Books and films
Books and films that help us understand collective action.
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Guerre, grève et pandémie: La Suisse dans la Grippe / War, Strike, and Pandemic: Switzerland in the 1918
What do we really know about the most serious pandemic to hit modern Switzerland? The Spanish Flu of 1918, responsible for 25,000 deaths in Switzerland, remains to this day the worst-case scenario for public health policy.
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Gueules noires et tristes mines / Black faces and sad expressions
Twenty years before May 68, this cry would spring forth from the fighting mining villages.The coal miners have voted to strike and are blockading the mine shafts, which the police are tasked with clearing. Behind the barricade at the Fanchon shaft, they are waiting for them, sometimes with fear in their hearts, but determined to retaliate.The reader is…
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Indispensables et indésirables
A few months after the outbreak of the First World War, the French government decided to mobilize tens of thousands of workers in the colonies to address the severe labor shortage in metropolitan France. This involved organizing not only their recruitment throughout the Empire – in Indochina, Madagascar, North Africa, and even China – but also their…
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Instruire, manifester, démissionner / To Instruct, to Protest, to Resign: A Brief Sociology of the OFPRA on Strike
Between October 2023 and February 2024, the French Office for Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) experienced an unprecedented period of strikes. Amidst the news surrounding the vote on the immigration law, the negotiations of the "asylum and immigration" pact in Brussels, and the publication of the new "performance objective report," protection…
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La Fabrique des insurgées: 1869 / The Making of the Insurgents: 1869: The First Women Workers' Strike
Lyon, 1869. Camille works in a silk mill, where she endures 12-hour days for a pittance.
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Le joint français: 1972, une usine en grève / The French Joint 1972, a factory on strike
"Le Joint Français," a subsidiary of CGE, was originally a factory located in Bezons in the Val d'Oise region. It relocated to Saint-Brieuc in 1962.
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Les chantiers de la mort / The death camps: Mortality of workers from Antiquity to the present day
The author critically examines the deadliest construction projects in human history. He shows how millions of men and women, from antiquity to the present day, have lost their lives building towers, walls, pyramids, railways, stadiums… The history of worker mortality goes back several millennia, during which they were exposed to various dangers, first…
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Les merdailleux / The shitty ones: 1913, working-class childhood in the suburbs of Paris
In Plaine Saint-Denis, in working-class Paris during the Belle Époque, three kids invent their own world… until reality shatters it. Félicien, Désiré, and Félix-Marcel, inseparable friends, spend their time between the public school, flea markets, industrial wastelands, and the slaughterhouse.
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Les mutins du goulag et du quotidien / The Mutineers of the Gulag and Everyday Life: Followed by a Chronology of the Main Events in the History of the USSR
In the USSR, in the Gulag, “during 1945, 51 insurrectionary groups were discovered and liquidated,” according to a secret report to Stalin. To the stubborn resistance of the Gulag prisoners—the Gulag was abolished in 1960—was added that of the workers who opposed brutal labor legislation: “We will stop pretending to work when they stop pretending to pay…
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Les origines de l'internationalisme ouvrier / The origins of workers' internationalism: From the Communist League to the International Workingmen's Association (1847-1872)
The Communist League, for which Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto in late 1847, brought together German revolutionary workers and intellectuals. The League framed its actions within the context of internationalism, as the Manifesto emphasizes in its impassioned "Workers of the world, unite!" conclusion, The repression of the 1848 revolutions…
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Les syndicats de l'Éducation nationale: Des acteurs en mutation / National Education Unions: Actors in Transition
The education system has historically been one of the most unionized sectors of the French workforce. Yet, the unions within it have undergone significant transformations over the past two decades.
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Les syndicats - La dérive / Unions - The Drift: When Those Who Were Supposed to Protect Us Become the New Oppressors
For decades, trade unions have courageously defended workers' rights. But today, a sense of unease is setting in: authoritarianism, manipulation, intimidation of members, repeated strikes… and a population held hostage.
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Libération-Nord ou le syndicalisme résistant 1940-1944 / Libération-Nord or Resistance Trade Unionism 1940-1944
The history of the Resistance possesses a beauty and grandeur that fascinate. The history of Libération-Nord, one of the largest movements in the occupied zone, is no exception.
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Libres d'obéir / Free to Obey
Free to Obey, or How Modern Management Finds Some of Its Roots in Nazi Organization. The authors recount how Reinhard Höhn, a former jurist of the Third Reich, influenced managerial thinking by advocating autonomy under control, from the post-war period to the present day.
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Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva: L'ouvrier qui a osé / Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva: The Worker Who Dared - Journey of a Brazilian Son
From the dusty, impoverished roads of northeastern Brazil to the opulent presidential palaces, the life of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is a testament to his courage, vision, and the power of hope. Born into poverty, Lula worked as a shoeshine boy and factory worker before becoming one of Latin America's most influential leaders.
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L'usine: Névroses d'une grève oubliée / The Factory: Neuroses of a Forgotten Strike
A daily grind of noise and sweat, a relentless pace that crushes both body and mind, the machinations of union power, and the occasional struggle for friendship: this is the working-class experience recounted by the narrator, a former union representative at the Citroën factory in Aulnay-sous-Bois. A witness to and participant in the union struggles and…
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Mondige burger, stille werker? / Outspoken Citizen, Silent Worker? Why Saving Democracy Starts at Work
An inspiring story about support for change, public imagination, the trade union as a political emancipation machine and a driving force for autonomy. At school, you learn to think critically.
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Naar een nieuwe arbeidersbeweging / Towards a New Labor Movement
Marxist theory has been written off, declared dead, and consigned to the dustbin of history. All social democratic parties, all variations of contemporary social popular parties (such as the Labour Party (PvdA), GreenLeft (GroenLinks), and Socialist Party (SP)), have become integrated into modern society and are an inseparable part of it.
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Poésies sociales des ouvriers / Social Poems of the Workers: A Poetic Anthology of Working-Class Commitment Between Social Justice, Popular Voice, and Transformation
The social poetry of the workers will appeal to readers eager to understand 19th-century society, explore socially engaged literature, discover the vitality of popular poetry, and appreciate the power of words on the collective consciousness. This collection, poised between humanism, social commitment, and a celebration of labor, remains an essential…
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Polderen en strijden / Poldering and Struggle Highs and lows of the trade union movement in the 21st century
The first twenty-five years of the 21 and The 20th century was anything but quiet for the FNV. The book "Polderen enstrijden" (Poldering and Struggle) provides an overview of the most important actions and developments in the field of employment conditions and relations during this period.
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Protesteren voor beginners neemt / Protesting for Beginners
Whether it's about climate change, racism, women's rights, or the war in Gaza: all over the world, people are taking to the streets again to demonstrate nonviolently. In "Protesting for Beginners, " Lodewijk van Oord takes the reader through the history of peaceful resistance against war, violence, and injustice.
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Savoir commencer une grève. Résistances ouvrières à la désindustrialisation dans la France contemporaine / Knowing How to Start a Strike: Workers' Resistance to Deindustrialization in Contemporary France
Romain Castellesi offers us an unprecedented history of deindustrialization in France. A history marked by the silences and erasures that affect the working class; a history made up of resistances and struggles waged to defend themselves against the closure of factories and to preserve their dignity; a history still in progress, which continues to…
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Seis de Julho / July 6th: The Oil Workers' Strike of 1983
The book "July 6th: The 1983 Oil Workers' Strike ," by Carlos Lucena, is an analysis of the oil workers' strike that occurred on July 6, 1983, in Paulínia (SP) and Mataripe (BA). The work describes this event as one of the main strike movements of the 1980s.
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Se tenir debout / Standing Tall: A Century of Struggles Against Suffering at Work
Recovering from professional burnout and regaining physical and mental health is a process that can take years. Getting back on your feet and standing tall also means, within the workplace, daring to speak up and resisting deteriorating working conditions.
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The Life, Old Age, and Death of a Working-Class Woman
What would a gay sociologist write about his mother, a former working-class woman? Furthermore, what if that mother, despite being a longtime union member and a leader in strikes and rallies, in her later years despised anything associated with the left and voted for a far-right party?
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Go South": Union Organising in the 21st Century
Are the trade unions back? After the strike wave of 2022 and 2023 the unions are in a better place - more relevant, more active and more popular.
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Bargaining Forward: The story of the 2021 CUPE Strike in New Brunswick
This documentary showcases the unity and resilience of 22,000 public sector workers in New Brunswick as they strike against wage suppression. It explores strategic mobilization and collective bargaining efforts by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), culminating in a province-wide movement that successfully challenges austerity and sparks…
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Sugar Island
The movie explores the life of Makenya, a pregnant young woman living in a batey community in the Dominican Republic. The film interweaves Makenya’s story with her sugarcane-worker grandfather’s struggle for labor rights and the mechanization of the sugar industry, as well as with the island’s ancestral and mystical wisdom.
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Strajk. Historia buntów pracowniczych
More than 150 years have passed since the first strike, which took place in 1872 at the Cegielski factory—a symbol and an exceptional site not only on the map of Greater Poland but of the entire country. The Poznań enterprise, which has operated continuously for 178 years, serves for Jarosław Urbański as a point of reference and inspiration for…
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Takový socialismus nechceme!: Kultura protestu průmyslového dělnictva v českých zemích v letech 1945-1968
Did strikes exist during the period of state socialism in Czechoslovakia? Did industrial workers agree with government policy at the time?