Suchergebnisse

In a well known study of the building industry written some years ago, Richard Price argued that the institutionalisation of trade unions and general formalisation of industrial relations that occurred during the latter half of the nineteenth century were influences that tended to restrict the capacity of work groups to regulate the conditions of their working lives. Whereas earlier labour historians, from the Webbs onwards, had emphasised the part played by formal organisations in the improvement of working conditions, Price stressed the capacity of informal groups to control the way work was conducted. Price's approach, and that of other writers adopting a similar perspective, has been extremely influential, not least because it accorded well with developments taking place in the modern industrial relations setting of the 1960s and 1970s, where interest was focussed upon autonomous work group activity. In the context of the mid-nineteenth century, however, Price certainly pushed his argument a long way. The capacity of craft workers, possessing a strong corporate tradition, to regulate autonomously conditions in their trade was one thing, but Price suggested that work group formation and activity extended to labourers, in building and other industries. Dock labourers, in particular, were held to have been capable of such regulative activity, "long before unionisation". If this was indeed the case, then the argument regarding the negative contribution of formal union organisation and collective bargaining must presumably be held to apply even in those sectors of employment where the new unionism of the 1880s and 1890s made its appearance.

Der große Streik der Hafenarbeiter von 1889 wird hier unter der Fragestellung untersucht, welchen Einfluß er auf die Entwicklung der britischen Gewerkschaftsbewegung gehabt hat. Dabei zeigt sich, daß die Beutung des Arbeitskampfes geringer war als zunächst angenommen. Seine unmittelbare Wirkung bestand in der Ausdehnung der Gewerkschaften auf die unorganisierten Hafenarbeiter im Osten und Süden Englands. Darüber hinhaus zeigten die Gewerkschaften jedoch kein Interesse, den Streik über die Häfen hinaus auszudehnen. Da es sich um Organisationen handelte, die die Errichtung eines closed shop anstrebten und auch zeitweise verwirklichten, geriet ihre Politik mit den anderen expansiven Kräften des New Unionism in Konflikt, wie zum Beispiel die Auseinandersetzung zwischen Dockern und Gasarbeitern zeigte. Auch die Beziehungen untereinander wurden beeinträchtigt. Nach dem Streik waren schließlich die verschiedenen Hafenarbeitergewerkschaften in London nicht in der Lage, Einigkeit zu bewahren. (HOE)