This book traces the development of trade unions in Peninsular Malaysia over the last century from colonial times to the early 1990s, stressing the key role of the state in shaping the role and nature of organized labour during various time periods. Trade unions were not allowed in British Malaya before 1940. After the Japanese Occupation, organized labour was effectively mobilized by the left, and contributed significantly to the anti-colonial struggle for Independence.

However, from 1948, severe repression directed against the left brought an abrupt end to this development. From the early 1950s, the colonial authorities sought to wean support from the communist-led insurgency by encouraging moderate or responsible unionists, but this did not prevent the resurgence of labour militancy in the mid-1950s on the eve of Independence.

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After a brief honeymoon period with the post-colonial government, union activity mounted again in the 1960s until repression against the left from the mid-1960s took its toll. Extra-parliamentary rule after the May 1969 riots saw increased government efforts to subordinate labour to economic developmental priorities, particularly those of export-oriented industrialization. In the early 1970s, however, there were also concessions to organized labour in an attempt to promote tripartite corporatism.

But from the late 1970s, there has been further subordination of labour to a changing developmentalist agenda increasingly favourable to private business interests.