It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions eager to provide mutual support and disappointed in the Knights of Labor.

In 1955, the two merged to create the AFL-CIO, which has comprised the longest lasting and most influential labor federation in the United States to this day.

[3] Just when it appeared that the strike might be won, the New York District Assembly of the Knights of Labor leaped into the breach, offering to settle with the 19 factories at a lower wage scale than that proposed by the CMIU, so long as only the Progressive Cigarmakers' Union was employed.

[3] The leadership of the CMIU was enraged and demanded that the New York District Assembly be investigated and punished by the national officials of the Knights of Labor.

[5] On April 25, 1886, a circular letter was issued by Adolph Strasser of the Cigar Makers and P. J. McGuire of the Carpenters, addressed to all national trade unions and calling for their attendance of a conference in Philadelphia on May 18.

"[5] The call was signed by Strasser and McGuire, along with representatives of the Granite Cutters, the Iron Molders, and the secretary of the Federation of Trades of North America, a forerunner of the A.F.

[10] Negotiations with the dissident craft unions were nipped in the bud by the governing General Assembly of the K of L, however, with the organization's Grand Master Workman, Terence V. Powderly refusing to enter into serious discussions on the matter.

Convinced that no accommodation with the leadership of the Knights of Labor was possible, the heads of the five labor organizations which issued the call for the April 1886 conference issued a new call for a convention to be held December 8, 1886, in Columbus, Ohio, in order to construct "an American federation of alliance of all national and international trade unions.

[14] The founding convention voted to make the President of the new federation a full-time official at a salary of $1,000 per year (equal to $33,911 today), and Samuel Gompers of the Cigar Makers' International Union was elected to the position.

[17] In the face of the steady disintegration of its rival, the fledgling American Federation of Labor struggled to maintain itself, with the group showing very slow and incremental growth in its first years, only cracking the 250,000 member mark in 1892.

of L.'s founding convention declaring "higher wages and a shorter workday" to be "preliminary steps toward great and accompanying improvements in the condition of the working people."

of L. faced its first major reversal when employers launched an open shop movement in 1903, designed to drive unions out of construction, mining, longshore and other industries.

of L.'s affiliated unions declined between 1904 and 1914 in the face of this concerted anti-union drive, which made effective use of legal injunctions against strikes, court rulings given force when backed with the armed might of the state.

The National Civic Federation was formed by several progressive employers who sought to avoid labor disputes by fostering collective bargaining and "responsible" unionism.

of L. Socialists, who believed the only way to help workers was to remove large industry from private ownership, denounced labor's efforts at cooperation with the capitalists in the National Civic Federation.

of L. even more strenuously opposed all immigration from Asia because it represented (to its Euro-American members) an alien culture that could not be assimilated into American society.

of L. unions strongly encouraged young men to enlist in the military, and fiercely opposed efforts to reduce recruiting and slow war production by pacifists, the anti-war Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the radical faction of Socialists.

To keep factories running smoothly, President Wilson established the National War Labor Board in 1918, which forced management to negotiate with existing unions.

of L. unions tried to make their gains permanent and called a series of major strikes in meat, steel and other industries.

[40][41] In the pro-business environment of the 1920s, business launched a large-scale offensive on behalf of the so-called "open shop", which meant that a person did not have to be a union member to be hired.

He made sure that relief operations like the Civilian Conservation Corps did not include a training component that would produce skilled workers who would compete with union members in a still glutted market.

The Wagner Act also set up to the National Labor Relations Board, which used its powers to rule in favor of unions and against the companies.

[46] That same year workers at the Westinghouse plant in East Springfield MA, members of federal labor union 18476, struck for recognition.

of L. convention in Washington, DC, John Frey of the Molders and Metal Trades pushed for craft union internationals to have jurisdictional supremacy over the FLU's; the Carpenters headed by William Hutchenson and the IBEW also pushed for FLU's to turn over their members to the authority of the craft internationals between 1933 and 1935.

[55] Lewis argued that the A.F.of L. was too heavily oriented toward traditional craftsmen, and was overlooking the opportunity to organize millions of semiskilled workers, especially those in industrial factories that made automobiles, rubber, glass and steel.

[citation needed] Affiliates within the AFL formed "departments" to help resolve these jurisdictional conflicts and to provide a more effective voice for member unions in given industries.

For example, the Chicago Federation of Labor spearheaded efforts to organize packinghouse and steel workers during and immediately after World War I.

The business unionist approach also focused on skilled workers' immediate job-related interests, while refusing to "rush to the support of any one of the numerous society-saving or society destroying schemes" involved in larger political issues.

of L. concentrated its political efforts during the last decades of the Gompers administration on securing freedom from state control of unions—in particular an end to the court's use of labor injunctions to block the right to organize or strike and the application of the anti-trust laws to criminalize labor's use of pickets, boycotts and strikes.

Construction unions supported legislation that governed entry of contractors into the industry and protected workers' rights to pay, rail and mass production industries sought workplace safety legislation, and unions generally agitated for the passage of workers' compensation statutes.