IndustrializationLabor Reactions

The Development of Labor Unions• Why did labor Unions form during this era?

– Long Hours• 6-7 day workweeks• 12+ hour workdays

– Low Wages• In sweatshops

– 27 cents for a child’s 14-hour day– 1899 – women earned an average of $267 a year; men $498

– Danger• Injuries = common

– 1882 – an average of 675 laborers were killed in work-related accidents each week

– Lack of worker benefits• No vacation, sick leave, unemployment compensation and injury reimbursement

– Child Labor• 1890-1910 – 20% of boys & 10% of girls under 15 held full time jobs

Early Labor Organizing • National Labor Union (NLU)

– 1st large scale national organization of laborers– Formed – 1866– Membership ~ 640,000– Big accomplishment – helping legalize the 8 hour work day for

gov’t workers• Knights of Labor

– Motto – “ An injury to one is the concern of all”– Membership open to all

• ~ 700,000– Supported an 8 hour workday and “equal pay for equal work” – Strikes were a last resort

• Instead advocated arbitration

Knights of Labor

Department of Labor

Labor Unions Diversify• Craft Unionism– Included skilled workers form one or more trades

• Industrial Unionism– Included both skilled and unskilled workers in a specific

industry• Labor Unions in the West– Small unions– Increased the strength of the labor mov’t / the tension

between labor and management

Labor Relations Turned Violent: Strikes

• Industry and gov’t responded forcefully to union activity– Saw it as a threat to capitalism

• Various strikes turned violent– The Great Strike of 1877

• Strikers protesting wage cuts at B&O Railroad• Federal troops ended it

– The Haymarket Affair• Strikers protesting police brutality• Bomb was tossed into a line of police• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OQxncb2ihQ

– Homestead Strike• Steelworkers strike against cut wages• Broken up by the National Guard

– Pullman Company Strike• Strikers protesting lay offs, wage cuts and high rent• Broke up by federal troops

Management & Government Reactions to Unions

• The more powerful unions became, the more employers came to fear them

• Ways that management tried to undue labor progress– Not “officially” recognizing unions– Forbidding union meetings– Firing union members– Turning the Sherman Antitrust Act against labor

• By claiming that strikes, boycotts, etc. would hurt interstate trade

• Despite setbacks, workers still viewed unions as powerful tool