This article explores how repression and everyday conflicts at the workplace were connected with labor rights and trade unionism in two authoritarian regimes. It focuses on worker and labor activists’ media in Francoist Spain and in state socialist Poland during the years 1965–68 and 1977–79, respectively. Spanish and Polish workers both lacked the right to join and form independent trade unions, the right to free assembly and association, and the right to strike. At the same time, they faced comparable problems in their everyday working lives, including low salaries, excessive overtime, incompetent management, and deficits in safety and hygiene standards. In this context, (illegal) magazines for workers emerged. They provided new arenas for exchanging experiences, advertised strike actions all across the country, called for united action, and explained national legislation and global labor norms. Based on an analysis of Spanish and Polish workers’ publications, this contribution investigates how labor activists in these states addressed day-to-day problems and the constant violations of internationally binding labor norms.
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September 01 2020
Writing (for) Workers: Alternative Workers’ Magazines in Francoist Spain and in State Socialist Poland in the 1960s and 1970s Available to Purchase
Anna Delius
Anna Delius
ANNA DELIUS completed a PhD in modern history at the Freie Universität Berlin in 2020. She coauthored the monograph Kollektive Erinnerungen europäischer Bürger im Kontext von Transnationalisierungsprozessen (2016) and several articles on memory and human rights history in Europe that have been published in such journals as Eastern European Politics and Societies and East Central Europe.
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Labor (2020) 17 (3): 53–72.
Citation
Anna Delius; Writing (for) Workers: Alternative Workers’ Magazines in Francoist Spain and in State Socialist Poland in the 1960s and 1970s. Labor 1 September 2020; 17 (3): 53–72. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-8349356
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