History Of the Labor Movement in the United States

History Of the Labor Movement in the United States

This is a brief history of the labor movement in the United States

from the late eighteen hundreds to the present. In 1881 a movement

toward organized labor was beginning to be inforced. A group of

people from a few trades and industries such as carpenters, cigar-

makers, the printers, merchants, and the steel workers met and formed

The Federation of Organized Trades And Labor Unions. Although

it had little power, the organization was defanantly and the side as the

workers. It stated that a eight hour work day was considered a full day

and asked that all affiliated unions include this as part of there law by

May 1, 1886.

Dispite some success it was felt that the organization needed

reorganizing to make it a more effective center for the trade unions.

It was now that the American Federation of Labor came to be.

Gompers was elected president and was a leader in the national

cigar makers union as well. The newly formed American Federation

of Labor (AFL) began to recognize that women should be represented

through organized unions. In 1894 it adapted a resolution that "women

should be organized into trade unions to the end that they may

scientifically and permanently abolish the terrible evils accompanying

their weakend, unorganized state; and we demand that they receive

equal compensation with men for equal services performed."

While 8 hour day strike movement was generally peaceful, there was

some acts of violence that set the labor movement back. The

McCormick Harvester Company in Chicago learned ahead of time of

a planned strike and so locked out all its employees who held union

cards. Because of this fights broke out and police opened fire on the

union members killing four of them. A public rally to protest these

killings at Haymarket Square drew a large crowd. When a bomb went

off, killing seven police officers and wounding fifty more, the police

began to fire into the crowd and several more people were killed and

about two-hundred wounded. This incident set the eight -hour-day

movement back by a few years.

In the early parts of the 20th century, many struggles between

unions and corporations over hard work, unsafe and unhealthy

working conditions for very low wages were surfacing.

One confrontation, that in the end was stoped by a federal court

raised many questions about weather the government could simply

force union workers to return to work though an injunction.