The Labor Union Movement

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The Labor Union Movement

• Early Struggles, Early Defeats

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Labor Union

• A formal organization of workers with several
  goals
• Better wages
• Better conditions
• Less Hours
• Job Security

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2 Types

• Trade (Craft) Unions only skilled workers
• Industrial Unions all skilled and unskilled
  workers in an industry

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Wage Earners

• By 1900
• 2/3 of workers were wage earners
• 10 hour days
• 6 day weeks
• Subsistence level wages
• Supply (high -immigrants) demand
• David Ricardo iron law of wages

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Women

• Workingmens earnings insufficient
• Women children needed to increase household
  earnings
• 1/5 women worked for wages
• Textile, garment, food processing
• Clerical work becomes feminized gtgt wages and
  status fall

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Power of Big Business

• Lockouts
• Blacklists
• Yellow-dog Contracts
• Private Armies
• State Militias
• Court Injunctions

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Great RR Strike of 1877

• Depression gtgt wage cuts gtgt BO RR strike spread
  along the track gtgt ½ million other workers join
  in gtgt Pres. Hayes calls out Fed Troops gtgt 100
  killed
• Results
• A few companies made concessions
• Most companies set out to break the unions

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Knights of Labor

• Inclusive
• Male Female
• Black? White
• Skilled Unskilled
• 1870s-1886
• Terence V. Powderly
• Abolish child labor, trusts monopolies
• Establish workers cooperatives

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Haymaker Bombing

• 1886 in Chicago
• 1st May Day celebration
• General strike for 8hr workday gtgt violence at
  McCormicks Harvester plant gtgt workers hold
  public meeting on May 4 gtgt police sent to break
  up gtgt seven officers killed by bomb (anarchists)
• Result Knights loose popularity membership

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AFL (American Federation of Labor)

• Moderate Union
• Skilled Workers
• Collective Bargaining
• Strikes
• 1890-1915
• Raises began to rise
• Hours fell
• Samuel Gompers

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Samuel Gompers
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1890s

• Homestead Strike - 1892
• Carnegies Homestead Steel Plant
• 20 wage cut
• Lockout, private guards strikebreakers (scabs)
  defeat steel unions
• Steel workers crushed until New Deal (1930s)

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1890s Cont

• Pullman Strike 1894
• Wage cuts, fired union leaders
• gtgtEugene Debs (American RR Union) directs RR
  workers not to handle Pullman cars
• gtgt traffic halted nationwide
• gtgt Pres. Cleveland orders troops to keep mail
  trains running gtgt injunction issued
• gtgt Debs arrested for ignoring injunction gtgt
  later forms Socialist Party in 1900

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Radical Solutions

• Socialist Party Eugene Debs

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Radical Solutions Worldwide Union?