Labor History (Business)

The paper investigates the management practices in place and the labour market outcomes experienced by workers in the Traffic Branch of the Victorian Railways over the period 1864–
1921. Using longitudinal panel data drawn from several publicly available sources and employing methods similar to those used by Baker et al. (1994a, 1994b), Seltzer and Merrett (1996), Hamilton and MacKinnon (1996) and Maloney and Whatley (1995), the careers of workers permanently employed in the Traffic Branch are examined. An analysis of the ports of entry, career structure, tenure and remuneration patterns indicates that the organisation operated as a well defined yet flexible internal labour market that included both blue- and white-collar positions.

This study represents the first substantial investigation of the human resource management practices within the Victorian Railways over the period 1864-1921. The employment and management strategies of the organisation are examined using a range of models and theories drawn from labour economics, new institutional economics and human resource management.

Much of previous research explaining the rise of income and wealth inequality in the developed countries and the US in particular has focused on the role of the decline of union membership. Another neglected factor for the growing income gap is the role that labor representation in corporate board rooms (codetermination) plays in containing income inequality. This paper uses the case of Germany, that has a long tradition of codetermination, to argue that labor sharing in important decisions alongside management in corporate boards contributes significantly to reducing income inequality by preventing a focus on the short-term maximization of profits and dividends for top managers and shareholders, which risks the longterm survival of the firm and raises income inequality. Codetermination also allows workers to make more realistic demands for wage increases by sharing in the financial information of the firm. By preventing layoffs, codetermination also helps firms to retain important human capital and talent. In contrast, the United States does not have any codetermination laws, and relegates unionized workers exclusively to collective bargaining to defend their interests, which prevents US workers from gaining the advantages from codetermination.

This call for paper aims to bring together historians and social scientists of different hues who study the factory in a historical perspective to discuss new research focused on the factory as a unit of analysis. The focus is on thematic and methodological perspectives that engage with dimensions such as gender, race, the spatial and transnational turn, the discourse analysis etc. that have cross-fertilised with the perspective of class that was traditionally adopted by the labour history of the factory. Monographs on the factory were once frequent, and some were models of their genre, but they sometimes adopted an overly narrow industrial relations lens (or, worse, the hagiographic tone of a company history) that obfuscated what could be gained from an integrated, interdisciplinary and multi-focal gaze. We aim to foster a novel research agenda on the factory that would be located at the intersection of different disciplines and sub-disciplines, looking at a variety of agents, and crossing the boundaries of national historiographies of industrialization and de-industrialization. While this perspective argues for a history of the factory that is interdisciplinary, labour historians have much to gain from it. As a field labour history has widened in scope in the past thirty years: the history of everyday life, of communities, of urban space, of gender and the reproductive sphere are now part and parcel of labour histories. These methodological and theoretical developments have had a tremendous influence on labour history. We look for contributions that build upon these developments and further encourage a dialogue between labour history and other fields. As a complex organization employing large number of workers the factory is a point of convergence of different social phenomena, some transnational in scope such as resources, employees and circulation of commodities. Studying a factory in all its aspects encompassing the transnational flows of capital and trade, internationally shaped investment decisions, the interactions between international and national regulation, national and international labour migration could move our research questions from the fallacies of a narrowly national focus. We also recognise that the definition of factory is open to interpretation as models of organisation of production have been arguably adopted in the service sector (call centres) or in logistics and distribution (warehouses) where workers are highly regimented and constantly gauged against statistical performance standards, primarily speed. These workplaces adopt Taylorist practices that once characterized factory production, such as the strategic use of technology to control the pace of working and the fragmentation and mechanization of tasks to deskill workers. The onus is on the researcher to argue why a particular workplace should be considered a " factory " and benefit from intellectual dialogue with the papers of this working group. We are calling for papers that focus on a factory or a coherent group of factories from any aspects, but in particular from an integrated, interdisciplinary and multi-focal gaze. Papers that deal with the politics of the working-class in general, not linked to a particular factory, are better suited to other working groups in the European Labour History Network. We invite proposals for papers and roundtables addressing one or more of the following themes:

The story of wages in nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century Australia has largely been told through official published statistics and the experiences of skilled artisans and construction labourers. Utilising wage book data from an early successful manufacturing plant – a biscuit factory – we reveal the earning histories of several neglected groups of Australian workers. We specifically investigate the effects of the 1890s depression, the introduction of a wages board, and shifting demographics on the wages of unskilled factory hands, women, juvenile workers, and commercial clerks. We demonstrate that typical Australian wage series studies have misinterpreted the impact of these phenomena.

Florent Le Bot, « 1906, Changer la vie. Jean Guéhenno, mémorialiste des ouvriers fougerais de la chaussure », Cahiers Jean Guéhenno, 2e volume, Les Amis de Jean Guéhenno, Fougères, 2010, p. 40-54.
Dans le cadre d'un doctorat d'histoire portant sur les spoliations antisémites dans la branche du cuir, Florent Le Bot a montré l'importance des communautés industrielles localisées, telles Fougères, Romans, Cholet ou Limoges, dans une économie de la chaussure en archipel. Parmi les sources de son travail, publié désormais sous le titre La Fabrique réactionnaire. Antisémitisme, spoliations et corporatisme dans le cuir, 1950-1950 (cf. bibliographie indicative en fin d'article), les écrits de Jean Guéhenno sur la fabrique fougeraise ont pu trouver toute leur place.

The factory once loomed large in national historiographies. As the emblematic locus of industrialization, the industrial plant nurtured the core soul of capitalism: the relations of production on the shop floor. Labour historians once revelled in the history of the factory, focusing sharply on its workers and their organizations. Conversely, since the 1980s, after the wave of de-industrialization and factory relocation that has characterized western economies, the factory, along with the industrial worker, seems to have disappeared from historians' agenda. Deindustrialization has inspired a questionable historical narrative predicated on the shift from an 'industrial economy' to a 'knowledge economy'. Factories are allegedly no longer at the centre of policy-making decisions, electoral programmes or social protest. Industrial trade unions are ghosts of their former selves, while organised labour has become a largely public sector phenomenon. The factory interests few. But, in a world awash with manufactured goods, where have the factories, and their workers, gone? Monographs on the factory were once frequent, and some were models of their genre, but they sometimes adopted an overly narrow industrial relations lens (or, worse, the hagiographic tone of a company history) that obfuscated what could be gained from an integrated, interdisciplinary and multi-focal gaze. For this reason, this issue will encourage contributions that study the factory through multiple lenses. For instance, as part of the urban space, the ways its architecture, planning and organization affected workers' patterns of protest and consent, influenced practices of management or transformed the urban environment. A novel research agenda on the factory would be located at the intersection of different disciplines and sub-disciplines, looking at a variety of agents, and cross the boundaries of national historiographies of industrialization and de-industrialization. We are calling for papers from social, economic and cultural historians who focus on the historical study of a factory in all its aspects, but in particular from an integrated, interdisciplinary and multi-focal gaze. Contribution to this panel will hopefully inspire a novel research agenda on the factory that would be located at the intersection of different disciplines and sub-disciplines, looking at a variety of agents, and crossing the boundaries of national historiographies of industrialization and de-industrialization.

Presuming that a certain case study would be presented in line with the utilization of archival materials having various origins, here into this paper, the utilization of the archival sources within the previously completed research works on the Ottoman-Turkey “natural sea sponge gathering” (süngercilik) industry will be presented. Researches on Microeconomic history is known exhibiting a contemporarily advancing trend. Within the mentioned analytical approach to economic history, the leading works refers to the specific production processes, companies and the industrial organizations and in contrary to the more extensive and holistic approaches to the economic history, with their more limited and specific focus, they are mostly presenting findings on the basis of micro scaled economic process. Within the adopted approach as mentioned, these studies exhibit differences with the holistic approaches to history which present the findings of various research undertaken with respect to the main trends of national economies on macro economic basis. The effect of data sources is definitely having an impact on the advancing trend exhibited in the history researches undertaken with a micro economic perspective.  Whereas the observed quality and quantity improvements in essential sources is also becoming the main reason why the gained recognition for the mentioned research agenda is being increasing. On the other end, an important factor effecting their contributions while the number of the likely studies is increasing as mentioned, is the revisions and reconsiderations of the neglected details of the same archival sources which have various origins, and have already been analyzed and examined by the previously completed studies which are mostly known adopting the holistic approaches. (..)

(October, 2015, ongoing paper, submitted to peer review for an International Congress).

Keywords: Micro economic history, Mainstream and institutional economic analysis in micro economic history studies, Archival sources in economic history studies, Archival sources in micro economic history studies.