Labor Unions

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Labor Unions
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Working conditions

• Monotonous same job day after day
• 12 16 hour shifts, 6 days a week
• Dangerous machinery with no safety precautions
• Workers frequently lost fingers, limbs, eyesight,
  hearing
• Lung diseases from coal and lint dust
• When workers were injured or too sick to work,
  they were fired!

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Child Labor

• Factory owners often hired children because
• They were smaller, so more room for machinery
• They were cheaper children were paid less than
  half of what grown men were
• They were easier to intimidate with beatings and
  abuse

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Craft Unions vs. Trade Unions

• Craft Unions
• Only allowed highly skilled craftsmen to join
• Machinists, welders, electricians, etc.

• Trade Unions
• Designed for unskilled laborers
• General factory workers, construction workers,
  etc.

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Industrial Unions

• United all craft and trade workers in a
  particular industry in a single union
• Example United Auto Workers unites everyone who
  works in the auto manufacturing industries

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Union Tactics

• Strikes workers walked off the job in protest
• Boycotts encouraged the public to not buy goods
  from companies that would not negotiate with
  labor
• Collective bargaining employees negotiate
  contracts as a group rather than as individuals
• Mediation allowing a neutral third party to
  oversee negotiations
• Arbitration allowing a neutral third party to
  hear both sides arguments and make a final,
  binding ruling
• Closed shops agreement where employers could
  only hire union members, non-union workers were
  banned from the workplace

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Employer Responses

• Yellow-dog contracts contracts which forbade
  workers from joining unions
• Blacklists known union sympathizers were fired
• Lockouts closing of factories to punish workers
  for unionizing
• Scabs replacement workers hired to replace
  strikers
• Injunctions sought legal court orders that
  forbade strikes
• Strikebreakers hired thugs used to violently
  attack union leaders, strikers

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Government Responses

• Supported employers over labor unions
• Courts often ruled unions and strikes to be
  illegal conspiracies
• Courts authorized use of force to break strikes
  when necessary
• Presidents even used the US Army to break strikes

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Great Railway Strike of 1877

• 80,000 railroad workers went on strike to protest
  pay cuts
• Angry strikers damaged equipment, ripped up
  tracks, and blocked other tracks
• President Hayes ordered US Army to reopen tracks
• Over 100 people died in clashes between strikers
  and troops, millions of dollars in damage done to
  railroads

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The Knights of Labor

• 1869 1949
• Workers organization (NOT a labor union)
• Wanted an 8-hour workday
• Promoted equal pay for women
• Supported a ban on child labor
• Proposed worker-owned factories
• Never well-organized, which left it ineffective

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The Haymarket Riot

• May 1886 Unions called for a day of general
  strike to promote the 8-hour workday
• Strikers and police clashed in Chicago, 1 striker
  killed
• Anarchists protested in Haymarket Square the next
  day police arrived to break up the demonstration
• A bomb was set off, followed by a gun battle,
  killing 8 policemen, 4 strikers
• 8 anarchists were arrested, including a member of
  the Knights of Labor
• 4 were executed for murder
• Knights of Labor lost popularity for being
  associated with anarchists

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The American Federation of Labor (AFL)

• Merger of 20 trade unions into the AFL in 1886
• Focus get companies to recognize unions and
  agree to collective bargaining, push for closed
  shops, promote the 8-hour work day
• Still exists today as the AFL-CIO

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Samuel Gompers

• 1850 1924
• 1st leader of the AFL
• Supported plain and simple unions keep unions
  out of politics, reject ideals of socialism,
  communism, and anarchism
• Concentrate on little things better wages and
  working conditions
• Preferred negotiation over strikes or boycotts

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The Homestead Strike

• June-July, 1892
• Steel workers at Andrew Carnegies mill in
  Homestead, PA demanded higher wages, Carnegie
  responded by locking out workers, fortifying the
  plant with high fences and guard towers and
  trying to hire scabs
• Striking workers laid siege to the plant, refused
  to allow scabs or even managers entry
• Carnegie sent 300 armed agents of the Pinkerton
  Security firm to secure the plant and a gun
  battle erupted

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The Homestead Strike (cont.)

• The Pinkerton agents were forced to surrender and
  run out of town, prompting the governor to send
  in the state militia to end the violence
• Under the protection of 4000 soldiers, the plant
  reopened with (mostly black) replacement workers
  and the strike failed union voted to accept the
  pay cut and go back to work

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The Pullman Strike

• May 1894
• Pullman Company (which built train cars),
  required workers to live in the town of Pullman,
  IL and buy goods from company owned stores
• Pullman cut wages, leading to workers struggling
  to meet their rent buy necessities
• Workers who complained were fired, prompting a
  general strike
• Members of the American Railway Union across the
  country refused to work on Pullman-built cars to
  show support for the strikers, tying up rail
  traffic

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The Pullman Strike (cont.)

• Railroads arranged for US mail to be attached to
  Pullman cars, resulting in the mail not being
  delivered
• Strikers and the ARU were then in violation of
  federal law for interfering with the delivery of
  the US mail
• This prompted the US government to get involved
  to ensure the delivery of the mail
• Pres. Grover Cleveland ordered US troops to
  enforce a court injunction, breaking the boycott
  of Pullman cars and ending the strike of Pullman
  workers

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Eugene V. Debs

• 1855 1926
• Worked with many different unions in his career,
  but gained much of his experience by helping to
  form the American Railway Union
• Debs was sent to prison for failing to obey the
  court injunction ordering the end to the Pullman
  Strike
• While incarcerated, Debs became a socialist and
  would later run for President as the Socialist
  Partys candidate 5 times (1900, 04, 08, 12,
  20)
• Opposition to WWI would land him in prison a
  second time

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Womens Trade Union League

• Most unions excluded women workers because they
  werent the primary breadwinners for families
• 1903 Mary Kenney OSullivan, Leonora OReilly,
  Jane Addams, Lillian Ward created the WTUL
• Goals 8-hour work day, a minimum wage, no night
  shifts for women, ban on child labor

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Support for Unions damaged by

• Marxists believed that labor should own and
  operate factories communally (socialism)
• Anarchists opposed all government, were willing
  to use violence to achieve their ends
  (essentially terrorists)
• Nativism anti-immigration sentiments were fed by
  the number of immigrants who were Marxists,
  anarchists