HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE RISE OF AMERICAN LABOR UNIONS
1852: First Permanent National Union / 1868: Luzerne Mining DisasterMolly Maguires
/ 1869 – UP & CP Railroads LinkedPinkerton Detective Agency
/Noble Order of Knights of Labor
Agenda of Knights of Labor
/Downfall of Knights of Labor and the Haymarket Riot, May 4, 1886
1870's - Financial panic and depression took its toll of unions / 1886 - AFL Formed1890 - Sherman Anti-trust Act /
The 1892-99 Depression
1894 Pullman Strike
/ 1903-1904 - Colorado Miner Strike for 8 Hour Day1905 - Industrial Workers of the World /
IWW’s Free Speech Fights
The Haywood Trial
/Lawrence, Mass Textile Strike
The Clayton Act
/1914 Industrial Accidents
Ludlow Strike Disaster
/ 1915: Commission on Industrial RelationsWWI Labor Crackdown
/ 1920-29 Post-War Resistance to Unions1926 Railway Labor Act
/1929 Great Depression
1930s Dramatic Union Gains / 1932 - Norris-LaGuardia Act1933 National Industrial Recovery Act
/1934 Anti-Union Drives
Mohawk Valley Formula
/Worker Victories in the 1930s
Minneapolis Trucker Strike
/The Wagner Act
1936 Sit-Down Strikes
/First sit-down strike
CIO Organizing Strategy
/History of Organizing in Auto Industry
Flint Sit-down
/1937 Red Smear
Steel Workers Organizing Committee
/1938 Congress of Industrial Organizations
WWII and The Growth of Unions
/ 1945-46UAW Demand To See Books
/1947 Taft-Hartley Act
1950's /1955 AFL-CIO Merger
1959 Landrum-Griffin Act
/ 1960-65 Union Stagnation1966 UAW Splits From AFL-CIO
/ 1968 “Embourgeoisement” of American Workers1969 Boulwarism
/ 1980's Recession and The Rise of Foreign Competitionsources
1852: First Permanent National Union
National Typographers Union (although the Stonecutters, Molders, Cigarmakers, Bootmakers were soon to follow) was formed as a result of improved transportation and communication from railroad growth. The union was an effort to deal with the flow of cheap goods to high wage markets and the movement of employees to permit migratory worker admission to locals.
1868: Luzerne Mining Disaster
Irish miners form the Workingmen's Benevolent Association of Miners. In 1869, the Luzerne Mine disaster resulted in 170 dead miners because owners refused to spend a few dollars for a second escape exit. Thousands of miners kept a vigil at the shaft for two days, begging to be used on rescue teams. As the dead men were removed, organizers plead for union solidarity. They knew they might be facing death just by organizing. In 1842, their union had been shot out of existence. At the time the law regarded unionism as a conspiracy, like bank robbing. Mine owners spent $4 million to break the union. Their strategy was masterminded by Franklin Benjamin Gown.
Molly Maguires
At first Gowen's plan was to charge the union with communism. Then he brought in the Pinkerton Detective Agency and said that the progressive miners had formed a terrorist band known as the Molly Maguires. There is some dispute as to whether there ever was any such organization in Pennsylvania. For two years, a Pinkerton operative traveled the coal fields but was unable to obtain any evidence of crime committed by the miners.
When employer groups killed militant miners, the miners fought back. Gowen then deluged the press with stories about murder and arson by Molly Maguires, which was printed as uncontested fact. The Pinkerton operative testified at trial that certain leaders of the miners had committed various murders; Gowen had gotten himself appointed special prosecutor at the trial. The spy's testimony was corroborated by a prisoner, whose own wife testified that he was lying, and a vagrant known as Kelly the Bum. Twenty-four death sentences resulted.
1869 – UP & CP Railroads Linked
On May 10, 1869, the last spike was driven to connect the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads; 30,000 miles of railroad had been built between 1867 and 1873. Railroads were the first major trusts in finance and business to come to the attention of the public; they were also the first to inspire near-universal hatred among American workers.
Pinkerton Detective Agency
Pinkerton Agency provided a private army for employers; they secretly advertised their union-busting services. They were used not only as strikebreakers and spies, but also as agents' provocateurs, deliberately creating violence which was often used to discredit the labor movement and frame-up and imprison its members.
Noble Order of Knights of Labor
The Noble Order was a secret society until 1879. The union admitted skilled and unskilled workers, women, farmers, and some self-employed, but excluded lawyers, doctors, liquor dealers and other non-working men. The 1870 depression hastened its growth. The union emphasized political action and producer cooperation rather than collective bargaining. In principle, the Noble Order opposed strikes, stating a strategy of legislation and education. In practice, its greatest successes were in railroad strikes against wage cuts and discriminatory discharges.
In 1885, the Knights got Jay Gould, an industrial giant of the day and a symbol of unrestrained economic power among the rich, to end discrimination against striking Knights. The Knights prestige soared. Previously, Gould had bragged, “I can hire one half the working class to kill the other half." Thousands of immigrants who did not speak English, and who had not been told about the strikes, arrived under terms of contract labor, where owners pitted one nationality against another. During this period, industrial serfs were often used as strikebreakers.
Agenda of Knights of Labor
The agenda of the Knights of Labor was not just "wages" but included an 8-hour workday, abolition of child labor, direct representation and legislation, compulsory education, income and inheritance tax, government ownership of railroad and telegraph, making laws the same for employers and employees, and compulsory arbitration.
Downfall of Knights of Labor and the Haymarket Riot, May 4, 1886
After 80,000 workers settled their strike for an eight-hour day, the strike resumed after the employer kept the strikebreakers on the payroll. Local unionists had mass meeting to protest death of six strikers on picket line. The protest was peaceable, and the mayor of Chicago told the police chief to send the police home. Later, police marched upon the speakers and demanded that the meeting disperse. In the middle of this turmoil, someone threw a bomb and police began firing round after round into the stunned crowd, killing several and wounding 200. One police officer was killed and seven injured.
At the time many thought, with some police corroboration, that the bomb was thrown by an agent provocateur. But newspapers demanded blood from workers. National press stated that the leaders should be hanged for their political views, for their words, and for their general activities. After a trial at which there was no hard evidence against the leaders, the leaders were condemned to death. After world-wide protests following the verdict, the governor commuted the sentences of three of the local unionists. But the leaders and two others were hung.
1870's - Financial panic and depression took its toll of unions
Substantial paralysis of traffic and extensive disruption resulted from large-scale railroad strikes in protest against wage cuts. After riots in several cities, federal troops and state militia were called out "to restore order." Few railroad workers had been organized, and the strikes appeared to be largely spontaneous. They were unsuccessful, partly because violence alienated public opinion.
1886 - AFL Formed
Craft unions formed the American Federation of Labor ("AFL") with the conservative Samuel Gompers as president. The AFL rejected radical utopian features of earlier movements (they were primarily skilled workers). The AFL philosophy: was "pure wage consciousness," with an acceptance of capitalism, which made it the first national labor group to do so.
AFL chartered one trade union with exclusive jurisdiction. Great mass of unskilled workers remained unorganized. Also, Gompers failed to admit railroad unions because he insisted on members eliminating race discrimination in their constitutions. He later acceded because of resistance.
1890 - SHERMAN ANTI-TRUST ACT
Much of America’s industrial monopoly graduated into the realm of imperialism with its influence spanning the globe into places such as Cuba, the Philippines, and Hawaii.
In response to such industrial power, Congress passed in 1890 the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. However, from the beginning, the act was destined to be used more successfully against labor than against corporations.
As the 1890's began there were price-fixing, wage-fixing trusts in oil, sugar, whiskey, iron and steel, cottonseed oil, lead, tobacco, meatpacking, agricultural machinery, telegraph, telephone and railroads. From 1892 to 1896 the government brought ten cases under the Act; five against labor and five against corporations. The courts decided in favor of the government in four of five cases against labor and in only one of five against the trusts.
The first time it was used was in 1894-95 against Eugene Debs and other Pullman strike leaders. In the Danbury Hatters case, the antitrust law was applied against the union boycott. A common use of the act was to attach workers' homes to a suit pending outcome of the suit. While the Hatters case cost the AFL $420,000, the real cost was the resulting dread among laborers of joining unions out of fear of being sued with potential of treble damages. AFL had to drop boycott as a weapon.
The 1892-99 Depression
In the depression of 1893, the AFL and other major unions lost less ground than they had lost in any previous major downturn. The union movement in the 1890's suffered some famous defeats. Federal troops were called out dozens of times in the West; thousands of miners were placed in barbed-wire camps for months without trial or charges. Thousands of others were loaded into freight cars and deported without trial because they were union men.
1894 Pullman Strike
The American Railway Union (ARU) struck at the Pullman Company. The ARU admitted anyone, except Blacks, who received a paycheck from a railroad company.
The 5,000 employees of Pullman were forced to live in his "utopian" Chicago community where they were gouged on rent, water, and other services; charges were automatically deducted from wages. Spies were rampant. Eugene V. Debs arrived three days after the employees first struck. After the company refused to negotiate twice, the ARU agreed to a boycott. If any member of the ARU was fired for refusing to move sleeping cars, all other members on the line concerned would strike.
The General Managers Association welcomed the conflict, perceiving an opportunity to break the new powerful union. They insisted that Pullmans be on every train, confident that the federal government would intervene if they claimed interference with the mails. A railroad corporation lawyer, Olney, was Attorney General of the US and he had great influence with President Cleveland.
Debs tried to prevent violence; managers promoted it. In fact, the official government report submitted to President Cleveland by the US Strike Commission following the strike said: "There is no evidence before the commission that the officers of the ARU at any time participated in or advised intimidation, violence or destruction of property."
On third day of the strike, railroads began to manufacture violence. Thugs, thieves and ex-convicts were sworn in as deputy marshals, with power to arrest and shoot, both of which they did. They were armed and paid by the railroads, and acted in the double capacity of railroad employees and US officers. The Chicago Police Chief, after the strike was over, testified that the railroad's government officials fired without provocation into unarmed and peaceful crowds.
Despite violence, the strike was still solid on the fifth day. Debs thought that the strike might actually be successful. He was working day and night to keep it peaceful. The national papers declared that Debs was leading a conspiracy to overthrow the US government by force and violence.
On the sixth day, a sweeping federal injunction was issued forbidding all strike activity. The injunction was issued ex parte and without notice of hearing. Debs and other ARU officials declared that they could not yield to the injunction and call off the strike without dealing the labor movement a blow that would set it back for years.
Two days later President Cleveland ordered federal troops to Illinois despite the protest of Governor Altgeld. Thirty strikers and women were killed, and three times that many wounded; innocent bystanders were among the most frequent victims. On July 10 a federal grand jury indicted Debs for conspiracy against the US and interfering with interstate commerce in violation of the Sherman Act. He was arrested and gave bail; strikers still fought on and for a day or so it seemed as if there might be a nationwide general strike.
On July 17 Debs was arrested again with contempt of court and violation of the July 2 injunction. With its leaders behind bars, the strike was finally broken. The ARU was smashed and industrial unionism was set back some forty years.
Clarence Darrow, a young lawyer who resigned from his job with the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad to defend the strikers, met his clients in the filthy Cook County jail. Debs' chief concern was the 120,000 ARU men who would now be blacklisted. The US Supreme Court approved his contempt charge and sentenced him to six months in prison. When he emerged from prison, 10,000 Chicagoans greeted him and fought to touch him. Over 100,000 people met him when his train arrived in Chicago and a parade was held.
1903-1904 - Colorado Miner Strike for 8 Hour Day
During the strike, 42 men were killed; 112 wounded; 1,345 arrested and imprisoned; and 773 deported. Unions had gotten the Colorado legislature in 1899 to pass an eight-hour workday law, but mine owners universally violated it.
In 1901, the state Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. Miners got a referendum to amend the constitution, and passed it again. Still, mine owners refused to obey. Miners became determined to get by strike what they had not been able to get through the use of political action and law. Strike was led by Big Bill Haywood, a well-read miner whose hand had been crushed in a mine accident.
When judges found in favor of the miners, their courts were invaded by soldiers. When newspapers printed a word favorable to the union, they were closed and their staffs imprisoned. Lawyers, after defending strikers, were assaulted and deported. Professional killers were imported by the score by the Mine Owners Association, which organized the Citizens' Alliance, vigilantes with 30,000 members in the state.