On the other hand, it campaigned for the exclusion of Chinese workers from the United States and made only halting, ineffective efforts to defend the rights of women and Black people.
African-American workers established their own Colored National Labor Union as an adjunct, but their support of the prevalent racism of the citizens of the United States limited its effectiveness.
The NLU also obtained similar legislation in a number of states, such as New York and California, but discovered that loopholes in the statute made them unenforceable or ineffective.
[2] The organization was spectacularly unsuccessful at the polls and lost virtually all of its union supporters, many of whom moved on to the newly formed Knights of Labor.
The depression of the 1870s, which drove down union membership generally, was one of the final factors contributing to the end of the NLU, the other being the dismantling of policies instituted during Radical Reconstruction.