This paper aims to address three interrelated questions. First, what are the core tasks of the trade union movement in contemporary Ethiopia? Second, what have its central tasks been in the past? And finally, why have the central tasks changed over time? The answer to these questions feed into a broader discussion of the determination and subversion of union strategies, that goes beyond a linear logic of tradition and innovation. Instead, when examining the shifts in union strategies in Ethiopia, a more fluid picture emerges, where similar low-risk strategies – such as entrepreneurism, consumer collectivism, and a range of social activities – have been adopted as core tasks in different historical conjunctures over the past five decades, but where higher-risk means of conducting open class conflict have also repeatedly been returned to when circumstances have permitted or compelled. It is argued that the Ethiopian example lends credence to a conjunctural and relational approach to the determination of union strategies, where tasks and methods are repeatedly removed from the union repertoires – by internal and external processes which reflect shifts in the overall balance of forces – but reappear when circumstances permit or compel.

To achieve its aims this paper links current trade union activities to the work of labour movements during the wave of strikes that occurred in Ethiopia between 1973 and 1976 (and the its denouement in 1977) and its relationship to revolutionary theory, using Screpanti’s concept of “proletarian insurgencies” to describe an exceptionally fierce outburst of strike activity and rank-and-file militancy. This episode of Ethiopian history is under-researched as the 1973-1976 tends to be subsumed under the literature of the Ethiopian revolution. Given that the proletarian insurgency had a longer historical arch and a separate logic from the revolution (to which it nevertheless contributed) this subsumption is somewhat reductive, and conceals important lessons that could be learned from it. The paper will outline objective and subjective conditions/forces that brought about the proletarian insurgency under the following sections:

• Strike waves and revolutionary theory
• Subsumption: The strike wave and revolutionary Ethiopia in the literature
• Strike activity in Imperial Ethiopia
• 1973: a strike wave begins
• 1974: general strikes and contagious wild-cat activity
• 1975: revolutionary trade unionism
• 1976: insurrection
• 1977: militarization & defeat
• Conclusions and implications

The paper is based on archival research and interviews with key participants conducted over the past decade.

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