωνικές αλλαγές που είχαν σημειωθεί σε διεθνές επίπεδο. Από το 1890 έως το 1912, η περιοχή απετέλεσε το επίκεντρο εθνικών ανταγωνισμών. Τα νέα σύνορα που διαμορφώθηκαν έθεσαν διαφορετικά όρια και συνθήκες για τον βορειοελλαδικό χώρο και οι σχεδόν αυτοδιοίκητες κοινότητες πέρασαν σε μια ενιαία κεντρική κρατική διοίκηση. Η περιοχή συνέχισε να δοκιμάζεται από αμφισβητήσεις ξένων χωρών, πολιτική αστάθεια, πολέμους και μετακινήσεις πληθυσμών. Οι πρώτες τρεις δεκαετίες του εικοστού αιώνα αποτέλεσαν μια περίοδο έντονων δημογραφικών ανακατατάξεων και το 1930 ο πληθυσμός παρουσίαζε μια πολύ διαφορετική εικόνα. Η επέμβαση του ελληνικού κράτους, παρά τα εμπόδια και τις καθυστερήσεις, ήταν αποτελεσματική σε αρκετούς τομείς που αναδιοργανώθηκαν, κυρίως στη νομιμότητα, στην ασφάλεια, και στα έργα υποδομών.

Η εργασία στηρίζεται στους μαθητικούς καταλόγους των σχολείων της πόλης, (μητρώα, μαθητολόγια, βαθμολόγια). Από την δημογραφική παράμετρο του καταγεγραμμένου επαγγέλματος του πατέρα και την στατιστική επεξεργασία και ανάλυση, εξάγονται συμπεράσματα που φωτίζουν τον κοινωνικό και οικονομικό μετασχηματισμό της περιοχής. Η μελέτη έχει υψηλό ενδιαφέρον αν ληφθεί υπόψη ότι έως το 1920 λείπουν από την περιοχή επίσημες κρατικές απογραφές πληθυσμού ενώ και όλο το αρχείο των ληξιαρχικών πράξεων της εξεταζόμενης χρονικής περιόδου έχει καταστραφεί από πυρκαγιά του κτιρίου του Δήμου. Στα θετικά αυτής της καταγραφής είναι η συνέχεια σε όλα τα σαράντα αυτά έτη, σε αντίθεση με τις επίσημες κρατικές απογραφές, οι οποίες διενεργούνται «φωτογραφικά» σε μια χρονική στιγμή. Η έντονη επαγγελματική κινητικότητα, η συνεχής εξειδίκευση, η σταδιακή εμφάνιση των υπαλλήλων του κρατικού μηχανισμού, τα νέα επαγγέλματα των προσφύγων, καταγράφονται ακούσια μέσα στα μαθητολόγια των σχολείων, τα οποία αναδεικνύουν με δυναμική μορφή την ποσοτική και ποιοτική επαγγελματική εξέλιξη και τη συγκρότηση της αγοράς σε τοπικό επίπεδο.

Η τοποθέτηση εκπαιδευτικού προσωπικού στα σχολεία της Μακεδονίας ήταν ένα από τα δυσκολότερα προβλήματα που αντιμετώπιζε η τοπική κοινωνία την περίοδο της Οθωμανικής κυριαρχίας, αφού η πρόσληψη και μισθοδοσία ικανών δασκάλων εξασφαλιζόταν από την κοινότητα. Η άσκηση του διδασκαλικού επαγγέλματος δεν ήταν εύκολη υπόθεση. Οι αμοιβές των δασκάλων ήταν πενιχρές, η καταβολή των μισθών τους καθυστερούσε, ενώ ο διορισμός και η απόλυσή τους εξαρτιόταν από τη διάθεση της σχολικής Εφορείας και των κοινοτικών αρχόντων, οι οποίοι, πολλές φορές, δεν είχαν την ικανότητα να αξιολογήσουν σωστά το έργο τους, αφού οι περισσότεροι δε διέθεταν το κατάλληλο μορφωτικό επίπεδο. Έτσι, οι δάσκαλοι αναγκάζονταν να δουλεύουν όσο το δυνατόν περισσότερο, κάτω από αυτές τις δυσμενείς συνθήκες, προκειμένου να εξασφαλίσουν τη θέση τους για το επόμενο σχολικό έτος. Οι σχολικές Εφορείες των κοινοτήτων εξαντλούσαν πρώτα την αναζήτηση των «μορφωμένων» δημοτών στην «εγχώρια αγορά», οι οποίοι καλούνταν να ασκήσουν το επάγγελμα του δασκάλου, χωρίς απαραίτητα να έχουν πτυχίο διδασκαλείου και στη συνέχεια απευθύνονταν στις μεγάλες πόλεις της Μακεδονίας, ιδιαίτερα κατά την πρώτη δεκαετία του 20ου αιώνα, όταν οι ανάγκες των σχολείων σε εκπαιδευτικό προσωπικό είχαν σχεδόν διπλασιαστεί. Ακόμη και μετά την απελευθέρωση, οπότε ο διορισμός των δασκάλων γίνεται από το υπουργείο Παιδείας, οι συνθήκες εργασίας εξακολούθησαν να είναι αντίξοες, αφού δούλευαν πολλές ώρες σε πολυπληθείς τάξεις, έως και 65 μαθητών διαφορετικών ηλικιών, χαμηλού μορφωτικού επιπέδου και σε υποτυπώδη σχολικά κτήρια.

Στην παρούσα εργασία, γίνεται μια προσπάθεια να αναδειχθούν σημαντικά ζητήματα που αφορούσαν τις διαδικασίες πρόσληψης και απόλυσης των δασκάλων Πρωτοβάθμιας Εκπαίδευσης, στη Μακεδονία, πριν και μετά την ενσωμάτωσή της στο ελεύθερο ελληνικό κράτος, μέσα από αρχειακό υλικό σχολικών Εφορειών της Μακεδονίας και εφημερίδων της εποχής. Επειδή το μεγαλύτερο μέρος της ιστορικής-εκπαιδευτικής μας έρευνας είναι ποιοτικό στηριχτήκαμε στην κριτική και ποιοτική ανάλυση του υλικού τεκμηρίωσης, ακολουθώντας την εξής διαδικασία: συλλογή, ταξινόμηση, κατανόηση, σύνθεση, ερμηνεία και αξιολόγηση. Το υλικό τεκμηρίωσης αφορούσε τόσο τις πρωτογενείς πηγές, που δημιουργήθηκαν κατά το χρονικό διάστημα που μελετούμε όσο και τις δευτερογενείς πηγές που σχετίζονται με αναλύσεις γεγονότων βασισμένες σε πρωτογενείς πηγές. Για την παρουσίαση των αποτελεσμάτων της έρευνάς μας και όπου χρειάστηκε να ερευνηθούν και να κωδικοποιηθούν ποσοτικά δεδομένα κάναμε χρήση των στατιστικών προγραμμάτων της Microsoft Excel.

 

The purpose of the paper is to present the formation of the local labor market, the mode of operation and the changes that took place in the passage of time using the example of the “municipal professions” and their evolution in the city of Piraeus.

The study of the municipal budgets from 1836 till 1899 offers adequate information for qualitative and quantitative analyses. The qualitative analyses are related to the following issues: a) how the qualifications and the duties of the administrative personnel were determined, what were the specialization and the classification of administrative professions, when the hierarchical relationships between employees were organized and which was the regulation that governed them (organization chart), b) when the scientific (physician, midwife, pharmacist) and technical (engineer, architect) professions emerged and what was their development, c) what types of remunerations were used until to prevail the payment in money.

The quantitative analyses are concerning the subjects below: a) what was the number of employees by category and as a whole, b) what were the working-hours and the amount of their remuneration or their wages and c) what was the percentage of spending on wages and remunerations in comparison to other categories but also to the total municipal expenditure.

Μία από τις μείζονες νομοθετικές πρωτοβουλίες της πρώτης κυβέρνησης του ΠΑΣΟΚ υπήρξε ο νόμος 1365/1983 «κοινωνικοποίηση των επιχειρήσεων δημοσίου χαρακτήρα ή κοινής ωφέλειας». Με τον νόμο αυτό και με κάποια προεδρικά διατάγματα που τον ακολούθησαν έγινε προσπάθεια να εφαρμοστεί σε τρεις μεγάλες δημόσιες επιχειρήσεις (ΔΕΗ, ΟΤΕ, ΟΣΕ) μια μορφή διευρυμένης συμμετοχής και κοινωνικού ελέγχου, που ονομάστηκε «κοινωνικοποίηση». Η κίνηση πυροδότησε την πρώτη σφοδρή πολιτική-συνδικαλιστική σύγκρουση μετά τις εκλογές του 1981 και σημάδεψε το μεγαλύτερο μέρος της κυβερνητικής του περιόδου, εγκαινιάζοντας μια σειρά από συζητήσεις, διαμάχες, αγώνες και παρεμβάσεις σε όλα τα επίπεδα από πολλές πλευρές (κόμματα, συνδικαλιστικό κίνημα και παρατάξεις, τύπος κ.λπ.).

Το διάστημα που ακολουθεί την ψήφιση του νόμου (1985-1988) κλιμακώνεται η συζήτηση σχετικά με το παρόν και το μέλλον της «κοινωνικοποίησης», τα προβλήματα, τις προοπτικές και το περιεχόμενο που έχει ή θα πρέπει να λάβει. Γίνεται με άλλα λόγια μια πολυδιάστατη, συνολική αποτίμηση, με τη συμμετοχή εκπροσώπων συνδικαλιστικών οργανώσεων και παρατάξεων, εκπροσώπων δημοσίων οργανισμών και υπουργείων, δημοσιογράφων κλπ.

Η στροφή της οικονομικής πολιτικής της κυβέρνησης που ξεκινά με το Πρόγραμμα Σταθεροποίησης το φθινόπωρο του 1985 συνεπάγεται και μια αναθεώρηση της πολιτικής απέναντι στις «κοινωνικοποιημένες» επιχειρήσεις. Στα 1985-1988 γίνονται συστηματικές προσπάθειες για την αναπροσαρμογή του πλαισίου λειτουργίας των «κοινωνικοποιημένων» επιχειρήσεων με στόχο τον εκσυγχρονισμό της λειτουργίας τους, μέσα από τη λήψη «διορθωτικών μέτρων», πολιτική που χαρακτηρίστηκε ως απόπειρα εφαρμογής «ιδιωτικοοικονομικών κριτηρίων». Η πολιτική αυτή ασκήθηκε κατά κύματα και περιελάμβανε, μεταξύ άλλων, την ενδυνάμωση του κεντρικού ελέγχου, την εισαγωγή σύγχρονων συστημάτων διαχείρισης και παραγωγής, την ίδρυση γενικής γραμματείας ΔΕΚΟ, την περικοπή εξόδων και εργατικού κόστους, τη στελέχωση με στελέχη από τον ιδιωτικό τομέα.

Στην προτεινόμενη ανακοίνωση θα επιχειρήσω να εξετάσω την απόπειρα εφαρμογής της Κοινωνικοποίησης από κάθε άποψη: θα παρουσιάσω αναλυτικά τις θεσμικές-νομοθετικές διαστάσεις, τη στόχευση και τη φιλοσοφία του νέου θεσμικού πλασίου, θα προσπαθήσω να περιγράψω την κοινωνική, πολιτική και συνδικαλιστική διαμάχη που συνόδευσε το εγχείρημα και τέλος να σκιαγραφήσω πτυχές από τη λειτουργία των νέων θεσμών συμμετοχής.

Πηγές μου για αυτό αποτελούν τεκμήρια που έχουν εντοπιστεί στο "Αρχείο Επαγγελματικών Οργανώσεων - Συλλογή Γιώργου Μαυρογορδάτου" που απόκειται στα ΑΣΚΙ, καθώς και ο ημερήσιος και περιοδικός τύπος της εποχής.

A process of mass proletarianization of social layers occupied in the farming sector took place in Greece during the 1950s and 1960s, as a result of an extensive under-employment in agriculture. External migration aside, migration influxes of young men and women stormed Greek urban areas, especially the capital, Athens. A large part of these young people took on jobs in manufacturing, a sector which had been growing rapidly since the early 1960s. This new factory workforce constituted a factor of cultural renewal in the factories, shaping the figure of the young male and female worker in the 1970s. This process, amongst other things, promoted class confrontations in the mid-1970s, and created a pool of mass support for the Socialist Party (PASOK) around the turn of the decade.

This brief, generally accepted account of geographical, occupational and political orientation leaves certain areas unexplored and obscures the intricacy of the processes involved in the formation of the new workers’ culture, namely: a) the particular expression of the actual relations between the “old” and the “new” factory workers, b) the variety and complexity of the forms of labor transition from the primary to the secondary sector of the economy, c) the socio-political implications that the rural background of the new workforce has had, in terms of its trade-union behavior, attitude towards political parties and overall social expectations and relationships.

In an attempt to enrich the above schema with the life experience of factory workers of that period, the presentation draws a comparison between two quite different factories: the smaller paper-producing MEL (Makedoniki Etaireia Ladopoulou) factory, situated in a rural area between three small farming towns in the prefecture of Thessaloniki, in northern Greece; and the much bigger and technically advanced PITSOS factory in Agios Ioannis-Rentis in the prefecture of Attiki, producer of home electrical appliances with a 2,000-strong workforce.

The presentation makes use of numerous interviews of former workers of these two factories, setting the different worker’s life trajectories against the context of the long-term processes of transformation of Greek society in the 1960s and 1970s. Of particular interest are workers’ experiences of the Dictatorship of the Colonels (1967-1974) and the way the change-over to a democratic regime (metapolitefsi) was understood; the elaboration on the issues of rural and factory work and its representations; city life versus life in small rural towns; and trade-unionism, all elements of the formation of a new working-class culture in Greece in the 1970s.

"Peiraiki - Patraiki" was a textile industry of high economic and social importance. At the same time, it was one of the most notable cases of enterprises in difficulty. That means heavily indebted large scale enterprises which were passed under State’s control during the first four years of PASOK's governance (1981-1985) in Greece. The announcement intends to examine three issues. Firstly, the government typology about the accession of "Peiraiki - Patraiki" to the Organization of Enterprises Reconstruction (OER), which was the institution that managed the enterprises in difficulty. In this aspect, government policy used a variety of practices. Secondly, the demands and the points of view of "Peiraiki - Patraiki" employees, in relation with the accession of the enterprise to OER. Thirdly, how the change in the ownership status affected the labour relations. For the last two issues, the announcement will focus on the industrial complex of "Peiraiki - Patraiki" in the city of Patras. The focus to this industrial complex, is proposed, mainly, for two reasons: First of all, because it was the largest industrial unit of "Peiraiki - Patraiki" in Greece, with approximately 3,000 employees. Moreover, because the first industrial union among the factories of "Peiraiki - Patraiki" was established in Patras. Furthermore, because members of the industrial union of Patras participated in the new board of directors, which was established after the accession of "Peiraiki - Patraiki" to OER. As far as primary sources are concerned, the announcement makes extensive usage of the archive of "Peiraiki - Patraiki", of the OER archive and also of sources of Patras industrial complex trade union.

Labour relations concern researcher until long-time, otherwise interests in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) were increased during the last few years. CSR rises the attention of different kinds of scholars: management fellows, sociologist, economist and, last but not least, economic historians.
The social behaviour of a company has become a matter of fact because, as highlighted by literature, it is aimed at all subjects that touch the enterprise, namely stakeholders. In particular, a special ‘kind’ of stakeholder is the workers. So, labour relations are directly interested by the companies’ social actions.
In this study, the focus is on the long-term behaviour of enterprises in terms of social commitment for their workers. What kind of social actions for the workers have developed over time? What prompted companies to take these? Were behaviours and reasons different across European Countries? In what ways has CSR affected labour relations?
This article is based on the existing literature and it want to provide a summary of what it had emphasized, also trying to compare different experiences in Europe, in particular between Italy, France, German.

One major challenge facing scholars who study premodern agrarian societies is how to quantify labor and how to define labor regimes, both of which are necessary for comparative research. Farm work cannot be measured in the same ways that labor and work rates are in the manufacturing and service sectors. Considerable work has been in calculating labor budgets for specific crops, for example on the number man-days per year that it takes to work a specified unit of land planted with, say, wheat or vines. While useful, budgets alone are of limited analytical utility. First, they fail to take into account the large macrospatial between regionsβ€”and microspatial within a regionβ€”variability of labor input to output for a given cultigen. Second, the prevalence of pluriactivity means that much of the work done on and off of a farm that does not relate directly to the production of the major crops goes unrecorded, leading to a serious underestimation of rural labor. Much of the literature written in this vein adopts as its unit of analysis the family farming household working its own land; whereas, in reality many households, as well as practicing pluriactivity, also sold their labor in the form of paid work or in some form of tenancy arrangement in order to make ends meet. Lastly, most of research published by anthropologists, sociologists, and political economists on the topic focuses on the present and the recent past, and their emphasis is on how to modernize rural labor regimes.

This paper adopts an historical approach to the study of rural labor. I begin by reviewing the existing literature, highlighting the strengths and the weaknesses of the dominant theoretical and methodological approaches. I then examine historical case studies that have been done on labor and the rural economy around the globe. Having defined two comparative contexts, I then present an overview of my researches on rural Greece during the later nineteenth and early twentieth century. Since this project is in its early stages, my presentation will focus more the theoretical and methodological challenges we face and on how I am attempting to address them than on concrete results. One point of emphasis I will present, however, is that, alone, the strictly econometric approach employed in much of the current scholarship is incapable of overcoming the deficiencies outlined above and that we need to include more integrally social and environmental factors as well.

The present paper is based on Ottoman tax registers, narratives (both Ottoman and foreign travelers accounts) and domestic sources of 15th and 16th centuries and aims to trace the process of adaptation to the conquered lands of part of the migrated population from Anatolia – the yuruks. After the military conquest of the territory of the modern Eastern parts of the Thracian Valley (the papers analyzes the data referring the territory of the Ottoman kaza of Eskihisar) the yuruks were among the migrated Muslim turks which took part in the “demographic conquest”, and as the data from the historical sources under study shows, participated in the establishment of a new and unstable settlement network in the region.

The documents reveal the process of adaption to the conquered lands as adopting to the local environment and agricultural production. The register shows that along with the process of the establishment of the new settlement networks the yuruks enlarge their agricultural activities and production which is evident from the taxation of the yuruk taxpayers from the villages of the kaza of Eskihisar, i.e. their adoption to the conquered space and economic potential of the environment.

The Ottoman registration of the 15th centuries and on shows that once the yuruks were registered as taxpayers and engaged with agrarian production the Ottoman state introduced a new land tax – resm-i buyundruk, which, as the data shows was levied in cash, going to the timar holdings and refered only to yuruks practicing agriculture. From one hand the different taxation from the rest of the taxpayers shows not only the financial importance of the income for the state but also might refer to the endeavors of the Ottoman state to interfere in the process that could lead to a sedentary life of the yuruks in Romelia.

Daily wage in the raisin producing regions of the Western Peloponnese during the nineteenth century Greece has been overlooked as a not important supplement to the dominant regime of the simple commodity production mode, with no particular appeal to historical research. However, the noticeable presence of the big and medium size plantations in these regions was requiring the intense use of daily paid work, even when landowners were employing traditional cultivating practices, such as the sharecropping. At the end of the century, a large population mainly from – but not entirely – the mountainous Peloponnesian villages had depended its living on the daily wage. in the meantime landowners were attempting to cut labour costs by importing foreign workers from the Ottoman provinces. Finally, the loss of raisin French market and the Greek financial crisis affected both workers and owners and paved the way to the overseas emigration.

The solution to the medieval agrarian crisis in a large part of Catalonia came in the form of the consolidation of the "mas", a large farm of about 100 hectares which created a disperse habitat and practiced de only heir system. In the eighteenth century the expansion of wine-growing caused the appearance of small farms in the land of the “masos” that were cultured through “rabassa morta” contracts and “cuartería” contracts. However, this system could only function with a great deal of additional labour to cultivate the land of large farms and to produce the raw materials needed to manufacture goods and provide services in the city. Thus there emerged a demand for "mossos", maidservants, shepherds and agreements to exploit the forests and to obtain timber, coal, turpentine, bricks, tiles and other products. “Mossos” and maidservants arose from among the younger children of the small farms who worked on a regular basis in the “masos” for a few years when they were young, and then intermittently when they were adults.

Based on a micro-historical study of three parishes in inland Catalonia which specialized in wine production over a long period, but focusing above all on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the aim of this paper is to reproduce the structure of the “masos” which had become consolidated in the sixteenth century. We examine the forms in which the land was cultivated in this period and the difficulties for social reproduction, the emergence of small farms related to the expansion of wine growing, the contracts used and the organization of space that they entailed. We also assess the relationship between the peasants and the large farms (“masos”), the role of the peasants both as providers of intermittent manual labour and as the basis for the commercial exploitation of the natural resources of the “masos”. Finally, we explore the practice of a hereditary system that allowed the continuation of these farms, the fate of the “mossos” and maidservants, and the prospects for upward mobility of these peasant farmers in relation to the fate of the “masos”.

The end result is a framework that sheds light on the workings of the labour market in this rural world, on the ways both agricultural and other kinds of natural resources were generated or used, and on the problems of social reproduction of large and small farms, and allows a reflection on social mobility in rural areas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The progressive collapse of the timar system (dirlik system) in the Ottoman Empire from the late 16th century created big vacuums in the Ottoman financial system, which would be covered by the expansion and operational restructuring of the tax lease system (iltizam system). The lifetime assignment of tax-related claims of the Ottoman State was an innovative measure for the financial affairs of the Ottoman Empire was cut to the financial affairs of the Ottoman Empire, as a tool for the speedy monetization of the economy and the gradual transformation of state tenure system. The tactic of bidding on lifelong tax farming brought the logic of market competition in an absolutely bureaucratic environment. At the same time, multiple levels of taxes sub-letting, from the original bidder to subtenants and local administrators gradually formed a new economic structure.

This change, which reflects the disintegration of the military Ottoman feudalism and the emergence of the first elements of the capitalist mode of production, largely associated with the formation of large landed property, which was not subject to military service obligation. However, the conversion of large land estates in the Balkans and Anatolia had a negative impact on the rural populations of the Empire.

The expansion of large landholding in Albanian lands from the early 18th century, was based primarily on forced ownership and, secondarily, on indebtedness of the rural population. In most cases, there was a usurpation of entire villages which culminated during Ali Pasha Tepedelenli years. His possessing of a very large number of estates in the Helladic and Albanian territory made Ali Pasha one of the most powerful economic actors in the Balkans, a mighty "sword entrepreneur." In many cases, the Albanian Local Ruler used the tactic of hiring rural labor for the cultivation of farms.

The records realized by the Ottoman Administration regarding Ali Pasha’s large landownership in Greek and South-Albanian territories show a predominance of salaried cultivators (ailakci) and assistants (yarinci) who were paid in cash or in kind (food commodities) and worked in the local provinces of Macedonia, Epirus, Thessaly and southern Albania. In addition, a treaty contracted by Ali Pasha with the Seven Islands State in November 1803 shows that workers were employed for seasonal work and were paid in kind. According to Pouqueville, most of the highlanders of Tsamouria (in south Alabnia), leased their labor power for plowing the land and were paid in kind. Despite these cases, there is no evidence that the wage payment system had developed in the Greek or Albanian countryside.

Consequently the basic unit of agricultural labor remained the cultivator (çifçi re'aya), the status of whom resembled that of the serf.

At the same time, in Europe ended protectionism ended, following the abolition of the Speenkhamland Act (1834) in England, which defended the right to survival and was responsible for impeding the creation of a competitive labor market . However, in the Ottoman territory, work, particularly in agriculture, remained committed to traditional pre-capitalist structures. The existence of paid workers, belonging to the aforementioned categories, is recorded as the end of the Ottoman period in the provinces (çiftlik) of Macedonia and Thessaly. These workers, who originated many times from moving populations (Gypsies, Balkan nomads) and lived in makeshift shelter, worked in remuneration, and complemented tenants.

This research mainly based on archival material from the Ottoman Archives of the Prime Minister of Turkey (Bâb-i Defterî / Basmuhasebe Darhaane-i Amire Kalemi Defterleri) in Istanbul / States.