We explain what a worker is, its characteristics and what its origin is. Also, how is the history of the labor movement.
What is a worker?
In essence, a worker is a employee industrial. That is, a person who performs a worked physical, manual, or driving machines and tools, in exchange for a salary generally calculated by hours of work.
Although not exactly synonymous, the term laborer is often used in the same sense as "worker," especially when referring to the modern working class. Also used "proletarian" and "proletariat” to refer to the worker and the working class from a political and ideological perspective, especially from the philosophical school originated by Karl Marx (that is, the Marxism).
The word worker comes from the Latin operator, which meant "pawn" or "day laborer", but also what is typical of work. In fact, this Latin word derives from opus, "work" or "work", and is related to the current term "operator" (of machinery, for example).
Although this word existed in Roman antiquity, what we understand today as a worker is typical of the industrial society that was born with the modern world, from the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The existence of workers is essential for the industrial work model of the capitalism contemporary, since these provide the “work” element of the productive equation.
Since the 20th century, it is common for this type of worker to be organized and represented socially and politically in unions and/or unions, that is, that they have self-managed organizations that allow them to renegotiate their employment conditions with their employers and with the State.
The workers work as workforce in factories and in the construction sector, either autonomously or semi-autonomously, or as salaried workers on the payroll of a business. There they carry out a job considered non-specialized, that is, it does not require previous studies or exhaustive academic preparation, and for this reason it is often among the lowest paid.
When referring to the totality of the workers of a nation, one often speaks of the working class, and when this class is organized in active defense of their rights, they are usually referred to as the labor movement.
Origin of the working class
The working class is the most modern of the transformations of the working class, from the entry of Europe on the Modern age and the start of the industrialization. This occurred in the mid to late 18th century, when the first factories emerged and a significant demand for urban workers was created.
Thus, a good part of the peasant population of the West (and later of the world) left the countryside and migrated to the cities, seeking to be part of a new expanding field of work, which was also better paid. This became known as the rural exodus.
Thus, a new social class was formed throughout the nineteenth century: the class of industrial workers, that is, the workers, a term with which they were distinguished from rural workers or peasants. Therefore, the appearance of the working class is the historical symptom of a great social change, as the bourgeoisie assumed the role of social class dominant in place of the old aristocracy.
In addition, the appearance of the working class marks the beginning of life for the most part urban, given that the peasant exodus greatly increased the population of the cities and concentrated the great majority in them, leaving the rural zones in the hands of a comparatively minority population.
the labor movement
The workers of the eighteenth century found themselves helpless before their employers and worked in conditions of frank exploitation labor.
They had to tolerate working days of more than 12 hours, without any distinction between minors and adults. The sanitary and industrial safety conditions were deplorable, they threatened their health and did not offer them any type of defense in case of incidents, accidents or lawsuits with the factory owners.
Consequently, the workers began to associate in small brotherhoods or brotherhoods that copied the guild model of the medieval, and where they could help each other.
Many of these first brotherhoods even acted against the incipient automation in factories, destroying looms and other machinery that displaced artisans and workers, since where several employees were previously needed, with the machine many fewer could be hired and more produced. . This movement against the machines became known as Luddism.
Thus, the first workers' societies had a double purpose: to provide mutual aid to disadvantaged workers and to resist the inhumane conditions of early capitalism, demanding better wages and reductions in the daily working day.
The initial response of governments was the prohibition of all types of workers association, which threw the labor unions to radical positions such as the anarchism and then the communism.
However, the triumph of the workers' societies was unstoppable.Throughout the 19th century, new legal figures allowed the working class to fight for its well-being and to participate to a certain extent in the politics national. Thus, in 1834, arose in Great Britain the Great Trae Union (“Unión de Sindicatos de Oficios”) that served as a nucleus for the different labor groups that gave a voice to the workers of the same area.
The labor movement was of great importance in the construction of contemporary societies. For example, he played a key role in obtaining universal male suffrage, in reducing the working day to 8 hours and establishing benefits that we take for granted today, such as annual paid vacations, sick days , national holidays and compulsory social insurance.
In addition, the labor movement was strongly influenced by the doctrines of Marxism, anarchism, socialism and other critical approaches to the capitalist order, which led to the different workers' revolutions of the 20th century. Many of them later established communist regimes, as happened in Russia at the beginning of the century, when the USSR.