Labor politics in the oil industry: new historical perspectives

The article introduces the special journal issue and discusses the role labor had in transforming oil politics during the twentieth century, particularly its second half. The decades that run from the 1950s to the 1990s are by now recognized as crucial in changing the relationship between oil-producing and oil-consuming countries. However, scholars have focused their attention mostly on diplomatic relations and high politics, on the economic strategies carried out by single oil firms, or on the relationship between states and oil rents. With few exceptions, the ways in which labor relations, workers and trade unions contributed to redefine national and international oil politics has received but scant attention. This special issue examines the ways in which international oil firms and their governments shaped labor relations in oil-producing countries; the role oil workers and trade unions had in the emergence and consolidation of oil nationalism, the nationalization of oil resources, and the transformation of relations between oil- producing and oil-consuming countries; how workers influenced national ideas and forms of democracy, authoritarianism, rights, and sovereignty in oil-producing countries, and how they interacted with oil workers in consuming countries.