November 26, 2025 • 18 mins
This is a teaser preview of one of our Radical Reads episodes, made exclusively for our supporters on patreon. You can listen to the full 67-minute episode without ads and support our work at https://www.patreon.com/posts/e113-radical-of-143322722
In this episode, we discuss Beverly Silver's pioneering work, Forces of Labour: Workers' Movements and Globalisation Since 1870, a book which was hugely influential on many of us at Working Class History. The book is epic in its breadth (looking at labour unrest around the world and across a long period of time), but also firmly committed to viewing class struggle from the bottom up.
But most important about the book is how deeply materialist and methodical it is in how it outlines the concrete conditions that gave space for working-class struggle, and how those struggles forced capital to think of new strategies in order to deal with it. Moreover, in doing so, her book also helps us to think and to strategise about working-class organising today.
Listen to the full episode here:
More information
In this episode, we discuss Beverly Silver's pioneering work, Forces of Labour: Workers' Movements and Globalisation Since 1870, a book which was hugely influential on many of us at Working Class History. The book is epic in its breadth (looking at labour unrest around the world and across a long period of time), but also firmly committed to viewing class struggle from the bottom up.
But most important about the book is how deeply materialist and methodical it is in how it outlines the concrete conditions that gave space for working-class struggle, and how those struggles forced capital to think of new strategies in order to deal with it. Moreover, in doing so, her book also helps us to think and to strategise about working-class organising today.
Listen to the full episode here:
More information
- Buy Forces of Labour from an independent bookshop (or read it online here)
- Check out our collection of books about labour movement history in our online shop
- See the webpage for this episode at https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e113-radical-reads-forces-of-labour/
- Thanks to our patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jazz Hands.
- Episode graphic consists of two photos: textile strikers in Paterson, in the US, 1913, courtesy National Parks Gallery, and textile strikers in Egypt, 2007, courtesy Hossam el-Hamalawy https://www.flickr.com/photos/elhamalawy
- Edited by Jesse French
- Our theme tune is Montaigne’s version of the classic labour movement anthem, ‘Bread and Roses’, performed by Montaigne and Nick Harriott, and mixed by Wave Racer. Download the song here, with all proceeds going to Medical Aid for Palestinians. More from Montaigne: website, Instagram, YouTube
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone. As you might know, we don't get any
sort of funding from any wealthy benefactors, academic institutions, governments,
or political parties. Our work is funded by you, our
listeners and readers on Patreon. In return, our supporters on
Patreon get access to exclusive content and benefits like ad
free episodes, bonus podcast episodes, and two exclusive Patreon only
(00:23):
podcast series, fireside Chats and Radical Reads. So here's a
little preview of our latest Patreon only episode. You can
join us, help support our work, and listen to the
full episode today at patreon dot com slash working class
history link in the show notes.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
As we come margin Martin and the Beauty of the
Day a million dark in Kegeens one thousand mil, last
grade are branden by the beauty. His sun sun discloses
on the paper, arousing roses, red and roses.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
And I actually think like this discussion of like the
things that give workers power in a particular situation, I
think was actually that was another thing that was like
it was so methodical, and I, you know, I hadn't
thought of it like that at the time, you know,
I just thought, like, you know, there's obviously early two
(01:28):
thousands people are still talking about like the death of class.
We're all middle class now, you know, the working class
doesn't exist. It does doesn't exist as a you know,
a political force or whatever. And so I had, you know,
in my from my political perspectives, like, no, you still
have workers. You have workers who are you know, working
in shops or working in you know, like call centers,
(01:51):
and you know, maybe they're not like you know, in
the UK, they're not working in steel factories anymore like
or they're not they're not mining like you know, your
mining doesn't exist in the same way they're used to whatever.
But you still have people working for a wage. But
then what this did was show me that actually that
was that's actually still quite a kind of a flat analysis,
(02:14):
you know what I mean. And I think, like, just
as you know, to highlight how often I think about
this book is I thought about it while watching Sorry
to Bother You, the film excellent film, brilliant film by
Boots Riley.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
So good.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, it's excellent film, really, like, you know, can't praise
it highly enough. But it was a bit and basically
the main the main character works in a call center
and you know, and there's an element in the film
where like they organize a strike. Basically, that's broadly, you know,
I don't want to give any spoilers away, but I
(02:51):
felt like one of the underlying messages in it was like,
you know, the working class has changed, but the working
class still exists, and the working.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Class can still struggle in the way that he used to.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
And there was a bit of me that I was like,
you know, as much as I agree with the message,
I thought the choice of the call center worker wasn't great.
And you know, obviously this is not a criticism of
the film, because you know, the film is art. You know,
he's not writing a fucking sociological treatise, you know what
I mean, So like he's made like an artistic film,
(03:26):
so like this is a I don't want to underline
that this is you know, it doesn't take away from that,
and you're not supposed to watch the film as a
piece of sociology basically, But that aside, if we were
to watch the film as a piece of sociology, like
you can't just simply swap out one form of labor
(03:49):
for another and be like, oh, we can just do this,
like you know, call center workers can do what carfactory
workers used to.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
And I think that's what.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Forces of Labor really kind of brought out for me,
is that like different workers in different industries have there's
a there's like a material basis for the power that
they might have, and so, you know, so she distinguishes
between and I think it's not the only think of
her categories. I think she takes them from from another
(04:22):
thinker called Eric olin Wright.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
And basically she.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Distinguishes in this thing like associational power and structural power,
and associational power being the power of, you know, being
in associations. You know, so like the power of being
in a union, for example, and then there's a structural power,
which then I think is divided into this the idea
of like this market I think which John has already
(04:47):
mentioned this marketplace bargaining power and workplace barkaining power, and
you know, the marketplace barking power being you know, in
the general labor market, how much power do you have,
Like if you were to lose your job, would you
be able to be to find another one easily? If
you lose your job, would you be able to look
at do you have access to land or whatever that
you'd be able to grow your own food to sustain
(05:08):
yourself or whatever. And workplace bargaining power being this power
that you literally have in the workplace, like again what
John said about, you know, on the assembly line, if
you get one group of workers who like walk off,
then the whole assembly line grinds to a holt. So
workers end up having quite a lot of power even
(05:32):
if they don't have like a majority of them going
on strike at any one particular time.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
And yeah, and this is exactly the kind of key
difference between the struggles the largely successful struggles in the
auto industry that Silver talks about in the different regions
to the textile industry, because she does point out in
the late nineteenth century, textile workers in the UK were
successfully able to win a lot better pay and conditions,
(06:01):
largely on the strength of their associational power that their
unions in the North of England were so strong and
had so much support in the community that their strikes
were so solid that they were able to win better
paying conditions. But in a lot of other places they
just have less workplace bargaining power because unlike a car factory,
(06:25):
if some people on one loom shuts down, it doesn't
shut down the whole factory, It only shuts down that loom,
so smaller groups of people can't cause as much as disruption.
So that's one of the reasons that textile workers have
less of that kind of structural power. And other reasons
are things like the machinery of textiles is a lot
(06:49):
cheaper than it's a lot easier to set up a
small textile plant, and cheaper than to set up a
small car factory, So it's much easier for competitive to
startup a new company or for one company to move
a plant then doing carfactory workers. And this is kind
of useful information for us thinking about organizing where we work,
(07:11):
where we are, and also just thinking about any other
struggles going on in the world. It's I think I
find it's a really useful framework that helped me think
not just about you know, things going on in the world,
but also just about where you work yourself and where
the kind of weaknesses are in your own employer. You
know where the employers week and where you have potential
(07:33):
strength and that sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
It's I think just.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
A really helpful toolkit basically for thinking about and strategizing
about that sort of thing about organizing.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Yeah, I mean again that thing of like you know
what happens if you go and strike? You know what
happens if people in your section go on strike?
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Like what are the.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Broader implications of it? Or like if everyone in your
workplace goes on strike, or if everyone in and in
your industry goes on strike, what are the.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Knock on effects?
Speaker 1 (08:03):
And how does that kind of give you and your
your colleagues's strength basically, And I think there's you know,
because obviously she actually talks about the textile industry as
being the leading industry of the nineteenth century, then the
car industry the leading industry in the twentieth century, and
(08:24):
there's sort of like an interesting discussion about what might
be a kind of a leading industry in the twenty
first century. I think it was really interesting discussion. And
also I mean, as well as thinking about in terms
of where we work, or rather where you work, you know,
like you know, you the listener, the general kind of you,
(08:46):
how can you organize where you are? It also made
me think about when you're part of kind of collective organization,
where might a collective organization you know, direct its collective efforts,
you know, what I mean, and like where weather like uh,
and you know, and that and that's one of the
(09:07):
things that I think is really potentially really useful, you know,
in terms of not just thinking, Okay, yeah, so we
we have like a we want to organize like.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
A left political group.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Uh, and so we're going to think about the ideas
that we promote, but actually also thinking about what is
the working class that has to be mobilized in order
to move the broader you know, not just that one
set of workers, but actually to move the broader class itself.
And you know, and I say this as someone who
(09:43):
you know, I've largely worked in kind of peripheral industries,
and you know, I think I think about that quite
a lot, you know, so that even where we've organized something,
you know, ultimately within the broader class, it doesn't move
very much much at all.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
You do say that although one of the industries that
Stilver identifies as a possible as if not the major
central industry of the twenty first century, possibly one of
them that has more significance is education, because the labor
market now does require a high level of education generally.
(10:24):
And again I didn't used to have this kind of understand.
But you know, there's areas of education work where workers
do hold quite a lot of power, but primarily in
their role as childcare rather than actural educators. Obviously in
educators in some sense the product is education, but where
(10:45):
the capacity for education workers in general to cause the
most disruption is in not caring for other workers kids,
so that then other workers have to stay home and
look after their kids.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Which actually I think kind of during COVID really brought
that home, you know, like once the school's closed and
then it was like, well, you know, how the hell
are people going to work all day? You know, whether
they're like people who are going into work you know,
because they're key workers or whatever, or whether they're working
from home, you know, if their kids are hope, that's it.
(11:23):
Production is grinding to a whole, you know. And so yeah,
that's true, you know, I think certainly, interestingly, I think
that's certainly in the UK. There's an argument for saying
that the workplace power that workers have in education gets
(11:43):
higher the younger the children that they work with are,
but conversely, the strength of organization, the associational power actually diminishes,
you know, so like primary school workers, so that would
be like, you know, ages four to eleven. You know,
they probably have the most power because if they go
(12:06):
on strike and the kids have to stay home, you know,
all those parents have to take the day off work.
You know, you can't leave even you know, even a
lot of eleven year olds, you can't just leave them
in the house on their own all day. Next up
would be secondary school, and which is eleven to eighteen,
and those kids kind of especially in the older end
(12:28):
of it, they're probably more likely to be able to
be left alone at home. But then already you see
that like secondary school teachers in the UK are much
better organized than primary.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
School teachers almost always.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
And although I would say that the inverse is generally
the case when it comes to the support workers.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Well, that teaching assistants are more powerful in primary school
than in secondary school.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
And better organized generally, Yeah, you know generally because well
in the UK, I mean now it's different because the
Teachers Union does take school support staff, but before that
it was school support staff. We're in Unison for the
most part or GMB, and teachers were in one of
the teaching unions, and historically the organization of Unison, at
(13:14):
least in the primary was better than secondary.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
I think it's also it's also interesting to think, like
she does mention a bunch of other industries that have
the potential to have quite a lot of power. So, like,
you know, she talks about you know, like janitors and
cleaners and things like that, and I suppose to a
certain extent that's or there there have been quite a
few struggles in that industry, oh, you know, like and
(13:40):
she mentions like justice v janitors in LA. I think
you could also think about some of the more recent
stuff in the UK by smaller unions like UVW United
Voices of the World and the IWGB, which is the
Industrial Workers of Great Britain. She mentions that as possibly industry.
(14:01):
I mean, she's very careful not to say that these
will be the new industries that struggle will happen in.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
I think that she's more pointing out that the service
sector is the biggest part of the economy today and
then looking at examples of where organizing has happened in
the service sector.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Yeah, but she is sort of you know, proffering them
as like a potential alternative to the to like the
auto industry in terms of like, Okay, this is this
will be like the center of gravity for new kind
of working class movement, you know. And she's not saying
they will, but she said, like the potentially this is
(14:40):
one possibility for X, Y and Z reason because yeah,
like you say, services are really important and there's been
these struggles there. Education, you know, the education industry is
very important and there's been these struggles there. And transport
transport is another one. Yeah, and there's some excellent graphs
as well about again this is this is a little
(15:02):
bit like a kind of the technological fix, you know
that Basically she had these excellent graphs and tables about
how transport strikes move from one form of transport to another,
you know, so starting off with like trains and then
moving on to you know, things like aviation and stuff
like that, which is.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Again it is really really interesting.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
There's one that she mentions, which is the semiconductor industry,
you know, like making like MicroSort from small microchips and
things like that. And I guess you mentioned that because
like how central it is to so many products and
you know, around the world. And I think as far
as I can tell that one has not particularly come
to fruition in any in any way.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Well, I think she does address that in that because
already at that point it was very central. But it's
a highly automated industry that doesn't need many workers. And
also because it doesn't need many workers, you can pay
the ones that there are quite well, so to kind
of stop it being a terrain of that much struggle.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah, And I guess like one thing, I mean, I
don't know if there is a second edition that's coming
out for this, for this particular book, but if there was,
I think one sector that that sort of feels lacking
or that I feel like, you know, could could easily
have gone in there is you know, stuff like yeah,
(16:34):
like warehouses and couriers and things like that for you know,
which I suppose is not a new industry, but the
kind of the logistics sector more broadly, which has had
huge struggles everywhere, and I think increasingly it's becoming kind
of more a more prominent feature of capitalism, you know,
(16:55):
everywhere basically. And I think what's really interesting about the
logistics sector is that it's recreating the working class that
capital had tried to eliminate via the spatial fix, you know,
moving that you know, those big concentrations of workers around
(17:15):
big urban centers, which was such a pain in the
ass for the whole twentieth century, and that you worked
so hard to get rid of them, and now it's
recreated them in these like Amazon warehouses or these like
you know whatever DPD or Hermes or you know whatever.
And I think that is a potential, uh, you know,
(17:36):
new base of working class organizing. I think in a
I guess, you know, I don't know. I'm hesitant to
call it a new industry because obviously warehouses and distribution
existed before, but I feel like it exists now in
this logistics sector in a kind of a new way.
And so yeah, I think that that also has the
potential to be a new sort of center of gravity
(17:59):
for Bucker's movement.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
As we come Martin, Martin in the Beauty of the.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Day that brings us to the end of this episode.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Preview.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
To listen to the full thing and help support our
work researching and promoting people's history, join us on Patreon
at patreon dot com slash working class history link in
the show notes
Hi everyone. As you might know, we don't get any
sort of funding from any wealthy benefactors, academic institutions, governments,
or political parties. Our work is funded by you, our
listeners and readers on Patreon. In return, our supporters on
Patreon get access to exclusive content and benefits like ad
free episodes, bonus podcast episodes, and two exclusive Patreon only
(00:23):
podcast series, fireside Chats and Radical Reads. So here's a
little preview of our latest Patreon only episode. You can
join us, help support our work, and listen to the
full episode today at patreon dot com slash working class
history link in the show notes.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
As we come margin Martin and the Beauty of the
Day a million dark in Kegeens one thousand mil, last
grade are branden by the beauty. His sun sun discloses
on the paper, arousing roses, red and roses.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
And I actually think like this discussion of like the
things that give workers power in a particular situation, I
think was actually that was another thing that was like
it was so methodical, and I, you know, I hadn't
thought of it like that at the time, you know,
I just thought, like, you know, there's obviously early two
(01:28):
thousands people are still talking about like the death of class.
We're all middle class now, you know, the working class
doesn't exist. It does doesn't exist as a you know,
a political force or whatever. And so I had, you know,
in my from my political perspectives, like, no, you still
have workers. You have workers who are you know, working
in shops or working in you know, like call centers,
(01:51):
and you know, maybe they're not like you know, in
the UK, they're not working in steel factories anymore like
or they're not they're not mining like you know, your
mining doesn't exist in the same way they're used to whatever.
But you still have people working for a wage. But
then what this did was show me that actually that
was that's actually still quite a kind of a flat analysis,
(02:14):
you know what I mean. And I think, like, just
as you know, to highlight how often I think about
this book is I thought about it while watching Sorry
to Bother You, the film excellent film, brilliant film by
Boots Riley.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
So good.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, it's excellent film, really, like, you know, can't praise
it highly enough. But it was a bit and basically
the main the main character works in a call center
and you know, and there's an element in the film
where like they organize a strike. Basically, that's broadly, you know,
I don't want to give any spoilers away, but I
(02:51):
felt like one of the underlying messages in it was like,
you know, the working class has changed, but the working
class still exists, and the working.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Class can still struggle in the way that he used to.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
And there was a bit of me that I was like,
you know, as much as I agree with the message,
I thought the choice of the call center worker wasn't great.
And you know, obviously this is not a criticism of
the film, because you know, the film is art. You know,
he's not writing a fucking sociological treatise, you know what
I mean, So like he's made like an artistic film,
(03:26):
so like this is a I don't want to underline
that this is you know, it doesn't take away from that,
and you're not supposed to watch the film as a
piece of sociology basically, But that aside, if we were
to watch the film as a piece of sociology, like
you can't just simply swap out one form of labor
(03:49):
for another and be like, oh, we can just do this,
like you know, call center workers can do what carfactory
workers used to.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
And I think that's what.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Forces of Labor really kind of brought out for me,
is that like different workers in different industries have there's
a there's like a material basis for the power that
they might have, and so, you know, so she distinguishes
between and I think it's not the only think of
her categories. I think she takes them from from another
(04:22):
thinker called Eric olin Wright.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
And basically she.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Distinguishes in this thing like associational power and structural power,
and associational power being the power of, you know, being
in associations. You know, so like the power of being
in a union, for example, and then there's a structural power,
which then I think is divided into this the idea
of like this market I think which John has already
(04:47):
mentioned this marketplace bargaining power and workplace barkaining power, and
you know, the marketplace barking power being you know, in
the general labor market, how much power do you have,
Like if you were to lose your job, would you
be able to be to find another one easily? If
you lose your job, would you be able to look
at do you have access to land or whatever that
you'd be able to grow your own food to sustain
(05:08):
yourself or whatever. And workplace bargaining power being this power
that you literally have in the workplace, like again what
John said about, you know, on the assembly line, if
you get one group of workers who like walk off,
then the whole assembly line grinds to a holt. So
workers end up having quite a lot of power even
(05:32):
if they don't have like a majority of them going
on strike at any one particular time.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
And yeah, and this is exactly the kind of key
difference between the struggles the largely successful struggles in the
auto industry that Silver talks about in the different regions
to the textile industry, because she does point out in
the late nineteenth century, textile workers in the UK were
successfully able to win a lot better pay and conditions,
(06:01):
largely on the strength of their associational power that their
unions in the North of England were so strong and
had so much support in the community that their strikes
were so solid that they were able to win better
paying conditions. But in a lot of other places they
just have less workplace bargaining power because unlike a car factory,
(06:25):
if some people on one loom shuts down, it doesn't
shut down the whole factory, It only shuts down that loom,
so smaller groups of people can't cause as much as disruption.
So that's one of the reasons that textile workers have
less of that kind of structural power. And other reasons
are things like the machinery of textiles is a lot
(06:49):
cheaper than it's a lot easier to set up a
small textile plant, and cheaper than to set up a
small car factory, So it's much easier for competitive to
startup a new company or for one company to move
a plant then doing carfactory workers. And this is kind
of useful information for us thinking about organizing where we work,
(07:11):
where we are, and also just thinking about any other
struggles going on in the world. It's I think I
find it's a really useful framework that helped me think
not just about you know, things going on in the world,
but also just about where you work yourself and where
the kind of weaknesses are in your own employer. You
know where the employers week and where you have potential
(07:33):
strength and that sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
It's I think just.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
A really helpful toolkit basically for thinking about and strategizing
about that sort of thing about organizing.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Yeah, I mean again that thing of like you know
what happens if you go and strike? You know what
happens if people in your section go on strike?
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Like what are the.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Broader implications of it? Or like if everyone in your
workplace goes on strike, or if everyone in and in
your industry goes on strike, what are the.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Knock on effects?
Speaker 1 (08:03):
And how does that kind of give you and your
your colleagues's strength basically, And I think there's you know,
because obviously she actually talks about the textile industry as
being the leading industry of the nineteenth century, then the
car industry the leading industry in the twentieth century, and
(08:24):
there's sort of like an interesting discussion about what might
be a kind of a leading industry in the twenty
first century. I think it was really interesting discussion. And
also I mean, as well as thinking about in terms
of where we work, or rather where you work, you know,
like you know, you the listener, the general kind of you,
(08:46):
how can you organize where you are? It also made
me think about when you're part of kind of collective organization,
where might a collective organization you know, direct its collective efforts,
you know, what I mean, and like where weather like uh,
and you know, and that and that's one of the
(09:07):
things that I think is really potentially really useful, you know,
in terms of not just thinking, Okay, yeah, so we
we have like a we want to organize like.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
A left political group.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Uh, and so we're going to think about the ideas
that we promote, but actually also thinking about what is
the working class that has to be mobilized in order
to move the broader you know, not just that one
set of workers, but actually to move the broader class itself.
And you know, and I say this as someone who
(09:43):
you know, I've largely worked in kind of peripheral industries,
and you know, I think I think about that quite
a lot, you know, so that even where we've organized something,
you know, ultimately within the broader class, it doesn't move
very much much at all.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
You do say that although one of the industries that
Stilver identifies as a possible as if not the major
central industry of the twenty first century, possibly one of
them that has more significance is education, because the labor
market now does require a high level of education generally.
(10:24):
And again I didn't used to have this kind of understand.
But you know, there's areas of education work where workers
do hold quite a lot of power, but primarily in
their role as childcare rather than actural educators. Obviously in
educators in some sense the product is education, but where
(10:45):
the capacity for education workers in general to cause the
most disruption is in not caring for other workers kids,
so that then other workers have to stay home and
look after their kids.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Which actually I think kind of during COVID really brought
that home, you know, like once the school's closed and
then it was like, well, you know, how the hell
are people going to work all day? You know, whether
they're like people who are going into work you know,
because they're key workers or whatever, or whether they're working
from home, you know, if their kids are hope, that's it.
(11:23):
Production is grinding to a whole, you know. And so yeah,
that's true, you know, I think certainly, interestingly, I think
that's certainly in the UK. There's an argument for saying
that the workplace power that workers have in education gets
(11:43):
higher the younger the children that they work with are,
but conversely, the strength of organization, the associational power actually diminishes,
you know, so like primary school workers, so that would
be like, you know, ages four to eleven. You know,
they probably have the most power because if they go
(12:06):
on strike and the kids have to stay home, you know,
all those parents have to take the day off work.
You know, you can't leave even you know, even a
lot of eleven year olds, you can't just leave them
in the house on their own all day. Next up
would be secondary school, and which is eleven to eighteen,
and those kids kind of especially in the older end
(12:28):
of it, they're probably more likely to be able to
be left alone at home. But then already you see
that like secondary school teachers in the UK are much
better organized than primary.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
School teachers almost always.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
And although I would say that the inverse is generally
the case when it comes to the support workers.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Well, that teaching assistants are more powerful in primary school
than in secondary school.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
And better organized generally, Yeah, you know generally because well
in the UK, I mean now it's different because the
Teachers Union does take school support staff, but before that
it was school support staff. We're in Unison for the
most part or GMB, and teachers were in one of
the teaching unions, and historically the organization of Unison, at
(13:14):
least in the primary was better than secondary.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
I think it's also it's also interesting to think, like
she does mention a bunch of other industries that have
the potential to have quite a lot of power. So, like,
you know, she talks about you know, like janitors and
cleaners and things like that, and I suppose to a
certain extent that's or there there have been quite a
few struggles in that industry, oh, you know, like and
(13:40):
she mentions like justice v janitors in LA. I think
you could also think about some of the more recent
stuff in the UK by smaller unions like UVW United
Voices of the World and the IWGB, which is the
Industrial Workers of Great Britain. She mentions that as possibly industry.
(14:01):
I mean, she's very careful not to say that these
will be the new industries that struggle will happen in.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
I think that she's more pointing out that the service
sector is the biggest part of the economy today and
then looking at examples of where organizing has happened in
the service sector.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Yeah, but she is sort of you know, proffering them
as like a potential alternative to the to like the
auto industry in terms of like, Okay, this is this
will be like the center of gravity for new kind
of working class movement, you know. And she's not saying
they will, but she said, like the potentially this is
(14:40):
one possibility for X, Y and Z reason because yeah,
like you say, services are really important and there's been
these struggles there. Education, you know, the education industry is
very important and there's been these struggles there. And transport
transport is another one. Yeah, and there's some excellent graphs
as well about again this is this is a little
(15:02):
bit like a kind of the technological fix, you know
that Basically she had these excellent graphs and tables about
how transport strikes move from one form of transport to another,
you know, so starting off with like trains and then
moving on to you know, things like aviation and stuff
like that, which is.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Again it is really really interesting.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
There's one that she mentions, which is the semiconductor industry,
you know, like making like MicroSort from small microchips and
things like that. And I guess you mentioned that because
like how central it is to so many products and
you know, around the world. And I think as far
as I can tell that one has not particularly come
to fruition in any in any way.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Well, I think she does address that in that because
already at that point it was very central. But it's
a highly automated industry that doesn't need many workers. And
also because it doesn't need many workers, you can pay
the ones that there are quite well, so to kind
of stop it being a terrain of that much struggle.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah, And I guess like one thing, I mean, I
don't know if there is a second edition that's coming
out for this, for this particular book, but if there was,
I think one sector that that sort of feels lacking
or that I feel like, you know, could could easily
have gone in there is you know, stuff like yeah,
(16:34):
like warehouses and couriers and things like that for you know,
which I suppose is not a new industry, but the
kind of the logistics sector more broadly, which has had
huge struggles everywhere, and I think increasingly it's becoming kind
of more a more prominent feature of capitalism, you know,
(16:55):
everywhere basically. And I think what's really interesting about the
logistics sector is that it's recreating the working class that
capital had tried to eliminate via the spatial fix, you know,
moving that you know, those big concentrations of workers around
(17:15):
big urban centers, which was such a pain in the
ass for the whole twentieth century, and that you worked
so hard to get rid of them, and now it's
recreated them in these like Amazon warehouses or these like
you know whatever DPD or Hermes or you know whatever.
And I think that is a potential, uh, you know,
(17:36):
new base of working class organizing. I think in a
I guess, you know, I don't know. I'm hesitant to
call it a new industry because obviously warehouses and distribution
existed before, but I feel like it exists now in
this logistics sector in a kind of a new way.
And so yeah, I think that that also has the
potential to be a new sort of center of gravity
(17:59):
for Bucker's movement.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
As we come Martin, Martin in the Beauty of the.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Day that brings us to the end of this episode.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Preview.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
To listen to the full thing and help support our
work researching and promoting people's history, join us on Patreon
at patreon dot com slash working class history link in
the show notes
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