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The labor history of the United States describes the history of organized labor, as well as the more general history of working people, in the United States. Pressures dictating the nature and power of organized labor have included the evolution and power of the corporation, efforts by employers and private agencies to limit or control unions, and U.S. labor law. As a response, organized unions and labor federations have competed, evolved, merged, and split against a backdrop of changing social philosophies and periodic federal intervention.
The history of organized labor has been a specialty of scholars since the 1890s, and has produced a large amount of scholarly literature. In the 1960s, as social history gained popularity, a new emphasis emerged on the history of workers, with special regard to gender and race. This is called "the new labor history". Much scholarship has attempted to bring the social history perspectives into the study of organized labor.
The first local unions of men in the United States formed in the late 18th century, and women began organizing in the 1820s.[1] However, the movement came into its own after the Civil War, when the short-lived National Labor Union (NLU) became the first federation of American unions.
Some of the earliest organization by women occurred in Lowell, Massachusetts. In 1845, the trade union of the Lowell mills sent representatives to speak to the Massachusetts legislature about conditions in the factories, leading to the first governmental investigation into working conditions. The mill strikes of 1834 and 1836, while largely unsuccessful, involved upwards of 2,000 workers and represented a substantial organizational effort.[2]
The National Labor Union (NLU), founded in 1866, was the first national labor federation in the United States. It was dissolved in 1872.
The regional Order of the Knights of St. Crispin was founded in the northeast in 1867 and claimed 50,000 members by 1870, by far the largest union in the country. A closely associated union of women, the Daughters of St. Crispin, formed in 1870. In 1879 the Knights formally admitted women, who by 1886 comprised 10% of the union's membership,[3] but it was poorly organized and soon declined. They fought encroachments of machinery and unskilled labor on autonomy of skilled shoe workers. One provision in the Crispin constitution explicitly sought to limit the entry of "green hands" into the trade, but this failed because the new machines could be operated by semi-skilled workers and produce more shoes than hand sewing.
The first effective labor organization that was more than regional in membership and influence was the Knights of Labor, organized in 1869. The Knights believed in the unity of the interests of all producing groups and sought to enlist in their ranks not only all laborers but everyone who could be truly classified as a producer. The acceptance of all producers led to explosive growth after 1880. Under the leadership of Terence Powderly they championed a variety of causes, sometimes through political or cooperative ventures. Powderly hoped to gain their ends through politics and education rather than through economic coercion.
One of the earliest Railroad Strikes was also one of the most successful. In 1885, the Knights of Labor led railroad workers to victory against Jay Gould and his entire Southwestern Railway system. However, many of their big strikes failed and they collapsed in the wake of the Haymarket tragedy of 1886, where an unidentified person in a crowd threw a bomb into a crowd of police men. The city and police department used the incident as an excuse to repress the labor movement and arrest 8 influential anarchist labor leaders. The police and city admitted that there was no evidence connecting the anarchist labor leaders to the bombing, but Judge Joseph Gary allowed them to be convicted on the theory that their speeches had encouraged the unknown bomber to commit the act. The trial has been characterized as one of the most serious miscarriages of justice in United States history.[4] Most working people believed Pinkerton agents had provoked the incident.[5]
The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions began in 1881 under the leadership of Samuel Gompers. Like the National Labor Union, it was a federation of different unions. Its original goals were to encourage the formation of trade unions and to obtain legislation, such as prohibition of child labor, a national eight hour day, and exclusion of foreign contract workers. Samuel Gompers of the Cigar Makers Union was chosen as the chairman of its Committee on Organization and as a member of its Legislative Committee.
The Federation made some efforts to obtain favorable legislation, but had little success in organizing or chartering new unions. It came out in support of the proposal, traditionally attributed to Peter J. McGuire of the Carpenters Union, for a national Labor Day holiday on the first Monday in September, and threw itself behind the eight hour movement, which sought to limit the workday by either legislation or union organizing.
In 1886, as the relations between the trade union movement and the Knights of Labor worsened, McGuire and other union leaders called for a convention to be held at Columbus, Ohio on December 8. The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions merged with the new organization, known as the American Federation of Labor or AFL, formed at that convention.
The AFL was formed in large part because of the dissatisfaction of many trade union leaders with the Knights of Labor, an organization that contained many trade unions and which had played a leading role in some of the largest strikes of the era. The new AFL distinguished itself from the Knights by emphasizing the autonomy of each trade union affiliated with it and limiting membership to workers and organizations made up of workers, unlike the Knights.
The AFL grew steadily in the late nineteenth century while the Knights disappeared. Although Gompers at first advocated something like industrial unionism, he retreated from that in the face of opposition from the craft unions that made up most of the AFL.
The unions of the AFL were composed primarily of skilled workers; unskilled workers, African-Americans, and women were generally excluded. The AFL saw women as threatening the jobs of men, since they often worked for lower wages. The AFL provided little to no support to women's attempts to unionize and affiliate themselves with the parent union.[6]
The Western Federation of Miners (WFM) was created in 1893. Frequently in competition with the American Federation of Labor, the WFM spawned several new federations, and in 1916 became the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers.
The rally began peacefully under a light rain on the evening of May 4, 1886. August Spies spoke to the large crowd while standing in an open wagon on Des Plaines Street.[7] According to many witnesses, Spies said he was not there to incite anyone. Meanwhile a large number of on-duty police officers watched from nearby. The crowd was so calm that Mayor Carter Harrison, Sr., who had stopped by to watch, walked home early. Some time later the police ordered the rally to disperse and began marching in formation towards the speakers' wagon. A bomb was thrown at the police line and exploded, killing policeman Mathias J. Degan.[8] The police immediately opened fire. While several police officers aside from Degan appeared to have also been injured by the explosion, most of the police casualties seem to have been caused by bullets. About sixty officers were wounded in the riot along with an unknown number of civilians. In all, seven policemen and at least four workers were killed. However, it is unclear how many workers were wounded since the injured were afraid to seek medical attention, fearing punishment for having been involved in the incident.[9][10][11]
During the major economic depression of the early 1890s, the Pullman Palace Car Company cut wages in its factories. Discontented workers joined the American Railway Union (ARU), led by Eugene V. Debs, which supported their strike by launching a boycott of all Pullman cars on all railroads. ARU members across the nation refused to switch Pullman cars onto trains. When these switchmen were disciplined, the entire ARU struck the railroads on June 26, 1894. Within four days, 125,000 workers on twenty-nine railroads had quit work rather than handle Pullman cars.[12]
The railroads were able to get Edwin Walker, general counsel for the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway, appointed as a special federal attorney with responsibility for dealing with the strike. Walker went to federal court and obtained an injunction barring union leaders from supporting the boycott in any way. The court injunction was based on the Sherman Anti-Trust Act which prohibited "Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States". Debs and other leaders of the ARU ignored the injunction, and federal troops were called into action.[13]
The strike was broken up by United States Marshals and some 2,000 United States Army troops, commanded by Nelson Miles, sent in by President Grover Cleveland on the premise that the strike interfered with the delivery of U.S. Mail. During the course of the strike, 13 strikers were killed and 57 were wounded. An estimated 6,000 rail workers did $340,000 worth of property damage. Debs went to prison for six months for violating the federal court order, and his ARU disintegrated.
From 1890 to 1914 the unionized wages in manufacturing rose from $17.63 a week to $21.37, and the average work week fell from 54.4 to 48.8 hours a week. The pay for all factory workers was $11.94 and $15.84 because unions reached only the more skilled factory workers. [14]
The United Mine Workers was successful in its strike against soft coal (bituminous) mines in the Midwest in 1900, but its strike against the hard coal (anthracite) mines of Pennsylvania turned into a national political crisis in 1902. President Theodore Roosevelt brokered a compromise solution that kept the flow of coal going, and higher wages and shorter hours, but did not include recognition of the union as a bargaining agent.
The Women's Trade Union League was formed as a result of a meeting of interested parties during the 1903 AFL convention in Boston. The League maintained a loose affiliation with the AFL and provided support to unionized women similar to that of other trade union umbrella organizations. It was composed of both workingwomen and middle-class reformers, and provided financial assistance, moral support, and training in work skills and social refinement for the women it represented.[15][16]
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), whose members became known as "Wobblies", was founded in 1905 by a group of about 30 labor radicals. Among their most prominent leaders was William “Big Bill” Haywood. The IWW organized along the lines of industrial unionism rather than craft unionism; in fact, they went even further, pursuing the goal of "One Big Union" and the abolition of the wage system. Many, though probably not all, Wobblies favored anarcho-syndicalism. Much of the IWW’s organizing took place in the West, and most of its early members were miners, lumbermen, cannery, and dock workers. In 1912 the IWW organized a strike of more than twenty thousand textile workers, and by 1917 the Agricultural Worker's Organization (AWO) of the IWW claimed a hundred thousand itinerant farm workers in the heartland of North America.[17] Eventually the concept of One Big Union spread from dock workers to maritime workers, and thus was communicated to many different parts of the world. Dedicated to workplace and economic democracy, the IWW allowed men and women as members, and organized workers of all races and nationalities, without regard to current employment status. At its peak it had 150,000 members (with 200,000 membership cards issued between 1905 and 1916[18]), but it was fiercely repressed during, and especially after, World War I with many of its members killed, about 10,000 organizers imprisoned, and thousands more deported as foreign agitators. The IWW proved that unskilled workers could be organized and gave unskilled workers a sense of dignity and self-worth. The IWW exists today with about 2,000 members, but its most significant impact was during its first two decades of existence.
In 1908 the U.S. Supreme Court decided the Loewe v. Lawlor (the "Danbury Hatters' Case). In 1902 the Hatters’ Union instituted a nationwide boycott of the hats made by a nonunion company in Connecticut. The owner Dietrich Loewe brought suit against the union for unlawful combinations to restrain trade in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Court ruled the union was subject to an injunction and liable for the payment of triple damages. In 1915 Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, speaking for the Court, again decided in favor of Loewe upholding a lower federal court ruling ordering the union to pay him damages of $252,130. (The cost of lawyers had already exceeded $100,000, paid by the AFL). This was not a typical case where a few union leaders were punished with short terms in jail, but that the life savings of several hundreds of the members were attached. It was a major precedent for lower court ruling and a grievance for the unions. The Clayton Act of 1914 presumably exempted unions from the antitrust prohibition and established for the first time the Congressional principle that, "the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce." However, judicial interpretation so weakened it that prosecutions of labor under the antitrust acts continued until the enactment of the Norris-La Guardia Act in 1932.
State legislation 1912-1918: 36 states adopted the principle of workmen's compensation for all industrial accidents. Also: prohibition of the use of an industrial poison, several states require one day's rest in seven, the beginning of effective prohibition of night work, of maximum limits upon the length of the working day, and of minimum wage laws for women.
The Great Railroad Strike of 1922, a nationwide railroad shop workers strike, began on July 1. The immediate cause of the strike was the Railroad Labor Board's announcement that hourly wages would be cut by seven cents on July 1, which prompted a shop workers vote on whether or not to strike. The operators' union did not join in the strike, and the railroads employed strikebreakers to fill three-fourths of the roughly 400,000 vacated positions, increasing hostilities between the railroads and the striking workers. On September 1 a federal judge issued a sweeping injunction against striking, assembling, picketing, etc. colloquially known as the "Daugherty Injunction."
Unions bitterly resented the injunction; a few sympathy strikes shut down some railroads completely. The strike eventually died out as many shopmen made deals with the railroads on the local level. The often unpalatable concessions — coupled with memories of the violence and tension during the strike — soured relations between the railroads and the shopmen for years.
Moved to action by the rising cost of living, the president of the Boston Telephone Operator’s Union, Julia O’Connor, proposed a new wage scale to the general manager of the New England Telephone Company, William E. Driver. While telephone rates had increased, the rates of telephone operators averaged half that of a government clerk and “65 percent of the average for a female worker in manufacturing.” [19] When Driver rejected the new wage scale on April 11, 1919, due to lack of governmental permission, the union ordered a strike to begin on April 15. Not only did the 6,000 Boston operators and union members walk out, but over 3,000 operators in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, and Rhode Island walked out as well. The strike effectively shut down all the telephone service in New England. In a show of unity, most of the male union members working in the plant department also struck on behalf of the operators. [20] In response, the New England Telephone Company collaborated with Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to employ college students as strikebreakers. The students were not welcomed by the strikers and were attacked upon arrival. The Cooks and Waiters Union also supported the striking operators by refusing to serve the injured strikebreakers who were taken to local hotels for food. [21] On April 20, an agreement was reached by strikers and company officials to accept the proposed wage raises. The men who struck out of sympathy for the female operators also received a 30 cent a day increase. After the strike, Julia O’Connor began a tour organizing women operators nationwide. Her tour resulted in settlements “on the Pacific Coast, in the South, and in the Midwest…modeled after the New England Agreement.” [22]
The United Mine Workers under John L. Lewis announced a strike for November 1, 1919.[23] They had agreed to a wage agreement to run until the end of World War I and now sought to capture some of their industry's wartime gains. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer invoked the Lever Act,[24] a wartime measure that made it a crime to interfere with the production or transportation of necessities. The law, meant to punish hoarding and profiteering, had never been used against a union. Certain of united political backing and almost universal public support, Palmer obtained an injunction on October 31[25] and 400,000 coal workers struck the next day.[26]
Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) at first attempted to mediate between Palmer and Lewis, but after several days called the injunction "so autocratic as to stagger the human mind."[27] The coal operators smeared the strikers with charges that Lenin and Trotsky had ordered the strike and were financing it, and some of the press echoed that language.[28] Others used words like "insurrection" and "Bolshevik revolution."[29] Eventually Lewis, facing criminal charges and sensitive to the propaganda campaign, withdrew his strike call, though many strikers ignored his action.[30] As the strike dragged on into its third week, coal supplies were running low and public sentiment was calling for ever stronger government action. Final agreement came on December 10.[31]
The 1920s marked a period of decline for the labor movement. In 1919, more than 4 million workers (or 21 percent of the labor force) participated in about 3,600 strikes. In contrast, 1929 witnessed about 289,000 workers (or 1.2 percent of the labor force) stage only 900 strikes.[32] Union membership and activities fell sharply in the face of economic prosperity, a lack of leadership within the movement, and anti-union sentiments from both employers and the government; however, farm workers in California did continue to organize and among the Filipino farm worker population, there was a noticeable increase in unionizing activities, due to the decline in wages and increased hostility toward Filipino workers who aggressively organized for improved living conditions and higher wages. In the 1920s, anti-Filipino sentiment was fueled by the California Department of Industrial Relations statistician Louis Bloch, publisher of a bulletin on Filipino immigration into California. Additionally, Will J. French, the director of the California Department of Industrial Relations, supported the report, to which he wrote an introduction, describing a “third wave of Filipino immigration,” the rapidity of which he characterized as being too great; he also implied the wrong kind of Filipinos were coming in and this heavily influenced American Federation of Labor, which expounded upon anti-Filipino sentiment in equating Filipinos with the increase of “ethnic” labor, associated with declining field wages and increasing strikes. In this way, the traditional labor unions framed Filipino organizing attempts as being detrimental to white workers’ wages. The authorities and other whites often harassed Filipinos when they attempted to leave their segregated neighborhoods, and this created much tension and resentment among the primarily male Filipino community, whose members regarded themselves as Americans’ equals, but who were regarded as threats to white females and who were rarely valued for anything outside of farm and other menial labor. Filipinos possessed a very sophisticated sense of organizing and once they dominated a labor market would immediately begin negotiating for improved living conditions and wages, which created resentment and fear among whites in regard to wage control and concerns about wage devaluation for them – concerns the traditional labor unions pandered to. The stereotyping of Filipinos into farm labor, coupled with authoritarian attempts by law enforcement and the Associated Farmers - (who represented agri-business) - to terrorize and contain Filipinos created much hatred, conflicts, and occasional race riots, and it intensified Filipino determination to unionize – something they regarded as the only effective means of counteracting racism and exploitation. One of the earliest Filipino labor strikes by Sons of the Farm occurred in 1928, and forced wage increases and better living conditions. Because Filipinos were rejected by traditional labor unions, they had to form their own unions. They formed seven different unions, a number of which were formed in response to “agricultural violence.” Additionally, the Filipino Labor Union was the only one to strike effectively in the fields of California in the early 1930s. There were sporadic wildcat strikes from 1924 to 1927 and when wages dropped enormously due to the Depression in 1929, Filipino union activism noticeably increased, according to DeWitt.[33]
The economic prosperity of the decade led to stable prices, eliminating one major incentive to join unions.[34] Unemployment rarely dipped below 5 percent in the 1920s and few workers feared real wage losses.[35]
The 1920s also saw a lack of strong leadership within the labor movement. Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor died in 1924 after serving as the organization’s president for 37 years. Observers said successor William Green, who was the secretary-treasurer of the United Mine Workers, “lacked the aggressiveness and the imagination of the AFL’s first president.”[36] The AFL was down to less than 3 million members in 1925 after hitting a peak of 4 million members in 1920.[37]
Employers across the nation led a successful campaign against unions known as the “American Plan,” which sought to depict unions as “alien” to the nation’s individualistic spirit.[38] In addition, some employers, like the National Association of Manufacturers, used Red Scare tactics to discredit unionism by linking them to Communist activities. [39]
U.S. courts were less hospitable to union activities during the 1920s than in the past. In this decade, corporations used twice as many court injunctions against strikes than any comparable period. In addition, the practice of forcing employees (by threat of termination) to sign yellow-dog contracts that said they would not join a union was not outlawed until 1932.[40]
Although the labor movement fell in prominence during the 1920s, the Great Depression would ultimately bring it back to life.
The stock market crashed in October, 1929, and ushered in the Great Depression. By the winter of 1932-33, the economy was so perilous that the unemployment rate hit the 25 percent mark.[41] Unions lost members during this time because laborers could not afford to pay their dues and furthermore, numerous strikes against wage cuts left the unions impoverished: “…one might have expected a reincarnation of organizations seeking to overthrow the capitalistic system that was now performing so poorly. Some workers did indeed turn to such radical movements as Communism, but, in general, the nation seemed to have been shocked into inaction.” [42]
Though unions were not acting yet, cities across the nation witnessed local and spontaneous marches by frustrated relief applicants. In March, 1930, hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers marched through New York City, Detroit, Washington, San Francisco and other cities in a mass protest organized by the Communist Party’s Unemployed Councils. In 1931, more than 400 relief protests erupted in Chicago and that number grew by 150 in 1932. [43] The leadership behind these organizations often came from radical groups like Communists and Socialists, who wanted to organize “unfocused neighborhood militancy into organized popular defense organizations.” [44] Workers turned to these radical groups until organized labor became more active in 1932, with the passage of the Norris-La Guardia Act. [45]
On March 23, 1932, President Herbert Hoover signed what became known as the Norris-La Guardia Act, marking the first of many pro-union bills that Washington would pass in the 1930s. [46] Also known as the Anti-Injunction Bill, it offered procedural and substantive protections against the easy issuance of court injunctions during labor disputes, which had limited union behavior in the 1920s.[47] Although the act only applied to federal courts, numerous state would pass similar acts in the future. Additionally, the act outlawed yellow-dog contracts, which were documents some employers forced their employees to sign to ensure they would not join a union; employees who refused to sign were terminated from their jobs.[48]
The passage of the Norris-La Guardia Act signified a victory for the American Federation of Labor, which had been lobbying Congress to pass it for slightly more than five years. [49] It also marked a large change in public policy. Up until the passage of this act, the collective bargaining rights of workers were severely hampered by judicial control. .[50]
President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933, and immediately began implementing programs to alleviate the economic crisis. In June, he passed the National Industrial Recovery Act, which gave workers the right to organize into unions. [51] Though it contained other provisions, like minimum wage and maximum hours, its most significant passage was: “Employees shall have the right to organize and bargain collectively through representative of their own choosing, and shall be free from the interference, restraint, or coercion of employers.”[52] This portion, which was known as Section 7(a), was symbolic to workers in the United States because it stripped employers of their rights to either coerce them or refuse to bargain with them. [53] While no power of enforcement was written into the law, it “recognized the rights of the industrial working class in the United States.” [54]
Although the Norris-La Guardia Act was ultimately deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935 and replaced by the Wagner Act two months after that, it fueled workers to join unions and strengthened those organizations. [55]
In response to both the Norris-La Guardia Act and the NIRA, workers who were previously unorganized in a number of industries—such as rubber workers, oil and gas workers and service workers—began to look for organizations that would allow them to band together. [56] The NIRA strengthened workers’ resolve to unionize and instead of participating in unemployment or hunger marches, they started to participate in strikes for union recognition in various industries. .”[57] In 1933, the number of work stoppages jumped to 1,695, double its figure from 1932. In 1934, 1,865 strikes occurred, involving more than 1.4 million workers. [58]
The elections of 1934 might have reflected the “radical upheaval sweeping the country,” as Roosevelt won the greatest majority either party ever held in the Senate and 322 Democrats won seats in the United States House of Representatives versus 103 Republicans. It is possible that “the great social movement from below thus strengthened the independence of the executive branch of government.” [59]
Despite such claims of the impact of such changes on the United States' political structure and on workers'empowerment, scholars have criticized the impacts of these policies from a classical economic perspective. Cole and Ohanian (2004) find that the New Deal’s pro-labor policies are an important factor in explaining the weak recovery from the Great Depression and the rise in real wages in some industrial sectors during this time[60].
The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was experiencing internal issues at the time the Norris-La Guardia Act and NIRA were passed. It was struggling with the question of how it should organize with new members clamoring to join the association. [61]Traditionally, the AFL organized unions by craft rather than industry, where electricians or stationary engineers would form their own skill-oriented unions, rather than join a large automobile-making union.[62] Most AFL leaders, including president William Green, were reluctant to shift from the organization’s longstanding craft unionism and started to clash with other leaders within the organization, such as John L. Lewis .[63]
The issue came up at the annual AFL convention in San Francisco in 1934 and 1935, but the majority voted against a shift to industrial unionism both years. [64] After the defeat at the 1935 convention, nine leaders from the preindustrial faction led by John Lewis met and organized the Committee for Industrial Organization within the AFL to “encourage and promote organization of workers in the mass production industries” for “educational and advisory” functions. [65]
The CIO, which later changed its name to the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), formed unions with the hope of bringing them into the AFL, but the AFL refused to extend full membership privileges to CIO unions. [66] In 1938, AFL expelled the CIO and its million members, and they formed a rival organization. [67]
John Llewellyn Lewis (1880-1969) was the autocratic president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) from 1920 to 1960, and the driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Using UMW organizers the new CIO established the United Steel Workers of America (USWA) and organized millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s. A powerful speaker and strategist, Lewis did not hesitate to shut down coal production—the nation's main energy and heating source—to get his demands.
Lewis threw his support behind Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) at the outset of the New Deal. After the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935, Lewis traded on the tremendous appeal that Roosevelt had with workers in those days, sending organizers into the coal fields to tell workers that "The President wants you to join the Union." His UMW was one of FDR's main financial supporters in 1936, contributing over $500,000.
Lewis expanded his base by organizing the so-called "captive mines," those held by the steel producers such as U.S. Steel. That required in turn organizing the steel industry, which had defeated union organizing drives in 1892 and 1919 and which had resisted all organizing efforts since then fiercely. The task of organizing steelworkers, on the other hand, put Lewis at odds with the AFL, which looked down on both industrial workers and the industrial unions that represented all workers in a particular industry, rather than just those in a particular skilled trade or craft.
Lewis was the first president of the Committee of Industrial Organizations. Lewis, in fact, was the CIO: his UMWA provided the great bulk of the financial resources that the CIO poured into organizing drives by the United Automobile Workers (UAW), the USWA, the Textile Workers Union and other newly formed or struggling unions. Lewis hired back many of the people he had exiled from the UMWA in the 1920s to lead the CIO and placed his protégé Philip Murray at the head of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee. Lewis played the leading role in the negotiations that led to the successful conclusion of the Flint sit-down strike conducted by the UAW in 1936-1937 and in the Chrysler sit-down strike that followed.
The CIO's actual membership (as opposed to publicity figures) was 2,850,000 for February 1942. This included 537,000 members of the UAW, just under 500,000 Steel Workers, almost 300,000 members of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, about 180,000 Electrical Workers, and about 100,000 Rubber Workers. The CIO also included 550,000 members of the United Mine Workers, which did not formally withdraw from the CIO until later in the year. The remaining membership of 700,000 was scattered among thirty-odd smaller unions. (Galenson, p. 585)
The war mobilization dramatically expanded union membership, from 8.7 million in 1940 to over 14.3 million in 1945, about 36% of the work force. For the first time large numbers of women factory workers were enrolled. Both the AFL and CIO supported Roosevelt in 1940 and 1944, with 75% or more of their votes, millions of dollars, and tens of thousands of precinct workers.[68] However, Lewis opposed Roosevelt on foreign policy grounds in 1940. He took the Mine Workers out of the CIO and rejoined the AFL. All labor unions strongly supported the war effort after June 1941 (when Germany invaded the Soviet Union). Left-wing activists crushed wildcat strikes. Nonetheless, Lewis realized that he had enormous leverage. In 1943, the middle of the war, when the rest of labor was observing a policy against strikes, Lewis led the miners out on a twelve-day strike for higher wages; the depth of public dismay—even hatred—of Lewis was palpable. In November 1943 the Fortune poll asked, "Are there any prominent individuals in this country who you feel might be harmful to the future of the country unless they are curbed?" 36% spontaneously named Lewis. (Next came 3% who named Roosevelt.) As a result the Conservative coalition in Congress was able to pass anti-union legislation, leading to the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947.[69]
The Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1936-37 was the decisive event in the formation of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW). During the war Walter Reuther took control of the UAW, and soon led major strikes in 1946. He ousted the Communists from the positions of power, especially at the Ford local. He was one of the most articulate and energetic leaders of the CIO, and of the merged AFL-CIO. Using brilliant negotiating tactics he leveraged high profits for the Big Three automakers into higher wages and superior benefits for UAW members. The formula had repercussions when the Germans and Japanese started exporting cars in the 1970s, and led to a series of crises and shrinkage of the union.
New enemies appeared for the labor unions after 1935. Newspaper columnist Westbrook Pegler was especially outraged by the New Deal's support for powerful labor unions that he considered morally and politically corrupt. Pegler saw himself a populist and muckraker whose mission was to warn the nation that dangerous leaders were in power. In 1941 Pegler became the first columnist ever to win a Pulitzer Prize for reporting, for his work in exposing racketeering in Hollywood labor unions, focusing on the criminal career of William Morris Bioff. As historian David Witwer has concluded, "He depicted a world where a conspiracy of criminals, corrupt union officials, Communists, and their political allies in the New Deal threatened the economic freedom of working Americans."[70] Pegler's popularity reflected a loss of support for unions and liberalism generally, especially as shown by the dramatic Republican gains in the 1946 elections, often using an anti-union theme.[71]
With the end of the war in August 1945 came a wave of major strikes, mostly led by the CIO. In November the UAW sent their 180,000 GM workers to the picket lines; they were joined in January 1946 by a half-million steelworkers, as well as over 200,000 electrical workers and 150,000 packinghouse workers. Combined with many smaller strikes a new record of strike activity was set. The results were mixed, with the unions making some gains, but the economy was disordered by the rapid termination of war contracts, the complex reconversion to peactime production, the return to the labor force of 12 million servicemen, and the return home of millions of women workers. The conservative control of Congress blocked liberal legislation, and "Operation Dixie," the CIO's efforts to expand massively into the South, failed.[72]
The Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 revised the Wagner Act to include restrictions on unions as well as management. It was a response to public demands for action after the wartime coal strikes and the postwar strikes in steel, autos and other industries were perceived to have damaged the economy, not to mention a threatened 1946 rail strike that would have shut down the national economy. It was bitterly fought by unions, vetoed by President Harry S. Truman, and passed over his veto. Repeated union efforts to repeal or modify it always failed.
The Act, officially known as the Labor-Management Relations Act, was sponsored by Senator Robert Taft and Representative Fred Hartley. President Truman described the act as a "slave-labor bill" in his veto, but he did use it. Congress overrode the veto on June 23, 1947, establishing the act as a law.
The Taft-Hartley Act amended the Wagner Act, officially known as the National Labor Relations Act, of 1935. The amendments added to the NLRA a list of prohibited actions, or "unfair labor practices", on the part of unions. The NLRA had previously prohibited only unfair labor practices committed by employers. It prohibited jurisdictional strikes, in which a union strikes in order to pressure an employer to assign particular work to the employees that union represents, and secondary boycotts and "common situs" picketing, in which unions picket, strike, or refuse to handle the goods of a business with which they have no primary dispute but which is associated with a targeted business. A later statute, the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, passed in 1959, tightened these restrictions on secondary boycotts still further.
The Act outlawed closed shops, which were contractual agreements that required an employer to hire only union members. Union shops, in which new recruits must join the union within a certain amount of time, are permitted, but only as part of a collective bargaining agreement and only if the contract allows the worker at least thirty days after the date of hire or the effective date of the contract to join the union. The National Labor Relations Board and the courts have added other restrictions on the power of unions to enforce union security clauses and have required them to make extensive financial disclosures to all members as part of their duty of fair representation. On the other hand, a few years after the passage of the Act Congress repealed the provisions requiring a vote by workers to authorize a union shop, when it became apparent that workers were approving them in virtually every case.
The amendments also authorized individual states to outlaw union security clauses entirely in their jurisdictions by passing "right-to-work" laws. Currently all of the states in the Deep South and a number of traditionally Republican states in the Midwest, Plains and Rocky Mountains regions have right-to-work laws.
The amendments required unions and employers to give sixty days' notice before they may undertake strikes or other forms of economic action in pursuit of a new collective bargaining agreement; it did not, on the other hand, impose any "cooling-off period" after a contract expired. Although the Act also authorized the President to intervene in strikes or potential strikes that create a national emergency, a reaction to the national coal miners' strikes called by the United Mine Workers of America in the 1940s, the President has used that power less and less frequently in each succeeding decade.
The AFL and CIO unions supported the Cold War policies of the Truman administration, including the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and NATO. Left wing elements protested and were forced out of the main unions. Thus Walter Reuther of the United Automobile Workers purged the UAW of all Communist elements. He was active in the CIO umbrella as well, taking the lead in expelling eleven Communist-dominated unions from the CIO in 1949. As a prominent figure in the anti-Communist left, Reuther was a founder of the liberal umbrella group Americans for Democratic Action in 1947. In 1949 he led the CIO delegation to the London conference that set up the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in opposition to the communist-dominated World Federation of Trade Unions. He had left the Socialist Party in 1939, and throughout the 1950s and 1960s was a leading spokesman for liberal interests in the CIO and in the Democratic Party.
The friendly merger of the AFL and CIO marked an end not only to the acrimony and jurisdictional conflicts between the coalitions, it also signaled the end of the era of experimentation and expansion that began in the mid 1930s. Merger became politically possible because of the deaths of Green of the AFL and Murray of the CIO in late 1952, replaced by George Meany and Reuther. The CIO was no longer the radical dynamo, and was no longer a threat in terms of membership for the AFL had twice as many members. Furthermore, the AFL was doing a better job of expanding into the fast-growing white collar sector, with its organizations of clerks, public employees, teachers, and service workers. Although the AFL building trades maintained all-white policies, the AFL had more black members in all as the CIO. The problem of union corruption was growing in public awareness, and CIO's industrial unions were less vulnerable to penetration by criminal elements than were the AFL's trucking, longshoring, building, and entertainment unions. But Meany had a strong record in fighting corruption in New York unions, and was highly critical of the notoriously corrupt Teamsters. Unification would help the central organization fight corruption, yet would not contaminate the CIO unions. The defeat of the New Deal in the 1952 election further emphasized the need for unity to maximize political effectiveness. From the CIO side the merger was promoted by David McDonald of the Steelworkers and his top aide Arthur J. Goldberg. To achieve the successful merger they jettisoned the more liberal policies of the CIO regarding civil rights and membership rights for blacks, jurisdictional disputes, and industrial unionism. Reuther went along with the compromises did not contest the selection of Meany to head the AFL-CIO.[73]
The Teamsters union was expelled from the AFL for its notorious corruption under president Dave Beck. Its troubles gained national attention from highly visible Senate hearings led by Robert Kennedy in the late 1950s. The target was Jimmy Hoffa, (1913-75), who replaced Beck and held total power until he was imprisoned in 1964.[74] For Republicans in the 1950s the campaign against labor racketeering offered a chance to peel the working-class vote away from the Democratic Party by politically dividing union members from their leadership. The culmination of this trend came in the late 1950s during the McClellan Committee hearings, which was the largest congressional investigation up to that time. Those hearings transformed Teamsters president Hoffa into a potent symbol of the danger posed by labor racketeering. The committee's revelations and the publicity they received undercut the labor movement. Polls showed growing public skepticism toward unions, and especially union leaders. Such attitudes helped conservatives win a new round of legislative restrictions on organized labor in the form of the Landrum-Griffin Act (1959).[75]
The UAW under Reuther played a major role in funding and supporting the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s.[76]
In March of 1962, after ten years of devoted organizing work for the Community Service Organization, (CSO), which sought to politically empower immigrants and improve their working and living conditions, Cesar Chavez left because he perceived that its lawyers and politicians were not economically conservative enough; he believed the movement leaders ought to be willing and able to sacrifice for the cause of farm worker unionizing. The lawyers and politicians working for CSO were holding meetings in what Chavez regarded as luxury hotels, and Chavez felt they were not in touch with the farm workers that he wanted to organize into a union. His plans for unionizing farm workers were disregarded by the other CSO leaders who disagreed with Chavez and favored continuing exclusively organizing neighborhoods, and engaging in other political and legislative actions. They felt that unionizing should have been left to the mainstream labor movement; however, labor was ineffective in organizing farm workers, despite the United Farm Workers (AWOC) efforts at unionization two years prior to Chavez’s exit from the CSO. Chavez characteristically declined a job offer from AWOC due to their hiring of contractors, which he felt undermined unionization. However, from the CSO he gained a strong relationship with expert organizer, Fred Ross, who recruited Chavez himself into the CSO and taught him his organizing techniques. He specifically taught Chavez the house meeting tactic of community organizing. During the first year of organizing attempts, Chavez, with his wife and children, and a nascent network of local organizers collected information from 80,000 people in 86 towns near Delano, California and thus began the United Farm Workers organization. [77]
The UFW was initially called the National Farm Workers Association (in 1962), but after collaborating with the AWOC in a successful boycott against California grape growers, the two organizations merged to become the United Farm Workers in 1965. Their collaboration resulted in securing contracts with growers by 1970, but the UFW had to regroup when contracts expired and the growers negotiated with the Teamsters. The four-year strike to follow was one of the most successful in farm worker organizing history, which called for walk-outs, and “an international boycott of grapes, lettuce, and Gallo wines.” The UFW was primarily made up of Mexican Americans, but its principles based in religious non-violence were inclusive of “Filipinos, African Americans and Anglos.” The UFW was thus able to join the Filipino workers in striking over the reinstatement of the supposedly disbanded bracero program, which reappeared under a new name, leading to the successful Delano grape boycott. Successes of the UFW include: (1.) securing a three-year contract with grape growers; (2.) securing another 3-year contract with Minute Maid for 55,000 workers; (3.) securing, with political allies, as the result of continuing strikes, an Agricultural Relations Board, after much conflict and union-busting by the Teamsters in the mid-1970s; and (4.) maintaining the ability to invoke consumer boycotts. [78]
Another major and less quantifiable UFW success is that of the change in the “polity” itself, which ordinarily is “restrictive” and would have blocked the UFW challenges to the status quo. But, as J. Craig Jenkins points out, the UFW maintained support and protection from various socio-political circles and gained important political allies, such as Robert F. Kennedy. There was also enormous support from students, religious organizations and their leaders, and from consumers who boycotted products that did not sustain UFW moral and economic goals. The involvement of various civil rights activists who provided training and radicalism was crucial and suggests that such a widespread change in political and social attitudes, despite intense local political opposition to UFW demands, was evoked by political crisis and was facilitated by effective organizing that appealed to many types of people who were willing and available to make sacrifices for “la causa.” As Jenkins points out, “state and national elites no longer automatically sided with the growers.” Thus, the political insurgency of the UFW was successful because of effective strategizing in the right kind of political environment.[79]
The success of the UFW can be attributed to a variety of factors, some of which are considered anomalous and, not the least of which was Chavez’s tenacity and the willingness of all UFW leaders to “sacrifice for the cause,” while the situation of farm workers in America became widely understood, both through UFW boycotts, pickets, and strikes, and through media attention, such as the 1960 CBS broadcast of Edward R. Murrow’s Harvest Of Shame, a documentary on the plight of migrant farm workers. The government began to pay attention and to provide state and federal assistance to migrant farm workers in the form of education and health care. And in the mid-1960’s the U.S. government ended the bracero program, an extension of a WWII response to labor shortages which allowed the importation of Mexican workers but, which evolved as an effective mechanism to thwart strikes and unionization by legal immigrants and by naturalized farm workers. [80]
Abuse and reification of the bracero program highlights the “classic economic problem for American migrants” in which there is always a ready and able pool of foreign workers who can displace domestic migrant workers and who can be used and manipulated by growers and farmers who want to break strikes and prevent unionization. Despite the end of the war and no real labor shortage, the bracero program peaked in 1956, covering 445,000 workers, who were used by agri-business to deprive domestic migrant farm workers of both jobs and of the ability to leverage for better wages, living, and working conditions through unionization. This was very instrumental in motivating the continued struggle for farm worker organizing; coupled with political opportunities and the leadership of the charismatic Cesar Chavez and his many other like-minded UFW colleagues, the UFW produced stunning and unprecedented results for farm workers throughout the 1960s and 1970s.[81]
Most unions were strongly opposed to Reagan in the 1980 presidential election. In August 3, 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) union --which had supported Reagan--rejected the government's pay raise offer and sent its 16,000 members out on strike to shut down the nation's commercial airlines. They demanded a reduction in the workweek to 32 from 40 hours, doubling of wages, a $10,000 bonus and early retirement. Federal law forbade such a strike, and the Transportation department implemented a backup plan (of supervisors and military air controllers) to keep the system running. The strikers were given 48 hours to return to work, else they would be fired and banned from ever again working in a Federal capacity. A fourth of the strikers came back to work, but 13,000 did not. 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.[82]
The UAW's numbers are representative of the manufacturing sector: 1,619,000 members in 1970, 1,446,000 in 1980, 952,000 in 1990, 623,000 in 2004.
The situation for the automotive industry and UAW members worsened dramatically in 1973. Gasoline prices shot up and, worse, Volkswagen and Honda started flooding the American market. For the first time major American industries had foreign competition for the domestic market. This started years of layoffs and plant closings. Entire industries, such as textiles, shoes, and consumer electronics shriveled up as imports soared, espevcially from Japan and China.
In autos, the UAW to keep jobs had to give up some benefits it had won over the decades. By 2005 the total labor costs per employee had reached $65 per hour at GM, so in November 2005 it announced it would shut down more plants, costing 40,000 unionized jobs. The crisis was prefigured by the near-bankruptcy of Chrysler in 1979--it was rescued by government loans--and the actual bankruptcy of Delphi (formerly part of GM) in 2005. The bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler in 2009 indicated a much smaller and leaner industry, as the government took effective ownership of the two. The UAW was able to salvage much of the retirement benefits for retired members, as the active membership continued to shrink and received lower pay and benefits.[83]
As the manufacturing industries that have constituted the strength of the American Labor Movement declined, such as the steel and auto industries, the rise of the service sector began to see major growth. Some white-collar jobs in the service sector include clerical workers, nurses, social workers, and teachers, and are often filled by women workers. Traditionally, women had been under-represented in union organizing due to the belief that “it was a woman’s ‘nature’ to be a loyal ‘office wife’” and to not show disloyalty by joining a union.[84] Also, it was commonly held that women would not remain in the work force long and would return to their "proper place" in the home upon being married. [85]Therefore, efforts to mobilize women in unions was considered a poor use of resources. As the industrial sector began to decline more attention has turned to organizing women in white-collar service jobs, or what has been called the pink-collar sector. The Teamsters have increased female membership, as have the United Auto Workers and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union. The increased membership of women has also shed new light on gender issues, with family issues and other women’s concerns gaining more legitimacy in the work place.[86]While the number of women working outside the home has been on the rise, women still retain most of the family and home responsibilities with husbands contributing little to household chores. [87] As a result, unions with large female memberships have begun to include family issues in bargaining, such as maternity leave.
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