European Labour Protest 1848–1939 by Dick Geary

Author:Dick Geary [Geary, Dick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781000424232
Google: PVA2EAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-09-05T08:57:17+00:00

Strikes

What contemporaries would have noticed more than any other aspect of labour activity in the three decades before the First World War was the massive increase in the incidence of strikes and in their scale. More and more workers attempted either to defend or improve their living standards through industrial action. In most cases the first consideration was uppermost in the minds of strikers; but for some skilled and well organised groups such as printers and engineering workers complaints were made about nervous exhaustion as a result of new techniques of production and demands of an offensive nature, such as a share in the higher profits that accrued from increased productivity, could be heard. Issues of trade union recognition, harsh treatment at the hands of inconsiderate foremen and other questions relating to work practices and authority on the shop floor also raised their head from time to time.54 Whatever the reason, there can be no doubt that industrial disputes reached unprecedented proportions after the turn of the century. Britain saw massive strikes on the railways and in the docks in 1911; in fact the first national railway strike paralysed the country in that year. Even more days were lost in the following twelve months as a result of industrial disputes.55 In France the average annual strike rate never dropped below 500 disputes between 1900 and 1915, the first effective industry-wide strikes were staged in 1902 and four years later there came the first attempts to organise national stoppages. (It still remained true, however, that the average French strike was localised and small in scale before 1914.56) In Germany the number of industrial disputes escalated in the following way: 1,468 strikes involving 321,000 workers in 1900, 3,228 strikes (681,000 strikers) in 1910, and 2,834 strikes involving 1,031,000 two years later. It must be admitted that these years were the high points of German industrial conflict; but it remains true, none the less, that more and more workers, often from industries new to strike action, became involved in this particular form of labour protest. As in France, so in the Second Reich some of these strikes were nation- and industry-wide. In 1905, for example, no fewer than three-quarters of Ruhr miners downed tools in the same dispute, thus indicating that the strike had the support of many men who were not actually members of either the Catholic or the Free Trade Union miners’ organisations. Indeed, throughout this period many strikes were called without guidance from formal labour organisations and, as we shall see, in some cases against the express wishes of an increasingly cautious trade union bureaucracy.57

The overwhelming majority of these strikes arose from wage disputes, especially between 1910 and 1914 when inflation threatened to erode working-class living standards. However, the issue of the length of the working day also assumed a new importance with the introduction of more rigorous controls over labour in the factory and the employment of new techniques of production which increased the pace of work.58 In France the major trade union confederation, the CGT, took up the demand for an eight-hour day.

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