We are the AC: 100 years of AC, 200 years of trade union history

A richly illustrated and beautifully designed book about the history of the Socialist Trade Union on the occasion of their 100th anniversary. nIn co-edition with Amsab - Institute for Social History. and the General Central celebrates its hundredth anniversary. In 1909, construction workers from various socialist trade unions united in the Centrale Vereeniging van Bouwvakkers, the very first - socialist - trade union centre in our country. Over the years, workers' unions from many other sectors joined the association that we know today as the General Central. But the seeds of its existence go back to the French Revolution, when the first workers united despite the prevailing laws to free themselves from the yoke of capital and the disastrous consequences of the industrial revolution. It is the hairdressers and cigar makers, the marble workers, stone cutters, brick makers and cobblestone layers, the workers from the petrochemical and petroleum industries, the woodworkers, glassblowers and miners, the cleaning staff, the graphic workers and the painters, the workers from the leather and skin industry or - more recently - the temporary workers or those who work for service vouchers or in sheltered workshops, who together made the Algemene Centrale great. This book is about them, about their struggle and their victories, about their actions and achievements, their decisiveness and solidarity.nnLuc Peiren (1965) has a doctorate in history (VUB). Since 1990 he has worked as a project officer at the Amsab Institute for Social History. He has published various studies on the Belgian workers' and trade union movement, including the biography Cesar De Paepe. From Utopia to Reality. In 1997 he edited the publication Een eeuw effecten (1898-1998). Geschiedenis van de sociale vakbeweging (A century of solidarity) (1898-1998). Geschiedenis van de sociale vakbeweging (A history of the socialist trade union movement). He obtained his doctorate in 2004 with a study of the graphic trade union movement. This led in 2006 to the publications De kinderen van Gutenberg (The children of Gutenberg). Geschiedenis van de Grafische vakbeweging in België voor 1975 ...) and Over Beren en Apen (A history of the graphic trade union movement in Belgium).