Labour movement

The collective organization and political activity of workers seeking better working conditions, wages, rights, and influence. It includes trade unions, worker associations, and political movements.

Trade union: An organization of workers that represents members in negotiating with employers and defending their interests. Trade unions are the movement’s central institutions for organizing workers and negotiating collectively.
Industrial Revolution: The transformation from predominantly agrarian economies to mechanized industrial production, beginning in Britain in the eighteenth century. Factory labour and rapid urbanization created new shared workplace interests and conflicts.
Robert Owen: A Welsh social reformer and industrialist who advocated cooperative communities and improved conditions for workers. Owen helped popularize early cooperative and labour organizing in Britain.
Anarcho-syndicalism: A revolutionary current that seeks to replace capitalism and the state through worker-run unions and direct action. It locates political change in unions and workplace action rather than electoral parties.
Eight-hour day: A standard working-time limit of eight hours per day, historically sought by labour movements. Campaigns for shorter hours made the length of the working day a major collective demand.
Collective bargaining: Negotiation between employers and workers’ representatives over wages, working conditions, and other employment terms. It converts organized labour’s demands into binding agreements with employers.
Friendly society: A member-funded association that provides mutual aid, such as support during illness, unemployment, or death. Friendly societies offered workers collective support before many modern unions existed.
Rosa Luxemburg: A Polish-German Marxist theorist and revolutionary who wrote on mass strikes and working-class politics. Her analysis treated mass strikes as a source of political learning and worker power.
Social democracy: A political tradition that pursues social equality and worker protections through democratic institutions and reform. It offers a reformist route for labour goals through legislation and electoral politics.
Minimum wage: The lowest hourly, daily, or monthly wage that employers may legally pay workers. Labour advocacy helped make wage floors a tool for protecting workers’ earnings.

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