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We Built This Country

Humphrey McQueen

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Description:During the last half century, Humphrey McQueen has turned his perceptive eye and distinctive analysis onto a wide range of topics in Australian history and politics. Here he focuses on the history of builders labourers and their unions since the convict era. The book is a sequel to his earlier Frameworks of Flesh: Builders' Labourers Battle for Health and Safety. In important respects this is a bigger picture, looking at the building workers' experiences and ambitions and how they relate to their evolving union organisations. The title of the book immediately signals a simple but significant point--that it is workers in general, and building workers in particular, who actually create the physical forms of economic development. How this process has occurred has been shaped by the evolving forms of technology--particularly important in the building and construction sector--and by class struggles, both evolving and adapting over time and shaped by the workers' own organisations.The book takes a chronological approach, looking at the significant developments during three main periods--1787-1900, 1901-1960 and 1961 to the end of the 20th century--and a total of 13 sub-periods therein. Material from union records is interlaced with anecdotal material and analysis of broader political economic context. Issues related to wages, working time and conditions of work are central, but with substantial attention also paid the union movement's internal tensions and to the broader conflicts in the industry between labour, capital and the state.Readership of the book is likely to be mainly among labour historians and building workers keen to understand the historical aspects of their ongoing struggles, but there are also matters of interest to political economists seeking to analyse the evolving character of social struggles. It is interesting, for example, to look at the treatment of the BLF-backed 'Green Bans' in the 1970s, which is perhaps the most widely cited episode of union action in support of community and environmental goals. The book puts more emphasis on the role of National Secretary Norm Gallagher, later jailed for corruption, than on the role played by Jack Mundey and the NSW branch of the BLF which is of more enduring inspiration for 'red-green' activists.McQueen is concerned to emphasise that 'nothing comes out of nothing', i.e. that struggles like the green bans reflect longer traditions of workers struggles and aspirations. To signal this emphasis he prefaces the book with a fine quotation from the Victorian Secretary of the BLF in 1915 which begins with the statement 'The union movement is idealistic in its essential arts by widening the scope of benefits derived from its ever-expanding usefulness' and ends by saying that: 'Every new demand for better physical protection of the workers ensures a great ideal development for a future generation'. As the book implies, this is an enduring mission, even in an era when unions are generally on the defensive.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with We Built This Country. To get started finding We Built This Country, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

Pages: —

Format: PDF, EPUB & Kindle Edition

Publisher: —

Release: 2011

ISBN: 1740276973

Description: During the last half century, Humphrey McQueen has turned his perceptive eye and distinctive analysis onto a wide range of topics in Australian history and politics. Here he focuses on the history of builders labourers and their unions since the convict era. The book is a sequel to his earlier Frameworks of Flesh: Builders' Labourers Battle for Health and Safety. In important respects this is a bigger picture, looking at the building workers' experiences and ambitions and how they relate to their evolving union organisations. The title of the book immediately signals a simple but significant point--that it is workers in general, and building workers in particular, who actually create the physical forms of economic development. How this process has occurred has been shaped by the evolving forms of technology--particularly important in the building and construction sector--and by class struggles, both evolving and adapting over time and shaped by the workers' own organisations.The book takes a chronological approach, looking at the significant developments during three main periods--1787-1900, 1901-1960 and 1961 to the end of the 20th century--and a total of 13 sub-periods therein. Material from union records is interlaced with anecdotal material and analysis of broader political economic context. Issues related to wages, working time and conditions of work are central, but with substantial attention also paid the union movement's internal tensions and to the broader conflicts in the industry between labour, capital and the state.Readership of the book is likely to be mainly among labour historians and building workers keen to understand the historical aspects of their ongoing struggles, but there are also matters of interest to political economists seeking to analyse the evolving character of social struggles. It is interesting, for example, to look at the treatment of the BLF-backed 'Green Bans' in the 1970s, which is perhaps the most widely cited episode of union action in support of community and environmental goals. The book puts more emphasis on the role of National Secretary Norm Gallagher, later jailed for corruption, than on the role played by Jack Mundey and the NSW branch of the BLF which is of more enduring inspiration for 'red-green' activists.McQueen is concerned to emphasise that 'nothing comes out of nothing', i.e. that struggles like the green bans reflect longer traditions of workers struggles and aspirations. To signal this emphasis he prefaces the book with a fine quotation from the Victorian Secretary of the BLF in 1915 which begins with the statement 'The union movement is idealistic in its essential arts by widening the scope of benefits derived from its ever-expanding usefulness' and ends by saying that: 'Every new demand for better physical protection of the workers ensures a great ideal development for a future generation'. As the book implies, this is an enduring mission, even in an era when unions are generally on the defensive.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with We Built This Country. To get started finding We Built This Country, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

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We Built This Country

We Built This Country

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