Questions of labor market and labor intermediation have been a political concern in most European countries as well as the USA and Canada since the late 19th century. In contemporary debates, public labor exchanges have been depicted as a tool to cope with the confusing complexity of labor markets and to match the supply and demand of labor more effectively.
Up to now, only a few studies have asked how public labor exchange contributed to the emergence and differentiation of nationalized labor markets. However, public labor exchange did not just coordinate or regulate a given labor market but also contributed to the historical creation of labor and the segregation of labor markets. By defining regular employment, it helped to impose a particular distinction between formal and informal (or casual) work, between “real” economy and a shadow economy. It established formal criteria of classifying occupational skills and employability. Finally it aimed at distinguishing those willing and able to work from those deemed “work-shy”.
Previous research has mostly focused on the political aims and formal regulations of labor intermediation. By contrast, we know little about how labor exchanges functioned practically and what it meant to be subjected to those practices. Moreover, it seems necessary to reflect on the practical impact of public labor exchange on looking for jobs and discuss it in the context of the variety of all forms of intermediation. Public labor offices have always been only one of many possible ways of finding employment or employees, but they have not necessarily been the most commonly used one. According to contemporary and recent estimates, informal practices of finding employment by help of kin or other social networks, newspaper ads or direct inquiries have been important job search practices. Job placement by commercial mediation, charitable organizations, trade unions or associations has been quite common as well.
The workshop will compare practices of labor intermediation and ways of finding employment in the 19th and 20th centuries across a variety of countries.
Concept & Organization by The Production of Work-Team
Dr. Thomas Buchner
Dr. Alexander Mejstrik
Dipl. Sozwiss. Jessica Richter, MSc
Mag. Irina Vana
Mag. Márton Villányi
Dr. Sigrid Wadauer
With the support of
ERC, University of Vienna, FWF
******************
Programm:
Friday, 27.11.
Chair: Thomas Buchner and Sigrid Wadauer
9.00-9.30 Sigrid Wadauer (University of Vienna) & Thomas Buchner (University of Linz): Welcome and Introduction
9.30-10.30 Ad Knotter (Sociaal Historisch Centrum voor Limburg/Maastricht University): Mediation, allocation, control: the changing faces of labour exchanges in Belgium and the Netherlands (late 19th/early 20th centuries)
10.30-10.50 Coffee break
10.50-11.50 Malcolm Mansfield (Université de Paris 3): The Very Idea of Labour Intermediation: the Bourses du Travail in Turn of the Century France
11.50-12.50 Irina Vana (University of Vienna): Public labour offices and the hierarchies between different forms of unemployment and employment (1918-1938)
12.50-14.20 Lunch break
Chair: Jessica Richter
14.20-15.20 Verena Pawlowsky & Harald Wendelin (University of Vienna): The Austrian Employment Agency for Disabled Veterans during the First World War
15.20-16.20 David Meskill (Dowling College): Between Labor Market Constituencies:
The Struggles to Establish Vocational Counseling in Weimar Germany
16.20-16.40 Coffee break
16.40-17.40 Tamara Stazic-Wendt (University of Trier): Labour intermediation and welfare practices in rural areas (Rhine Province, 1910-1935)
Saturday, 28.11.2009
Chair: Irina Vana
9.00 – 10.00 Jan Lucassen (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam/International Institute of Social Science): Labour mediation among seasonal workers, in particular
the Lippe brick makers c. 1650-1900
10.00-11.00 Amit Kumar Mishra (University of Hyderabad): Sardars, Kanganies and Maistries: Intermediaries in Indian Labour Diaspora
11.00-11.20 Coffee break
11.20-12.20 M. Erdem Kabadayı (Istanbul Bilgi University): Petitioning as a way to find and regain employment at state industrial enterprises in the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth century
12.20-13.50 Lunch break
Chair: Alexander Mejstrik
13.50-14.40 Anna G. Piotrowska (Jagiellonian University): Individual strategies of labour intermediation among early 20th century American and European composers
14.40-15.00 Coffee break
15.00-16.00 Jessica Richter (University of Vienna): Between service, labour and subsistence: Self-sustainment and perceptions of changes of employment (Austria, 1918-1938)
16.00-16.30 Conclusion
| 
