The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act, is a foundational statute of United States labor law that guarantees the right of private sector employees to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining, and take collective action such as strikes. Central to the act was a ban on company unions. The act was written by Senator Robert F. Wagner, passed by the 74th United States Congress, and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
A domestic worker or domestic servant is a person who works within a residence and perform a variety of household services for an individual, from providing cleaning and household maintenance, or cooking, laundry and ironing, or care for children and elderly dependents, and other household errands. The term "domestic service" applies to the equivalent occupational category. In traditional English contexts, such a person was said to be "in service".
The Mines and Work Act was a piece of legislation in South Africa, originally passed in 1911, amended in 1912 and 1926 before undergoing further changes in 1956 and 1959. This act legally established South Africa's employment "colour bar." and was enacted to establish the duties and responsibilities of workers in Mines and Works in South Africa.
A skilled worker is any worker who has special skill, training, knowledge which they can then apply to their work. A skilled worker may have learned their skills through work experience, on-the-job training, an apprenticeship program or formal education. These skills often lead to better outcomes economically. The definition of a skilled worker has seen change throughout the 20th century, largely due to the industrial impact of the Great Depression and World War II. Further changes in globalisation have seen this definition shift further in Western countries, with many jobs moving from manufacturing based sectors to more advanced technical and service based roles. Examples of formal educated skilled labor include engineers, scientists, doctors and teachers, while examples of informal educated workers include crane operators, CDL truck drivers, machinists, drafters, plumbers, craftsmen, cooks and bookkeepers.
The Great Railroad Strike of 1922, or the Railway Shopmen's Strike, was a nationwide strike of railroad workers in the United States. Launched on July 1, 1922 by seven of the sixteen extant railroad labor organizations, the strike continued into August before collapsing. A sweeping judicial injunction by Judge James Herbert Wilkerson effectively ended the strike on September 1, 1922.
In South Africa under apartheid, and South West Africa, pass laws served as an internal passport system designed to racially segregate the population, restrict movement of individuals, and allocate low-wage migrant labor. Also known as the natives' law, these laws severely restricted the movements of Black South African and other racial groups by confining them to designated areas. Initially applied to African men, attempts to enforce pass laws on women in the 1910s and 1950s sparked significant protests. Pass laws remained a key aspect of the country's apartheid system until their effective termination in 1986. The pass document used to enforce these laws was derogatorily referred to as the dompas.
The Revised Philadelphia Plan, often called the Philadelphia Plan, required government contractors in Philadelphia to hire minority workers, under the authority of Executive Order 11246. Declared illegal in 1968, a revised version was successfully defended by the Nixon administration and its allies in Congress against those who saw it as an illegal quota program. US Department of Labor Assistant Secretary for Wage and Labor Standards Arthur Fletcher implemented the plan in 1969 based on an earlier plan developed in 1967 by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance and the Philadelphia Federal Executive Board. The plan required federal contractors to meet certain goals for the hiring of minority employees by specific dates in order to combat institutionalized discrimination on the part of specific skilled building trades unions. The plan was quickly extended to other cities.
James W. “Jim” Ford was an activist, a politician, and the vice-presidential candidate for the Communist Party USA in the years 1932, 1936, and 1940. Ford was born in Alabama and later worked as a party organizer for the CPUSA in New York City. He was also the first African American to run on a U.S. presidential ticket (1932) in the 20th century.
The Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company (ADDSCO) located in Mobile, Alabama, was one of the largest marine production facilities in the United States during the 20th century. It began operation in 1917, and expanded dramatically during World War II; with 30,000 workers, including numerous African Americans and women, it became the largest employer in the southern part of the state. During the defense buildup, which included other shipyards, Mobile became the second-largest city in the state, after Birmingham.
In the context of the 20th-century history of the United States, the Second Great Migration was the migration of more than 5 million African Americans from the South to the Northeast, Midwest and West. It began in 1940, through World War II, and lasted until 1970. It was much larger and of a different character than the first Great Migration (1916–1940), where the migrants were mainly rural farmers from the South and only came to the Northeast and Midwest.
A work permit or work visa is the permission to take a job within a foreign country. The foreign country where someone seeks to obtain a work permit for is also known as the "country of work", as opposed to the "country of origin" where someone holds citizenship or nationality.
The Southern Africa region experiences a relatively high influx of immigration into South Africa. As of 2019, the immigration rate is continuing to increase, and the role of the female population of migrants is significantly growing in this movement and settlement. The majority of immigrants are working residents and influence the presence of several sectors in South Africa. The demographic background of this group is diverse, and the countries of origin mainly belong to Sub-Saharan Africa and push migration south. A portion have qualified as refugees since the 1990s.
The Industrial Conciliation Act, 1956, formed part of the apartheid system of racial segregation in South Africa. It prohibited the registration of any new 'mixed' unions and imposed racially separate branches and all-white executive committees on existing 'mixed' unions. It prohibited strikes in 'essential industries' for both black and white workers and banned political affiliations for unions. Clause 77 legalized the reservation of skilled jobs to white workers, as the Bantu Building Workers Act of 1951 had done in the construction trade, 'to ensure that they will not be exploited by the lower standard of living of any other race'.
Die Spoorbond was an Afrikaner railway trade-union formed in 1934 by H. J. Klopper, founder of the Afrikaner Broederbond, which advocated a policy of replacing all black railway-workers with Afrikaners. It rejected strikes and called instead for loyal service to the South African Railways and Harbours Administration (SARHA). The union had a membership of some 16,000 in the 1930s, considerably more than that of its rival, the National Union of Railway and Harbour Servants, which was forced to dissolve in 1937.
The South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) was a national trade union federation in South Africa.
The Industrial Workers of the World (South Africa) or IWW (SA) had a brief but notable history in the 1910s-20s, and is particularly noted for its influence on the syndicalist movement in southern Africa through its promotion of the IWW's principles of industrial unionism, solidarity, and direct action, as well as its role in the creation of organizations such as the Industrial Workers of Africa and the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union.
The Building and Construction Trades Department, commonly known as North America's Building Trades Unions (NABTU), is a trade department of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) with 14 affiliated labor unions in the building trades. It was originally founded by the American Federation of Labor in 1907.
A stemmery is a building where tobacco leaves are stripped for the production of tobacco products. The name is an Americanism dating to the mid-late 1850s. Stemmeries often employed African-American laborers.
Benjamin Burombo (1909-1959) was a labor union leader and black nationalist in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Born in Buhera in Manicaland, he worked in South Africa, and then in Bulawayo, where he formed the British African National Voice Association in 1947. Better known as the African Workers Voice Association, the union was notable for its role in the 1948 general strike and campaigned against the 1951 Native Land Husbandry Act. The Act was intended to privatise communal lands. Burombo died at a relatively young age, his funeral was a major public event.
Workers for the Scripto company in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, held a labor strike from November 27, 1964, to January 9, 1965. It ended when the company and union agreed to a three-year contract that included wage increases and improved employee benefits. The strike was an important event in the history of the civil rights movement, as both civil rights leaders and organized labor activists worked together to support the strike.
