Tracing and Placing Women Trade Union Leaders: A Study of the Female Confectioners Union
Studies of union leadership commonly examine full-time officials and workplace delegates. Less attention has been given to those union activists who hold honorary elected roles, on executive or management committees and as office bearers. Women can actively access these positions as a strategy of separate organizing for increasing women’s participation, representation and voice in their union. Separate organizing in the form of a women’s union creates a broader canvas for women workers’ collective activity. Addressing a gap both in the historical literature on women’s union strategies and the contribution of honorary officials, this analysis focuses on the rank-and-file women who emerged as the core leadership group in the Australian women-only union, the Female Confectioners’ Union, in the 1920s. By drawing together analysis of archival records with genealogical sources, the women’s biographical profiles were created and, through the use of thematic analysis, insights were gained into the intersections of the individual women’s industrial and political activism and their domestic experiences. For the next 20 or more years, these women formed the backbone of the union (until an amalgamation with the men’s union in the confectionery trade in 1945) and were instrumental in shaping female collectivism.
Female Workers, the Confectionery Industry, and the London Labour Market c.1880
Abstract This paper explores the labour conditions of a small confectionery firm, Epps and Co., in late Victorian London before the rise of New Unionism. Utilizing details of employees and disciplinary proceedings contained within a wage book uncovered in the Rowntree’s company archives, it explores how discipline was enacted in the complex world of the London labour market. The relationship between, employer, employee, and discipline placed significant emphasis on the individual rather than the group, and both employer strategy and employee resistance operated on a remarkably singular level.
Points of strong summability of Fourier series
In this paper we present a new solution of Hardy and Littlewood's problem concerning strong summability of Fourier series; we also present a property of points of strong summability.