Quay voices in Glasgow museums : an oral history of Glasgow dock workers

Notes on oral history project commissioned by Glasgow museums about Glasgow dock workers

Unemployment revisited in comparative perspective: labour market policy in Strasbourg and Liverpool, 1890–1914

Many historical studies, some of them comparative, have explored the foundations of welfare states and the birth of unemployment policies in Europe in the late nineteenth century. Nearly all have focused on political debate at national level. This paper bases its analysis on labour market reforms initiated in Strasbourg and Liverpool in the decades preceding World War I. It explores how bona fide unemployed workers, the proper clients of official help, were distinguished from the mass of the poor and indigent. The labour market had to be defined and organized before policies for the unemployed could be put in place. The object is to demonstrate not only how this was done, but also how different perceptions of social justice and economic efficiency influenced both the process and the outcomes of public interventions, in this instance undermining attempts to transfer specific policies from one country to another

A Working-class Heroine Is Also Something To Be: The Untold Story of Cuban Railway Workers and the Struggle against Batista

When researching the biographical details of working class women, we are not only faced with that "enormous condescension of history" which EP Thompson criticized when writing about the history of working class movements, we also find that working class women are doubly "hidden from history" by the assumption that organised labour is male. However in Cuba in the 1950s, there were many important strikes which were initiated and sustained by women workers. When a group of office workers from the central Cuban town of Camagüey, the principal hub of the railway network covering the eastern part of the island, first heard of their employers' intention to impose wage cuts and redundancies, these women launched a wave of resistance by picketing the train drivers and maintenance engineers. The story of the railway women of Camagüey encourages us to look more closely into other working class struggles to seek the contributions made by women. The paper will examine the part played by working class women in the fight against the Batista dictatorship for, in addition to the women of Camagüey, we can find examples of militant activity from shop workers who started at least two town-wide general strikes and female office workers in the electrical supply industry who led demonstrations in a fight over trade union democracy. Sugar and dock workers' families organised vital solidarity action in the face of police violence, while women frequently took over picketing when their menfolk had to go into hiding to avoid being forced to return to work at gunpoint. The paper will argue that women workers, while only 10 percent of the Cuban workforce in the 1950s, played a part in the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship out of all proportion to their numbers

Socialist antisemitism and its discontents in England, 1884–98

Virdee's essay explores the relationship between English socialists and migrant Jews amid the new unionism of the late nineteenth century: a cycle of protest characterized by sustained collective action by the unskilled and labouring poor demanding economic and social justice. Reading this labour history against the grain, with a greater attentiveness to questions of race and class, helps to make more transparent both the prevalence and structuring force of socialist antisemitism, as well as English and Jewish socialist opposition to it. In particular, the essay suggests that the dominant socialist discourse was intimately bound up with questions of national belonging and this directly contributed to a racialized politics of class that could not imagine migrant Jews as an integral component of the working class. At the same time, such socialist antisemitism was also challenged by a minority current of English Marxists whose conceptions of socialism refused to be limited by the narrow boundaries of the racialized nation-state. And they were joined in this collective action by autonomous Jewish socialist organizations who understood that the liberation of the Jewish worker was indivisible from that of the emancipation of the working class in general. With the help of Eleanor Marx and others, these latter strands entangled socialist politics with questions of combatting antisemitism, and thereby stretched existing conceptions of class to encompass the Jewish worker

ERP implementation for an administrative agency as a corporative frontend and an e-commerce smartphone app

This document contains all the descriptions, arguments and demonstrations of the researches, analysis, reasoning, designs and tasks performed to achieve the requirement to technologically evolve an managing agency in a way that, through a solution that requires a reduced investment, makes possible to arrange a business management tool with e-commerce and also a mobile application that allows access and consultation of mentioned tool. The first part of the document describes the scenario in order to contextualize the project and introduces ERP (Enterprise Resources Planning). In the second part, a deep research of ERP market products is carried out, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each one of the products in order to finish with the choice of the most suitable product for the scenario proposed in the project. A third part of the document describes the installation process of the selected product carried out based on the use of Dockers, as well as the configurations and customizations that they make on the selected ERP. A description of the installation and configuration of additional modules is also made, necessary to achieve the agreed scope of the project. In a fourth part of the thesis, the process of creating an iOS and Android App that connects to the selected ERP database is described. The process begins with the design of the App. Once designed, it is explained the process of study and documentation of technologies to choose the technology stack that allows making an application robust and contemporary without use of licensing. After choosing the technologies to use there are explained the dependencies and needs to install runtime enviornments prior to the start of coding. Later, it describes how the code of the App has been raised and developed. The compilation and verification mechanisms are indicated in continuation. And finally, it is showed the result of the development of the App once distributed. Finally, a chapter for the conclusions analyzes the difficulties encountered during the project and the achievements, analyzing what has been learned during the development of this project

Rhythm in the speech of a person with right hemisphere damage: Applying the pairwise variability index

Although several aspects of prosody have been studied in speakers with right hemisphere damage (RHD), rhythm remains largely uninvestigated. This study compares the rhythm of an Australian English speaker with right hemisphere damage (due to a stroke, but with no concomitant dysarthria) to that of a neurologically unimpaired individual. The speakers' rhythm is compared using the pairwise variability index (PVI) which allows for an acoustic characterization of rhythm by comparing the duration of successive vocalic and intervocalic intervals. A sample of speech from a structured interview between a speech and language therapist and each participant was analysed. Previous research has shown that speakers with RHD may have difficulties with intonation production, and therefore it was hypothesized that there may also be rhythmic disturbance. Results show that the neurologically normal control uses a similar rhythm to that reported for British English (there are no previous studies available for Australian English), whilst the speaker with RHD produces speech with a less strongly stress-timed rhythm. This finding was statistically significant for the intervocalic intervals measured (t(8) = 4.7, p < .01), and suggests that some aspects of prosody may be right lateralized for this speaker. The findings are discussed in relation to previous findings of dysprosody in RHD populations, and in relation to syllable-timed speech of people with other neurological conditions

Prevalence of consumption of psychoactive substances amongst dockers

Background: Dockers in the port facilities are exposed to significant psychosocial risks (stress, suffering atwork, etc.) related to heavy organisational, environmental, physical, chemical constraints, etc. These workersare particularly affected by the consumption of psychoactive substances because of the dangerousnessand complexity of their work. To what extent can these numerous occupational risks be at the origin ofbehaviour favouring the consumption of psychoactive substances? However, in our country no study hasinvestigated toxic habits in this population. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of theuse and misuse of psychoactive substances amongst dockers, and to appreciate the poly-consumptionaccording to socio-demographic and occupational characteristics. Materials and methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted amongst 665 dockers. The interview tookplace at the occupational health service and lasted between 15 and 20 minutes for each person respectingthe confidentiality. The questionnaire covered socio-demographic characteristics, socio-professionalcharacteristics, and toxic habits (tobacco, alcohol, cannabis and others psychotropic substances). Themisuse was assessed by specific tests: Fagerström test for tobacco smoking, Cannabis Abuse ScreeningTest (CAST) and Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). Results: The prevalence of use was 30.5% for tobacco smoking, 9.1% for cannabis smoking, and 16.5%for alcohol consumption. The prevalence of toxic habits was significantly higher in handlers than in machineryoperators: tobacco smoking (39.7% vs. 27%; p = 0.002), snuff tobacco (12.5% vs. 4.6%; p = 0.001),hookah (7.6% vs. 2%; p = 0.001), cannabis smoking (20.6% vs. 4.5%; p = 0.001) and alcohol consumption(22.3% vs. 14.3%; p = 0.019). Amongst consumers, the prevalence of dependence or misuse was 45.3%for tobacco smoking, 56.7% for cannabis smoking and 44.5% for alcohol consumption. Fifty-two point fiveper cent had no toxic habit, 36.7% had one toxic habit, 9.9% two toxic habits, and 0.9% three toxic habits.The most frequent associations were tobacco-alcohol (6.5%), and tobacco-cannabis (3%). Conclusions: Occupational health professionals have to play a key role in raising awareness and fightingagainst consumption of psychoactive substances amongst dockers