Labor history of the United States
Craft workers found that these changes launched them into competition with each other to a degree that they had not experienced previously, which limited their opportunities and created substantial risks of downward mobility that had not existed prior to that time.
Over the first half of the 19th century, there are twenty-three known cases of indictment and prosecution for criminal conspiracy, taking place in six states: Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and Virginia.
59 (1806), a case against a combination of journeymen cordwainers in Philadelphia for conspiracy to raise their wages, the defense attorneys referred to the common law as arbitrary and unknowable and instead praised the legislature as the embodiment of the democratic promise of the revolution.
[13] In ruling that a combination to raise wages was per se illegal, recorder Moses Levy strongly disagreed, writing that "[t]he acts of the legislature form but a small part of that code from which the citizen is to learn his duties ... [i]t is in the volumes of the common law we are to seek for information in the far greater number, as well as the most important causes that come before our tribunals.
[19] Another line of cases, led by Justice John Gibson of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania's decision in Commonwealth v. Carlisle, held that motive of the combination, rather than simply its existence, was the key to illegality.
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 workday, and exclusion of Chinese and other foreign contract workers.
The WFM took a conservative turn in the aftermath of the Colorado Labor Wars and the trials of its president, Charles Moyer, and its secretary treasurer, Big Bill Haywood, for the conspiratorial assassination of Idaho's former governor.
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.
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".
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.
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.
As a result, women not only began working in heavy industry, but also took other jobs traditionally reserved solely for men, such as railway guards, ticket collectors, bus and tram conductors, postal workers, police officers, firefighters, and clerks.
[71] Women of color played a significant role in the American labor movement of the 20th century, helping to advance workers' rights in a variety of workplace environments, including fields, factories, and homes.
Two other important leaders, Dorothy Height—who worked to help improve opportunities for African-American women—and activist Dolores Huerta—who lobbied on behalf of migrant farmers and eventually founded the United Farm Workers of America—were also essential in promoting social justice and fair labor standards.
And yet, as Jews who emerged from a left-wing progressive tradition, these female garment workers nurtured a commitment to social justice, one that served as the catalyst for the labor organizing that these women later led.
The bombing, one of dozens of terrorist sabotage events nationwide organized by members of the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers, killed 21 and injured over 100.
The immediate cause of the strike was the Railroad Labor Board's announcement that hourly wages for railway repair and maintenance workers would be cut by seven cents on July 1.
[88] 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."
[101] For example, the now United Mine Workers of America were able to reignite the coal labor movement in Kentucky and West Virginia with Section 7(a) and eliminated compulsory residence in company towns for 350,000 miners.
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.
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.
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.
By 1952, the AFL had given up on decentralization, local autonomy, and non-partisanship, and had developed instead a new political approach marked by the same style of centralization, national coordination, and partisan alliances that characterized the CIO.
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.
[144][self-published source] Marxian economist Richard D. Wolff argues that anti-communism was part of a strategy by big business, Republicans and conservatives to single out and destroy the members of the coalition that forced through the New Deal, namely organized labor, socialist and communist parties.
[159] Republicans, using conservative think tanks as idea farms, began to push through legislative blueprints to curb the power of public employee unions as well as eliminate business regulations.
Through collaboration with consumers and student protesters, the UFW was able to secure a three-year contract with the state's top grape growers to increase the safety and pay of farm workers.
On 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.
[189] Federal law forbade such a strike, and the United States Department of Transportation implemented a backup plan (of supervisors and military air controllers) to keep the system running.
[218] From May 2 to November 9, 2023, a series of long labor disputes within the film and television industries of the United States took place, mainly focused on the strikes of the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA.
