The history of Unions in the U.S. and the role they play in today’s society
Labor unions have been around in the United State of America since the Industrial Revolution but they did not become a force in this nation until the early 1900s. The major labor unions did not appear until the early 1930s but the earliest recorded labor dispute occurred in 1768 in New York.
A good place to start when discussing the history labor unions in the United States is to first explain what exactly a labor union is. A labor union is a “democratic organization of employees in a workplace who choose to join together to achieve common goals,” states the AFL-CIO Union website. By forming a union workers can improve working conditions like wages, benefits, hours and worker safety. The AFL-CIO website states “Most people who work in this country have the right to form and join unions under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which encourages union formation” but there are still millions of workers in the United States who choose not to join labor unions.
Like stated earlier, the earliest recorded labor dispute in the United States occurred in New York in 1768 but their history really begins during the nineteenth century in 1866 with the founding of the National Labor Union. The National Labor Union is very much different from unions of today as they did not only cater to one particular type of worker. Another labor union that formed around the same time was the Knights of Labor. These two organizations might have seemed at odds with reform movements “aiming as they did at the cooperative commonwealth rather than a higher wage, appealing broadly to all “producers” rather than strictly to wageworkers, and eschewing the trade union reliance on the strike and boycott” states History website. Both the Knights of Labor and National Labor Union fell apart due to poor organization, lack of leadership and strong opposition from their opponents.
Just a short twenty years later the United States most famous labor formed, the American Federation of Labor. Founded in 1886 by Samuel Gompers, at its peak the American Federation of Labor had 1.4 million members. The American Federation of Labor is credited “with successfully negotiating wage increases for its members and enhancing workplace safety for all workers.” The American Federation of Labor succeeded where other labor unions failed in the past due to the lessons learned by Gompers and his associates of Marxism. They learned that “trade unionism was the indispensable instrument for preparing the working class for revolution.” Gompers and his fellow socialists took that notion from Marxism and translated it into the notion of “pure and simple” unionism: “only by self-organization along occupational lines and by a concentration on job-conscious goals would the worker be “furnished with the weapons which shall secure his industrial emancipation.””
The leaders of the American Federation of Labor found that previous labor unions were too fragmented in trying to fit all different types of workers under one umbrella, the AFL narrowed their plans down and created specific craft-focused unions. These smaller, craft-specific unions enlisted workers such as iron molders, miners, typographers, tailors, bakers, furniture workers, metal workers and many more. These smaller unions that conducted the main activities of the unions, not the American Federation of Labor itself. In just six years the American Federation Labor grew to include 40 unions. The five largest unions were the “carpenters (57,000), typographers (28,000), cigar makers (27,000), iron and steel workers (24,000), and iron molders (23,000).”
The American Federation Labor union merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1955 to form one of the two biggest labor unions in the United States still in existence today. Even through the merge their goal had remained the same: “to advance the economic and job interests of the union membership.” Things picked up for labor unions after World War II. Collective bargaining increased greatly, tripling weekly earnings for wage earners in manufacturing between the years 1945-70. Strides in worker security against old age, illness and unemployment were also gained during the same time span. Despite all of this organized labor was still a sectional movement “covering at most only a third of America’s wage earners and inaccessible to those cut off in the low-wage secondary labor market.”
In today’s workplace landscape, unions do not hold as much clout as they once have. Union memberships peaked during the 1970s but have been in a steady decline in the private sector of the work force. Not only have the number of members in the private sector decreased but the type of workers in unions have changed as well. Unions are more diverse than ever, “40 percent of its members are white-collar workers, 30 percent are women, and the 14.5 percent who are black signify a greater representation than in the general population and a greater rate of participation than by white workers (22.6 percent compared to 16.3 percent).” Another reason for the decline in labor unions clout is outsourcing. The private sector has moved many middle-wage jobs to outside of the United States for cheaper labor.
Labor unions have a long history that is intertwined with labor in the United States. They helped make working conditions much better for working Americans, both in the work place and at home by helping them get safer working conditions and better wages. Although labor unions have feel on hard times in recent years they still remain an important part of American labor history.
Works Cited
Domhoff, G. W. (n.d.). The Rise and Fall of Labor Unions In The U.S. Retrieved July 22, 2015, from Who Rules America: http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/history_of_labor_unions.html
Staff. (n.d.). LABOR MOVEMENT. Retrieved July 22, 2015, from History: http://www.history.com/topics/labor
Staff. (n.d.). Learn About Unions. Retrieved July 22, 2015, from AFL-CIO America's Union: http://www.aflcio.org/Learn-About-Unions
Staff. (n.d.). The history of labor unions and fight for fairness at work. Retrieved July 22, 2015, from Union Plus: https://www.unionplus.org/about/labor-unions/history-origin
