Labor in State-Socialist Europe, 1945–1989

Marsha Siefert (ed.)

Title: Labor in State-Socialist Europe, 1945–1989
Subtitle: Contributions to a History of Work
Editor: Marsha Siefert
Price: € 170,99
ISBN: 9789633863381
Format: eBook PDF (Adobe DRM)
Number of pages: 484
Language: English
Publication date: 01 - 09 - 2020
Series: CEU Work and Labor – Transdisciplinary Studies for the 21st Century
Categories
Discipline: Social and Political Sciences
Imprint: CEU Press
Also available as: Hardback - € 171,00

Table of Contents

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Acknowledgments
List of Tables and Figures
List of Abbreviations

Introduction. Labor in State-Socialist Europe since 1945: Toward an Inclusive History of Work
Marsha Siefert

PartI: Finding Work, Making Workers
Unemployment in State Socialism: An Insight into the Understanding of Work in 1950s Poland
Natalia Jarska
The Impossibility of Being Planned: Slackers and Stakhanovites in Early Socialist Romania
Alina-Sandra Cucu
Finding Workers to Build Socialism: Recruiting for the Steel Factories in Bulgaria and Albania
Ulf Brunnbauer and Visar Nonaj
“Inappropriate Behavior”: Labor Control and the Polish, Cuban, and Vietnamese Workers in Czechoslovakia
Alena K. Alamgir

Part II: Workers, Rights, and Discipline
Dishonest Saleswomen: On Gendered Politics of Shame and Blame in Polish State-Socialist Trade
Małgorzata Mazurek
Labor Discipline in Self-Managed Socialism: The Yugoslav Automotive Industry, 1965–1985
Ulrike Schult
“This Workers’ Hostel Lost Almost Every Bit of Added Value It Had”:Workers’ Hostels, Social Rights, and Legitimization in Hungary and the German Democratic Republic
Eszter Bartha
Discussing Women’s Double and Triple Burden in Socialist Yugoslavia: Women Working in the Garment Industry
Chiara Bonfiglioli

PART III: Workers, Safety, and Risk
Governing the State of Emergency: Large Industrial Accidents in Communist East Germany
Thomas Lindenberger
Labor’s Risks: Work Accidents, the Industrial Wage Relation and Social Insurance in Socialist Romania
Adrian Grama
Nuclear Yutopia: The Outcome of the First Nuclear Accident in Yugoslavia,1958
Marko Miljković

Part IV: Workers, Protest, and Reform
Strikes in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1968: Systems Analysis, and the Debate over the Causes of the Collapse of State Socialism
Peter Heumos
“It Shall Not Be a Written Gift, but a Lived Reality”: Equal Pay, Women’s Work, and the Politics of Labor in State-Socialist Hungary, Late 1960s to Late 1970s
Susan Zimmermann
Labor Protest in the Italian-Yugoslav Border Region During the Cold War: Action, Control, Legitimacy, Self-Management
Sabine Rutar
When Workers’ Self-Management Met Neoliberalism: Positive Perceptions of Market Reforms among Blue-Collar Workers in Late Yugoslav Socialism
Rory Archer and Goran Musić

Part V: Toward an Inclusive History of Work
Not Just Socialist Miners, but Miners of the World: Internationalism, Global Trends, and Romanian Coal Workers
Anca Glont

List of contributors
Selected Bibliography
Index

Marsha Siefert (ed.)

Labor in State-Socialist Europe, 1945–1989

Contributions to a History of Work

Labor regimes under communism in East-Central Europe were complex, shifting, and ambiguous. This collection of sixteen essays offers new conceptual and empirical ways to understand their history from the end of World War II to 1989, and to think about how their experiences relate to debates about labor history, both European and global.

The authors reconsider the history of state socialism by re-examining the policies and problems of communist regimes and recovering the voices of the workers who built them. The contributors look at work and workers in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia. They explore the often contentious relationship between politics and labor policy, dealing with diverse topics including workers’ safety and risks; labor rights and protests; working women’s politics and professions; migrant workers and social welfare; attempts to control workers’ behavior and stem unemployment; and cases of incomplete, compromised, or even abandoned processes of proletarianization. Workers are presented as active agents in resisting and supporting changes in labor policies, in choosing allegiances, and in defining the very nature of work.

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