Labour History

What is the course about?

An online course on the history of the labour movements across the word to deepen our understanding of the challenges of our times as well as sharpen our analysis, visions and strategies for the future.

By analysing historical examples of labour's responses to questions of democracy, dictatorships, authoritarianism, migration, capitalist crises and others, its achievements, but also tensions and contradictions, the online course creates spaces for critical debates about the role of labour movements today.

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Key concepts

organising, democracy, authoritarianism, dictatorship,  anti-colonialism, migration, social movements, capitalist crisis.

Course materials and workload

This course has 4 content chapters. The chapter contains a series of units; each unit is composed of one video lecture, two quiz questions, one exercise, one key reading as well as additional readings. All the course materials, including video scripts, can be downloaded and used offline. Zoom workshops with the course experts are recorded and added to the course content for those interested in going deeper into the issues discussed in each video lecture. 

The estimated workload for each chapter is 10 hours.

Course certificates

Certificates are available for purchase from iversity.

If you meet the course requirements, you can obtain a scholarship from the Global Labour University. For details on the requirements, read carefully the information in Chapter 1, Unit 2.

Localised workshops

The Global Labour University Online Academy will also organise a series of blended interventions through its network of 140 local local trainers and online tutors in 45 countries, namely: 

Austria, Bangladesh, Argentina, Belgium, Benin, Brazi, Bolivia, Cameroon, China, Chile, Cambodia, Colombia, Ghana, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Vietnam, Germany, India, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Liberia, Peru, Philippines, South Africa, Serbia, Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, United States, Uganda, Venezuela, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. 

Let us know if you want to join a localised workshop by sending an email to online@global-labour-university.org detailing your country, city and organisation. For more details, check Chapter 1 of our online course. 

Course content

What will you learn?

Upon completing this online course, the course participants will be able to: 

• understand the variety of labour responses to key questions facing workers in the past and explain the main reasons behind those responses; 
• identify and discuss tensions and contradictions in labour strategies, which have shaped the trajectory of specific struggles and beyond;
• draw connections as well as similarities and differences among the different case studies analysed in the online course and ongoing struggles in their particular context;
• apply the arguments and learnings from the case studies onto the questions facing the labour movement today and argue on the merits of alternative strategies from those currently pursued.

What is the target audience?

workers, trade unionists, labour and other activists, labour researchers and practitioners, NGOs, students, media and others.

What prior knowledge is required?

This is a multi-disciplinary course drawing on the fields of social, political and economic sciences. It is at the level of a Masters’ programme, but the concepts are explained in an accessible language and illustrated through examples. Therefore, it is also possible to participate in the course using the skills and knowledge acquired. The course requires a working level of English.

Course instructors

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Peter Rossman

I was Director of Campaigns and Communications for the international trade union federation of food, farm and hotel and catering workers IUF from 1991 until retirement in 2020. During that period I was actively involved in building trade union organization in transnational companies and their supply chains.

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Tim Pringle

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Rick Halpern

Rick Halpern is a social historian whose work has focused on race and labour in a number of national and international contexts. He has written about meat and meatpacking, sugar and plantations, and regionalism. Currently he is at work on two major projects: a book on race and class in 20th century photography, and a study of the year 1919 in Chicago. He is the Bissell-Heyd Chair of American Studies at the University of Toronto.

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Peter Cole

Peter Cole is professor of history at Western Illinois University (USA) and a Research Associate in the Society, Work and Politics Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa). He is the author of Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area (2018), winner of the Philip Taft Labor History Book Prize, and Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia (2007). He edited Ben Fletcher: The Life & Times of a Black Wobbly (revised 2nd edition, 2021) and co-edited Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW (2017). He co-edited and brought the novel, Presente: A Dockworker Story (2024), written by the deceased Herb Mill, to publication. He is the founder and co-director of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project.

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Jon Hyslop

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Monsieur Daniel Edmonds

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Madame Debora Migliucci

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Monsieur William P Jones

I am a historian of race and class in the United States and author of The March of Washington: Jobs, Freedom and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights and The Tribe of Black Ulysses: African American Lumber Workers in the Jim Crow South I am a Professor of History at the University of Minnesota

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Dorothy Sue Cobble

Growing up in a blue-collar union family in the 1950s Southern United States I learned about the depth of racial and class injustice and the power of collective organizing. The many jobs I held in my twenties before fleeing to graduate school at Stanford University left me acutely aware of workplace sexism and disrespect. I became fascinated by how work shapes our sense of self and especially curious about the distinctive feminisms, labor movements, and politics of working-class women. These questions animate all my writing and teaching. Thirty years and seven books later, I believe reimagining work and labor movements is more necessary – and possible -- than ever before. For more information about the books I have written and for copies of my essays, https://www.dorothysuecobble.com.

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Monsieur Marcelo Rosa

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Monsieur Kjell Östberg

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Lucien van der Walt

Professor Lucien van der Walt is an author and worker educator, and director of the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) at Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa. Long involved in working-class movements, and widely published, his books include Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1880-1940 (201 0/201 4, ed. with Steven Hirsch), Negro e Vermelho: Anarquismo, Sindicalismo Revolucionario e Pessoas de Corna Africa Meridional nas Decadas de 1880 a 1920 (2014), Politics at a Distance from the State: Radical and African Perspectives (2018/2022, ed. with Kirk Helliker) and Labour Struggles in Southern Africa, 1919-1939: New Perspectives on the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU) (2023, ed. with David Johnson & Noor Nieftagodien). Much of his work can be found at https://lucienvanderwalt.com/