This papers asses shifting processes of class formation and decomposition among Ethiopian wage workers over the past half-century, within a political-economic terrain that has been undergoing major changes. Drawing on new archival data on the history of the Ethiopian labour movement and the position of Ethiopian wage labour, the paper examines this process by looking at its organisational expressions in unions and in alternative constellations of workers, and its expressions in terms of militant practices such as strikes. A pattern of the shifting levels of activity and militancy is discernible, and appears in distinct cycles. These cycles, in turn, are reflected in similar patterns of shifting labour conditions and real wage levels.
It is argued that the process by which Ethiopian wage workers have acquired collective coherence and the means to engage in militant practices has repeatedly posed a serious challenge to employers and the state, and significantly modified the position of wage labour within the Ethiopian political economy. Successive defeats, however, have resulted in decomposition, the atomization of the working population and the complete subjugation labour, which in turn has created a catastrophic collapse in the conditions of labour.