From Mission to Microchip

From Mission to Microchip

Author: Fred Glass

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2016-06-28

Total Pages: 542

ISBN-13: 0520288408

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There is no better time than now to consider the labor history of the Golden State. While other states face declining union enrollment rates and the rollback of workersÕ rights, California unions are embracing working immigrants, and voters are protecting core worker rights. WhatÕs the difference? California has held an exceptional place in the imagination of Americans and immigrants since the Gold Rush, which saw the first of many waves of working people moving to the state to find work. From Mission to Microchip unearths the hidden stories of these people throughout CaliforniaÕs history. The difficult task of the stateÕs labor movement has been to overcome perceived barriers such as race, national origin, and language to unite newcomers and natives in their shared interest. As chronicled in this comprehensive history, workers have creatively used collective bargaining, politics, strikes, and varied organizing strategies to find common ground among CaliforniaÕs diverse communities and achieve a measure of economic fairness and social justice. This is an indispensible book for students and scholars of labor history and history of the West, as well as labor activists and organizers.Ê


From Migrant to Worker

From Migrant to Worker

Author: Michele Ford

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-04-15

Total Pages: 124

ISBN-13: 1501735160

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What happens when local unions begin to advocate for the rights of temporary migrant workers, asks Michele Ford in her sweeping study of seven Asian countries? Until recently unions in Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand were uniformly hostile towards foreign workers, but Ford deftly shows how times and attitudes have begun to change. Now, she argues, NGOs and the Global Union Federations are encouraging local unions to represent and advocate for these peripheral workers, and in some cases succeeding. From Migrant to Worker builds our understanding of the role the international labor movement and local unions have had in developing a movement for migrant workers' labor rights. Ford examines the relationship between different kinds of labor movement actors and the constraints imposed on those actors by resource flows, contingency, and local context. Her conclusions show that in countries—Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand—where resource flows and local factors give the Global Union Federations more influence local unions have become much more engaged with migrant workers. But in countries—Japan and Taiwan, for example—where they have little effect there has been little progress. While much has changed, Ford forces us to see that labor migration in Asia is still fraught with complications and hardships, and that local unions are not always able or willing to act.


We Were All Like Migrant Workers Here

We Were All Like Migrant Workers Here

Author: William J. Bauer Jr.

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2009-12-15

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0807895369

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The federally recognized Round Valley Indian Tribes are a small, confederated people whose members today come from twelve indigenous California tribes. In 1849, during the California gold rush, people from several of these tribes were relocated to a reservation farm in northern Mendocino County. Fusing Native American history and labor history, William Bauer Jr. chronicles the evolution of work, community, and tribal identity among the Round Valley Indians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that enabled their survival and resistance to assimilation. Drawing on oral history interviews, Bauer brings Round Valley Indian voices to the forefront in a narrative that traces their adaptations to shifting social and economic realities, first within unfree labor systems, including outright slavery and debt peonage, and later as wage laborers within the agricultural workforce. Despite the allotment of the reservation, federal land policies, and the Great Depression, Round Valley Indians innovatively used work and economic change to their advantage in order to survive and persist in the twentieth century. We Were All Like Migrant Workers Here relates their history for the first time.


The Fruits of Their Labor

The Fruits of Their Labor

Author: Cindy Hahamovitch

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 9780807846391

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In 1933 Congress granted American laborers the right of collective bargaining, but farmworkers got no New Deal. Cindy Hahamovitch's pathbreaking account of migrant farmworkers along the Atlantic Coast shows how growers enlisted the aid of the state in an unprecedented effort to keep their fields well stocked with labor. This is the story of the farmworkers_Italian immigrants from northeastern tenements, African American laborers from the South, and imported workers from the Caribbean_who came to work in the fields of New Jersey, Georgia, and Florida in the decades after 1870. These farmworkers were not powerless, the author argues, for growers became increasingly open to negotiation as their crops ripened in the fields. But farmers fought back with padrone or labor contracting schemes and 'work-or-fight' forced-labor campaigns. Hahamovitch describes how growers' efforts became more effective as federal officials assumed the role of padroni, supplying farmers with foreign workers on demand. Today's migrants are as desperate as ever, the author concludes, not because poverty is an inevitable feature of modern agricultural work, but because the federal government has intervened on behalf of growers, preventing farmworkers from enjoying the fruits of their labor.


Migrant Labor in China

Migrant Labor in China

Author: Pun Ngai

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2016-04-22

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 1509503382

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Long known as the world's factory, China is the largest manufacturing economy ever seen, accounting for more than 10% of global exports. China is also, of course, home to the largest workforce on the planet, the crucial element behind its staggering economic success. But who are China's workers who keep the machine running, and how is the labor process changing under economic reform? Pun Ngai, a leading expert in factory labor in China, charts the rise of China as a world workshop and the emergence of a new labor force in the context of the post-socialist transformations of the last three decades. The book analyzes the role of the state and transnational interests in creating a new migrant workforce deprived of many rights and social protection. As China increases its output of high-value, high-tech products, particularly for its own growing domestic market of middle-class consumers, workers are increasingly voicing their discontent through strikes and protest, creating new challenges for the Party-State and the global division of labor. Blending theory, politics, and real-world examples, this book will be an invaluable guide for upper-level students and non-specialists interested in China's economy and Chinese politics and society.


Defiant Braceros

Defiant Braceros

Author: Mireya Loza

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2016-09-02

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13:

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In this book, Mireya Loza sheds new light on the private lives of migrant men who participated in the Bracero Program (1942–1964), a binational agreement between the United States and Mexico that allowed hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers to enter this country on temporary work permits. While this program and the issue of temporary workers has long been politicized on both sides of the border, Loza argues that the prevailing romanticized image of braceros as a family-oriented, productive, legal workforce has obscured the real, diverse experiences of the workers themselves. Focusing on underexplored aspects of workers' lives--such as their transnational union-organizing efforts, the sexual economies of both hetero and queer workers, and the ethno-racial boundaries among Mexican indigenous braceros--Loza reveals how these men defied perceived political, sexual, and racial norms. Basing her work on an archive of more than 800 oral histories from the United States and Mexico, Loza is the first scholar to carefully differentiate between the experiences of mestizo guest workers and the many Mixtec, Zapotec, Purhepecha, and Mayan laborers. In doing so, she captures the myriad ways these defiant workers responded to the intense discrimination and exploitation of an unjust system that still persists today.


The Mobility of Labor and Capital

The Mobility of Labor and Capital

Author: Saskia Sassen

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1990-06-29

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780521386722

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In this empirical study, Saskia Sassen offers a fresh understanding of the processes of international migration. Focusing on immigration into the US from 1960 to 1985 and the part played by American economic activities abroad, as well as foreign investment in the US, she examines the various ways in which the internationalization of production contributes to the formation and direction of labor migration.


The Price of Rights

The Price of Rights

Author: Martin Ruhs

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2013-08-25

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1400848601

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Many low-income countries and development organizations are calling for greater liberalization of labor immigration policies in high-income countries. At the same time, human rights organizations and migrant rights advocates demand more equal rights for migrant workers. The Price of Rights shows why you cannot always have both. Examining labor immigration policies in over forty countries, as well as policy drivers in major migrant-receiving and migrant-sending states, Martin Ruhs finds that there are trade-offs in the policies of high-income countries between openness to admitting migrant workers and some of the rights granted to migrants after admission. Insisting on greater equality of rights for migrant workers can come at the price of more restrictive admission policies, especially for lower-skilled workers. Ruhs advocates the liberalization of international labor migration through temporary migration programs that protect a universal set of core rights and account for the interests of nation-states by restricting a few specific rights that create net costs for receiving countries. The Price of Rights analyzes how high-income countries restrict the rights of migrant workers as part of their labor immigration policies and discusses the implications for global debates about regulating labor migration and protecting migrants. It comprehensively looks at the tensions between human rights and citizenship rights, the agency and interests of migrants and states, and the determinants and ethics of labor immigration policy.