| Abstrakt: |
This article analyzes the impact of notions of "free labour" on industrial conflicts in postwar Europe. More specifically, it compares worker resistance against the (re-) introduction of labour conscription in two coal basins: the Ruhr in Germany and the Hainaut in Belgium. As coal was vital to the reconstruction effort, governments in both countries issued decrees that either compelled workers to accept a job in the coal sector or prohibited miners from changing jobs. If mobilisation civile in Belgium and Arbeitsverpflichtung in Germany were similarly ineffective in addressing the fundamental problems plaguing the coal sector, miner resistance against these schemes took very different forms in the two regions. In the Hainaut, the reintroduction of wartime constraints triggered a strike wave that was couched in a language of worker rights and freedoms. In the Ruhr, workers representatives steered clear from such ideological arguments, but saw the labour conscripts vote with their feet and abandon the coal mines en masse. In linking these differences to their pre-war and wartime legacies, the article draws attention to the longue durée of controversies over (un)free labour in democratic Western Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
