Labor Unions

Aim: Were unions successful in securing rights for workers?

Workers’ Rights Today

A $15 Minimum Wage Seemed Impossible. Now It’s Reality for a Million New Yorkers.

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Somali Workers in Minnesota Force Amazon to Negotiate

The Robots Have Descended on Trump Country

They are leaving many ‘casualties of history’ in their wake.

Supreme Court’s Janus Ruling Strikes at Labor’s Membership, Coffers, Clout

While the ruling almost certainly will send union membership through the floor – and take labor’s political clout with it – the long-term effect is still largely unclear.

I. Government (in)action

• A. Supreme Court Cases (Granger cases)
• Munn v. Illinois (1877) – States could regulate businesses vital to the public interest
• Wabash v. Illinois (1886) – States couldn’t regulate railroads because they constituted interstate commerce
• B. Legislation
• Interstate Commerce Act (1887) – Attempted to end pools and rebates
• RR rates must be fair and public
• Created Interstate Commerce Commission
• Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) – Outlawed illegal business combinations (trusts)
• Attempted to restore competition
• Not enforced – was actually used to break unions

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II. Capitalism vs. Socialism

• Socialism – the belief that the means of production, or business, should be publicly owned and run by the gov’t
• Socialists wanted society’s wealth to be redistributed so that everyone earned what they worked for and deserved
• Why did this appeal to some workers?

III. Workers

• Workers became mere lever-pullers in giant mechanism:
• Individual originality and creativity stifled
• Less value placed on manual labor
• Now factory workers became depersonalized, bodiless, soulless and often conscienceless
• New machines displaced employees

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• Individual workers powerless to battle single-handedly giant corporations, which

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• Put pressure on politicians
• Used strikebreakers (“scabs”)
• Employ thugs to beat up labor organizers
• Called on federal courts to issue injunctions ordering strikers to cease striking
• could request state and federal authorities send in troops
• locked doors against rebellious workers—a “lockout”—and starve workers into submission
• Compelled workers to sign “ironclad oaths” or “yellow-dog contacts”—solemn agreements not to join labor union
• Put names of agitators on “blacklist” and circulate it among fellow employers

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IV. Labor Movement

• Labor unions boosted by Civil War:
• Lost of human life drained labor supply
• Mounting cost of living provided incentive to unionize
• By 1872 several hundred thousand workers had organized
• 32 national unions, representing such crafts as bricklayers, typesetters, and shoemakers

IV. Labor Movement

• National Labor Union:
• Organized in 1866, one of first national-scale unions to form:
• Aimed to unify workers across locales and trades to challenge ever more powerful employers
• Lasted six years and attracted impressive total of some 600,000 members:
• Including skilled, unskilled, and farmers
• Excluded Chinese; made only nominal efforts to include women and blacks

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IV. Labor Movement

• National Labor Union called for:
• Arbitration of industrial disputes
• Eight-hour workday

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• Colored National Labor Union:

Their support for Republican Party and persistent racism of white unionists prevented two national unions from working together

V. Knights of Labor

• Knights of Labor:
• Officially known as Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor
• Began in 1869 as secret society
• Sought to include all workers in “one big union”
• Skilled and unskilled, whites and blacks, men and women
• Campaigned for economic and social reform

V. Knights of Labor

• Under leadership of Terence V. Powderly:
• Won a number of strikes for eight-hour day; Membership grew to 750,000
• Haymarket Square episode:
• Labor disorders had broken out
• On May 4, 1886 police advanced on meeting called to protest alleged brutalities by authorities
• Suddenly a bomb thrown, killing or injuring several dozen people, including police
• Hysteria swept Chicago:
• Eight anarchists arrested because preached incendiary ideas; charged with conspiracy

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V. Knights of Labor

• Haymarket Square bomb brings down Knights of Labor:
• Had been associated with anarchists
• Their strikes met with little success
• Another fatal handicap of Knights was inclusion of skilled and unskilled workers:
• Unskilled labor could be easily replaced by “Scabs”
• Craft unionists couldn't't be replaced so readily
• Hence they enjoyed better bargaining position
• Skilled workers sought refuge in American Federation of Labor:
• A federation of exclusively skilled craft unions

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VI. American Federation of Labor

• American Federation of Labor (AFL): 1886
• Samuel Gompers
• An association of self-governing national unions
• Each independent, with AFL unifying overall strategy
• No individual laborer could join central organization

VI. American Federation of Labor

• Gompers adopted down-to-earth approach:
• Didn’t advocate for sweeping social reform
• Hated socialism, supported capitalism, shunned politics for economic strategies and goals
• Promoted what he called “pure and simple” unionism:
• Better wages, hours, and working conditions
• One of his major goals was “trade agreement” authorizing closed shop—or all-union labor
• Chief weapons were walkout and boycott

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VII. Impact of Labor Movement

• Labor disorders continued, more than 23,000 strikes 1881-1900
• Disturbances involved 6,610,000 workers, with total loss to employers and employees of $450 million
• Strikers lost about half of strikes; won or compromised remainder
• Organized labor embraced only small minority of all working-people—about 3% in 1900

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VII. Impact of Labor Movement

• Railroad Strike of 1877; Haymarket Affair of 1886; Homestead Steel Strike of 1892; Pullman Strike of 1894
• What did they have in common?
• They began over wage cuts
• They were characterized by violence
• Unions, especially Knights of Labor, get bad reputation after Haymarket
• The government always sided with business over labor.
• They failed

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VII. Impact of Labor Movement

• Attitude toward labor changing:
• Public slowly recognized right of workers to organize:
• To bargain collectively and to strike
• Labor Day made a holiday by Congress in 1894
• A few industrialists saw wisdom of bargaining with unions to avoid strikes
• Vast majority of employers, with support for gov’t, continued to fight against organized labor