Worker: We explain what a worker is, their characteristics and their origins. In addition, we explain the history of the labor movement.
What is a worker?
Essentially, a worker is an industrial worker. That is, a person who performs physical or manual work, or who drives machines and tools, in exchange for a salary generally calculated by hours of work.
Although they are not exactly synonyms, the term worker is often used with the same meaning as “worker,” especially when referring to the modern working class. “Proletarian” and “proletariat” are also used 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, Marxism).
The word worker comes from the Latin operarius, which meant “laborer” or “day laborer,” but also that which is proper to work. In fact, this Latin word derives from opus, “work” or “labor,” and is related to the current term “operator” (of machinery, for example). Please read this Characteristics of Romanticism too!
Although this word existed in Roman antiquity, what we understand today as worker is typical of the industrial society that was born with the modern world, starting with the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. The existence of workers is essential for the industrial work model of contemporary capitalism, since they 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 guilds and/or unions, that is, to have self-managed organizations that allow them to renegotiate their employment conditions with their employers and with the State.
Workers work as labor in factories and in the construction sector, either independently or semi-independently, or as salaried workers on the payroll of a company. There they carry out work that is considered unskilled, meaning that it does not require prior studies or exhaustive academic preparation, and for this reason it is often among the lowest paid.
When referring to the totality of workers in a nation, we often speak of the working class, and when this class is organized in active defense of its rights, they are usually referred to as the labor movement. Get this Concept of Encyclopedia information too!
Origin of the working class
The working class is the most modern of the transformations of the working class, starting with the entry of Europe into the Modern Age and the beginning of industrialization. This occurred in the middle or end of the 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) abandoned the countryside and migrated to the cities, seeking to be part of a new field of work that was expanding, and which was also better paid. This was known as the rural exodus.
Thus, a new social class was formed throughout the 19th century: the class of industrial workers, or workers, a term used to distinguish them from rural workers or peasants. The emergence of the working class is therefore the historical symptom of a great social change, as the bourgeoisie assumed the role of the dominant social class, replacing the old aristocracy.
Furthermore, the emergence of the working class marks the beginning of predominantly urban life, given that the peasant exodus greatly increased the population of the cities and concentrated the great majority in them, leaving the rural areas in the hands of a comparatively small population.
The workers’ movement
The workers of the 18th century were helpless before their employers and worked in conditions of clear labour exploitation.
They had to tolerate work 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 kind of defence in case of incidents, accidents or disputes with the factory owners.
Consequently, the workers began to associate in small brotherhoods or guilds that copied the medieval guild model, and in which they could help each other.
Many of these first guilds 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 could be produced. This movement against machines was known as Luddism.
Thus, the first workers’ societies had a dual purpose: to provide mutual aid to disadvantaged workers and to resist the inhuman conditions of early capitalism, demanding wage increases and reductions in the daily work day.
The initial response of governments was to prohibit all types of workers’ association, which led workers’ unions to radical positions such as anarchism and, later, communism.
However, the triumph of workers’ societies was unstoppable. Throughout the 19th century, new legal forms allowed the working class to fight for its well-being and to participate to a certain extent in national politics. Thus, in 1834, the Great Trade Union (“Union of Trade Unions”) emerged in Great Britain, which served as a nucleus for the different workers’ groups that gave voice to workers in the same area.
The workers’ movement was of great importance in the construction of contemporary societies. For example, it played a key role in achieving universal male suffrage, 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 various 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 was founded.
