The strike collapsed, PATCO vanished, and the union movement as a whole suffered a major reversal, which accelerated the decline of membership across the board in the private sector.
Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Organized Labor Relations. Search for:. The History of Unions. Organized Labor A union is an organization of workers who have come together to achieve work related goals, such as higher pay and better conditions. Learning Objectives Explain the basic function of a labor union. Key Takeaways Key Points Through its leadership, labor unions bargain with the employers on behalf of union members and negotiates labor contracts with employers.
Union members, employers, and sometimes non-members are bound to the final negotiated agreement. In addition to their collective bargaining activities, labor unions provide benefits to their members, organize industrial actions, and participate in political activities.
Labor union density has declined in recent decades, particularly in the private sector. Key Terms collective bargaining : A method of negotiation in which employees negotiate as a group with their employers, usually via a trade union labor union : A continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment; a trade union. A Brief History of Organized Labor The union movement began in the early 19th century and paved the way for the establishment of the modern labor organizations.
Learning Objectives Outline the increases and declines in the labor union movement of the last years. Key Takeaways Key Points A large-scale consolidation of unions took place in the s and s. The Knights of Labor became a major force in the late s until its collapse. Unions grew rapidly from This period was followed by a long decline. It was brought back to life by the Wagner Act of During this period, it became normal to find unions in heavy industry.
Log In Mobile Nav Toggle. A Brief History of Unions Labor unions have fought for fairness in the workplace for many years. The Labor Movement from the Industrial Revolution to Now The origin of labor unions dates back to the eighteenth century and the industrial revolution in Europe.
Union Plus Credit Card Start saving. In exchange, labor would be able to benefit through employment security and the higher wages that would come with increased productivity and sales Weinstein , Chapter 1. In terms of present-day theorizing, Hanna and the NCF were trying to create a cross-class coalition or alliance that would be beneficial for both parties Swenson , pp.
Nor did the NCF hesitate to seek the advice of experts, including some who were considered reformers or even liberals, which is another reason for thinking that the corporate moderates were somewhat different than the ultraconservatives.
The most famous of these reform-oriented experts was an atypical economist, John R. Commons, who had been part of many reform efforts in the previous decade. Commons became a researcher and strike mediator for the NCF while managing its New York office from to He adopted the NCF emphasis on collective bargaining and championed the concept ever afterwards.
When he left for a position at the University of Wisconsin, where he trained several of the economists who later worked for the New Deal in the s, half of his salary was paid by moderate conservatives in the NCF that admired his efforts.
Commons later claimed that his years with the NCF were among the "five big years" of his life Commons , p. At first glance, the NCF focus on collective bargaining may seem to reflect the corporate moderates' acceptance of an equal relation between capital and labor in a pluralistic American context, which would not fit with the theory of corporate dominance reflected in this document, and on this site more generally.
But from a class-dominance perspective, collective bargaining is not about pluralism or values or decency, none of which had been in evidence in the periodic violence and use of repression by employers in the years following Instead, the concept of collective bargaining is the outcome of a power struggle that reflects the underlying balance of power in favor of the corporations.
From the corporate point of view, a focus on collective bargaining involved a narrowing of demands by AFL unions to a manageable level. It held out the potential for satisfying most craft-union members at the expense of the unskilled workers and socialists in the workforce, meaning that it decreased the possibility of a challenge to the economic system itself.
However farfetched in hindsight, the possibility of such a challenge seemed to have some validity in the early twentieth century due to the volatility of capitalism, the seeming plausibility of at least some aspects of Marx's theory of inevitable collapse, and the strong socialist sentiments of a growing minority of intellectuals and workers.
From the corporate moderates' point of view, which did not have the benefit of twentieth-century history as a guide, it is understandable that they preferred unions for skilled workers to periodic disruption by frustrated workers or constant political challenges from socialists, who incidentally won a growing number of city and state elections in the first 10 to 15 years after they founded a new political party in e.
From the labor standpoint, collective bargaining over wages, hours, and working conditions seemed to be the best that it could do at that juncture.
Despite the growing agitation by socialists, most skilled workers apparently did not think it was worth the costs to organize a political challenge to capitalism, or even to continue to attempt to organize unions that included both skilled and unskilled workers, as the Knights of Labor tried to do between and They therefore decided to fight for what their power to disrupt forced the corporate leaders to concede in principle. This strategic decision to work toward unions based on bargaining for better wages, hours, and working conditions was embraced even by the committed socialists who predominated in a handful of unions, including the Brewery Workers Union and the International Association of Machinists Laslett More generally, sociologist Howard Kimeldorf , p.
Thus, the process and content of collective bargaining is actually a complicated power relationship that embodies the strengths and weaknesses of both sides. Its existence reveals the power of labor, but the narrowness of the unions and the substance of what is bargained about reflect the power of capital.
Collective bargaining is "both a result of labor's power as well as a vehicle to control workers' struggles and channel them in a path compatible with capitalist development" Ramirez , p. Drawing on Kimeldorf's new formulation concerning the importance of replacement costs in union success in that era, Ramirez's point can be generalized to say that unionization is possible when workers can exercise a disruptive potential that threatens profits. That is, the unions that were organized in the late ninetieth and early twentieth centuries had a high disruptive capacity that was rooted in the difficulty and thus high costs of finding replacement workers in the face of strikes.
Sometimes these replacement costs were due to skill barriers, as in the case of the typographers and construction workers mentioned earlier, but replacement costs could also be high for companies that had fast turn-around times or had geographically isolated work sites that scared away potential replacement workers. However, it is important to add that the unionization and collective bargaining that sometimes developed in industries in which workers had disruptive potential is not quite a standoff in which both sides have the same amount of power.
They are close to equal when it comes to collective bargaining once the ability of workers to disrupt and organize has been demonstrated, but it is also the case that it is very difficult to sustain most unions if governments use their legal or coercive powers to support employers in their refusal to recognize unions. Thus, political power has to be added to the collective bargaining equation and it can serve as the tipping point if and when collective bargaining fails and one or both sides of an open class struggle resorts to organized violence.
In this context, the matter of who controls key government offices, starting with the presidency, becomes critical. Once again, it needs to be stressed that the unionism the NCF leaders were willing to support was a narrow one, focused almost exclusively on skilled or craft workers, to the exclusion of the unskilled industrial workers in mass-production industries.
Furthermore, the corporation leaders in the NCF objected to any "coercion" of nonunion workers by union members and to any laws that might "force" employers to negotiate. Everything was to be strictly voluntary, although government could be called in to mediate when both sides agreed to arbitration. Indeed, there was precedent for such voluntary arbitration in federal legislation passed in , which allowed for mediation between interstate railroads and those unionized employees that worked on the trains themselves e.
Within this limited perspective, the NCF and other corporate moderates seemed to be having at least some success in their first two years. Leaders in the new employers' associations not only signed agreements with their workers, but spoke favorably of the NCF and its work. None was in a major mass-production industry, however, and the new era did not last very long. As the unions' membership grew and they began making more demands, the employers' dislike of unions resurfaced accordingly.
In other words, class conflict once again emerged, which soon led to organized opposition to unions within the very same employer associations that had been created to encourage trade agreements. This sequence of events reveals the difficulties of maintaining cross-class coalitions, which were to break down more often than not in future decades as well.
Either the workers try to impose conditions that employers find unreasonable, or else some employers, known as "chiselers" in that era, try to gain market share or earn higher profits by undercutting the terms of the agreement. The usual pattern was most dramatically demonstrated when the National Metal Trades Association, which included a wide range of manufacturers that made use of metal in their production processes, broke its agreement with the International Association of Machinists only 13 months after signing it in May, The turnabout occurred when the machinists tried to place limits on the number of apprentices in a shop and resisted piece rates and doubling up on machines Swenson , pp.
The angry employers announced in a Declaration of Principles "we will not admit of any interference with the management of our business" Brody , p. The failure of the attempt to employ collective bargaining to resolves disputes is also demonstrated by the refusal of steel unions even to consider the terms offered in by J P. Morgan, the most powerful financier of the day, for his acceptance of already established unions in subsidiaries of his newly organized behemoth, U.
Instead, the union actually "called a general strike against the corporation to force immediate agreements on its entire tin plate, sheet steel, and steel hoop operations, thus breaking current agreements in some of them" Swenson , p. The corporation then crushed the strike and the union. More generally, at least people were killed and 1, were injured between and in the other labor disputes that soon followed in a variety of industries Archer , p.
The individual employer associations were reinforced in their anti-union efforts when the industry-wide National Association of Manufacturers NAM moved into their ranks. Founded in to encourage the marketing of American products overseas, its first president was also an early member of the NCF and tried to avoid any discussion of management-labor issues within NAM.
However, when anti-union employers took over the association in late in a three-way race for the presidency, it quickly turned into the largest and most visible opponent of trade unions in the United States. It thereby became the core organization for the ultraconservatives in the corporate community, a role it has played ever since, but always buttressed by the organizations established by specific industries, such as the Iron and Steel Institute and the American Automobile Manufacturers Association.
The rise of the anti-union movement caused the NCF to draw back from its collective bargaining emphasis, but it continued to endorse collective bargaining as a principle even though it no longer pushed for it. At the same time, though, the organization began to put greater emphasis on urging employers to pay good wages and install welfare programs of the kind that had been tried by a few companies in earlier decades in an attempt to placate workers.
In present-day theorizing, these large-scale employers, many of them using advanced production technologies, were paying "efficiency wages" in an effort to increase profits through enhanced productivity and at the same time protect themselves against disruption, sabotage, and the destruction of equipment:. In spite of the efforts by the NCF and other corporate moderates to deal with labor conflict after through welfare and education programs instead of collective bargaining, there was another wave of industrial violence in and Dynamite attacks at many construction sites across the country, and on the Los Angeles Times' entire building, by what turned out to be apolitical but militant members of the bridge and structural ironworkers' union, were of particular surprise and concern.
In reaction, President William Howard Taft sponsored legislation to create a Commission on Industrial Relations to examine the causes of industrial unrest and labor sabotage, which resulted in further legitimation for the collective bargaining agreements sought by the AFL. Although the National Civic Federation had abandoned its organizational emphasis on collective bargaining, several of its individual members nonetheless played the major role in the commission's deliberations.
The nine member commission, which was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson in , consisted of three corporate leaders, all members of the NCF; three labor leaders, also members of the NCF; and three public members, two of whom, Commons and a well-known socialite and reformer of the era, Mrs.
Borden Harriman, were members of the NCF. Walsh, an attorney, reformer, and advocate for the poor. Walsh was more than a match for the other eight members, leading the commission into investigations, arguments, and pronouncements that angered the non-labor members Adams ; Weinstein , Chapter 7.
The commissioners could not come to general agreement after hearing hundreds of hours of testimony and debating numerous legislative proposals. However, it is important to note, in the light of the eventual passage of the National Labor Relations Act in the mids, that the weight of the members' several separate reports in favored greater use of the collective bargaining mechanism.
As Commons noted in a report that also was signed by Mrs. Harriman and the business members, but not the labor members, the important issue was "whether the labor movement should be directed towards politics or toward collective bargaining" Weinstein , p. Commons went so far as to recommend new legislation empowering government advisory boards to mediate capital-labor relations and channel protest into collective bargaining, clearly foreshadowing the kinds of solutions that eventually were tried during the early New Deal.
The outbreak of World War I changed the power balance between business and organized labor. Supplies of new labor from Europe virtually dried up, the war fueled an economic boom, and the federal government expanded its role in the economy. Many AFL unions took advantage of the situation by calling strikes to gain union recognition, leading President Wilson to support the right of unions to exist and bargain collectively in exchange for a no-strike pledge.
Composed of corporate and trade union leaders, it was co-chaired by former President Taft and Frank P. Walsh, the intrepid investigator who had served as chair of the recently disbanded Commission on Industrial Relations. AFL membership increased from two million in to 3. While all this was going on, anti-war dissenters from radical unions and the Socialist Party were put in jail.
Leaders within the AFL were hopeful that this renewed harmony and success would continue after the war, but such was not to be the case. There were major strikes in the nation's coalfields and among longshoremen in New York City and police officers in Boston, as well as a general strike in Seattle. The largest strike took place in the steel industry, in which nearly , workers went on strike in an attempt to gain the right to bargain.
Led by U. Steel, the biggest and most powerful manufacturing company in the country, the employers launched a strong counterattack, branding the strike leaders as foreign radical agitators, this time linking them to Bolshevism, not anarchism. They also employed 30, African Americans as replacement workers, attacked picket lines, and broke up union meetings. With President Wilson appearing to favor steel executives, the defeat of the steel strike in December sealed the fate of collective bargaining in the ensuing decade Zieger and Gall , pp.
During the s, unions lost strike after strike as employer opposition to unions reversed many of the wartime advances by organized labor. Over the course of these lean years for organized labor, union membership declined from five million in to just under three million in Bernstein , p. Still, total union membership never fell below levels, no major union organizations disappeared, and there were some gains for the building trades, railroad brotherhoods, and the Teamsters Nelson ,pp.
But the United Mine Workers, which later took the lead in organizing during the s, fell from , in to under 80, in the early s. The garment unions were also devastated -- the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, another spearhead union in the s, fell from , in to 60, in with only 7, of those members paying dues and the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union fell from , in to around 40, in The biggest unions were now in construction, transportation, entertainment, and printing, all of which had high replacement costs in the face of union demands Zieger and Gall , pp.
There were virtually no union members in mass production industries. Nevertheless, there were a few corporate moderates who wanted to control labor by giving workers some representation and thereby avoid the kind of violent confrontations that the leaders of the NAM and other ultraconservatives were willing to undertake if necessary. These efforts were led by the richest man of that era, John D.
Rockefeller, Jr. Sober social scientists usually shy away from any suggestion that the Rockefellers were a powerhouse in their day because of the exaggerated claims that were made about the alleged hidden power of the five grandsons of John D.
Rockefeller, Sr. Such claims about the Rockefeller family in general continued into the early twenty-first century, at a time when there were no Rockefellers in positions of any importance in the corporate community. The most visible member of the family, John D. Rockefeller, IV, was the long-time Democratic senator from West Virginia, with a liberal voting record overall.
He announced his retirement from the Senate as of As for the idea that a Rockefeller might have had an influence on labor legislation in the s, that is an occasion for merriment or scoffing among respectable social scientists and historians. The story of Rockefeller involvement in labor legislation is completely unknown despite some good work on the topic in the late twentieth century, and is therefore met with skepticism or denial.
The story therefore has to be unfolded carefully if the wistful conventional wisdom of the historical institutionalists and pluralists, who reign supreme in the American social sciences, is ever to be questioned by future generations of social scientists. In the early s, the descendants of John D. As a first approximation of Rockefeller power in that era, that figure happens to be 2. Not only was the Rockefeller family far and away the richest family of that era, but John D.
Although Rockefeller, Sr. Rockefeller" or "Rockefeller," and his father will be referred to as "John D. The Rockefeller fortune was based primarily in five of the oil companies created in out of the original Standard Oil, after it was broken up by antitrust action. In the s and s, the Rockefellers held the largest blocks of stock in these companies and had great influence on their management. Four of the five companies were in the top 11 corporations in terms of their assets in Standard Oil of New Jersey renamed Exxon in the early s was the second-largest corporation, and Standard Oil of New York renamed Mobil at one point and then merged with Exxon in to create Exxon Mobil , was the fourth-largest.
Then there was Standard Oil of Indiana at No. Standard Oil of New Jersey was by far the most important and politically involved of these companies. Rockefeller had his offices in its headquarters building and was close to the senior management throughout the s and s, especially the president during these years, Walter C.
A grandson of one of John D. If the close and mutually respectful relationship between Teagle and Rockefeller can be kept in mind, and if Teagle's independent judgment is appreciated, then the idea of "Rockefeller" power in labor relations can be considered within a more open mind, especially after other dramatis personae are added to the picture.
Despite the huge amount of wealth the Rockefellers retained in the Standard Oil companies, they had diversified their holdings. Most important, by the early s they controlled the largest bank in the country, Chase National Bank, chaired by Rockefeller's brother-in-law, Winthrop Aldrich, who took the lead on Wall Street in calling for the separation of commercial and investment banking in early In addition, they owned a major coal company, Consolidation Coal, and several minor railroads.
The family also diversified into real estate in the early s by building Rockefeller Center in New York City with the help of a large loan from Metropolitan Life Insurance, a company with which Rockefeller enjoyed a close relationship, including the placement of one of his several personal employees on its board of directors.
The largest development of its kind up until that time, Rockefeller Center opened in the early s and lost money for many years thereafter Fitch ; Okrent By the s, however, it was at the center of the Rockefeller fortune, with any involvement in the oil companies long in the past. Similarly, involvement in Chase National Bank which became Chase Manhattan Bank in and merged into JPMorgan Chase in ceased in the mids with the retirement of David Rockefeller Rockefeller's fifth and youngest son after many years as either its president or chairman.
The company and Rockefeller became infamous because they played the central role in a prolonged and deadly labor dispute in , which came to be known as the Ludlow Massacre, after 20 people died in a daylong battle between the Colorado National Guard and striking miners.
The total included ten women and two children. They burned to death after machine gun fire ignited the makeshift tent city in which they were living after being evicted from company housing by the company management. More generally, at least 66 people died in the open warfare between labor and mine operators in Colorado between May and September of ; the violence only ended when President Wilson sent Federal troops to the area Zieger and Gall , p.
Rockefeller's reaction to this disaster reshaped corporate-moderate policy thinking about labor relations over the next 15 years, and unlikely as it may sound at this juncture in the story, had a direct impact on labor policy in the early New Deal. In addition to his corporate involvement and great personal wealth, Rockefeller also controlled three foundations: the General Education Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund.
Although he did not take a direct role in all of the foundations, he had an executive committee, made up of his main employees from each of them, which met with him to determine whether he should give his own money directly to a project or if the project should be assigned to a foundation. In addition, he chaired the board of the Rockefeller Foundation, which had its offices in the Standard Oil of New Jersey Building from its founding in until Rockefeller and his foundations supported a wide array of think tanks and policy-discussion organizations within the larger context of massive financial donations for medical research, education, national parks, ecumenical Protestant organizations, and museums Schenkel It needs to be stressed that he spent far more money on one of his favorite personal projects, the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg, than he did on think tanks and policy-discussion groups.
But still, the relatively small amounts of money he contributed to organizations in the policy-planning network nonetheless had a major impact on the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Social Security Act Domhoff and Webber I can see the raised eyebrows at this point, but read on.
The general importance of the three Rockefeller foundations can be seen through figures on assets and donations in As another indication of how concentrated foundation giving was at the outset of the New Deal, three Rockefeller-related and four Carnegie-related foundations accounted for well over half of the donations in Besides, most of the other foundations in the top 20 were not concerned with public policy; they gave donations to local charities, educational institutions, libraries, and museums.
For all that Rockefeller and his many personal employees and foundations did to aid in the general development of the policy-planning network, their most direct contribution to the New Deal was the creation of experts and policies that were financed in reaction to the violent labor conflicts in not one, but two, Rockefeller companies between and The Industrial Revolution marked a period of development in the latter half of the 18th century that transformed largely rural, agrarian societies in Europe and America into industrialized, urban ones.
Goods that had once been painstakingly crafted by hand started to be Labor Day will occur on Monday, September 6. Labor Day pays tribute to the contributions and achievements of American workers and is traditionally observed on the first Monday in September. It was created by the labor movement in the late 19th century and became a federal The Knights of Labor was founded as a secret society of tailors in Philadelphia in It grew in size and prominence in the early days of the American labor movement from the mid- to lates and played a key role in the Great Railroad Strike of Uriah Stevens, Knights Technology has changed the world in many ways, but perhaps no period introduced more changes than the Second Industrial Revolution.
The Industrial Revolution, which began roughly in the second half of the s and stretched into the early s, was a period of enormous change in Europe and America. The invention of new technologies, from mechanized looms for weaving cloth and the steam-powered locomotive to The abolitionist movement was an organized effort to end the practice of slavery in the United States.
The first leaders of the campaign, which took place from about to , mimicked some of the same tactics British abolitionists had used to end slavery in Great Britain in In , a group of prominent Black intellectuals led by W. Du Bois met in Erie, Ontario, near Niagara Falls, to form an organization calling for civil and political rights for African Americans.
With its comparatively aggressive approach to combating racial discrimination Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Origins of The Labor Movement The origins of the labor movement lay in the formative years of the American nation, when a free wage-labor market emerged in the artisan trades late in the colonial period. Recommended for you. Labor Movement. Child Labor. Labor Day's Railroad Strike Roots.
Homestead Strike. Child Labor Child labor, or the use of children as servants and apprentices, has been practiced throughout most of human history, but reached a zenith during the Industrial Revolution.
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