LABOR MOVEMENT

American Labor Movement

American Labor Movement

Introduction

Since the late 1700s many workers have participated in the American labor movement, organizing themselves collectively to improve their lives and working conditions. By forming unions, as well as a range of other working-class institutions, workers have used the leverage of their labor to gain a voice not only in their workplaces but also in their communities and in politics. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the American economy was predominantly agricultural. Until 1850 there were more slaves than wage earners. Nevertheless, in urban and urbanizing areas a growing number of mechanics, artisans, apprentices, and other waged workers engaged in small-scale manufacturing, which took place within households or in small workshops. This paper discusses American labor movement.

Discussion

In the 1780s and 1790s craft workers began to organize themselves. Through their unions and protective associations, workers provided mutual aid for their members, maintained control over entry into their trades, and pressured employers for better compensation, hours, and working conditions. In response, employers challenged their workers' right to organize. In the courts they charged that union activity constituted an illegal conspiracy against the public good, an argument that was upheld in several important cases. (Cohen 1990)

In the 1820s and 1830s many workers successfully built craft unions in the context of relatively favorable economic and political conditions. In urban areas carpenters, masons, cordwainers, stevedores, shoemakers, weavers, and others formed unions and city central trade councils. In the mid-1830s there were several major work stoppages, including a general strike in Philadelphia and strikes by women who worked in the textile factories of Lowell and Lynn, Massachusetts. (Fantasia 2004)

Workers' common interests began to bring them together across craft lines. In 1834 the New York General Trades Union called a convention of unionists that led to the formation of the National Trades Union, the first national federation of labor organizations. At the same time the labor movement entered the political arena. Forming their own political parties, workers ran against mainstream candidates in thirty-five towns between 1827 and 1832, advancing issues such as the shortening of the workday, the abolition of prison labor, universal public education, and antipoverty measures. However, the Panic of 1837 and the ensuing depression weakened the union movement significantly.

From 1850 on, industrialization accelerated, particularly with the expansion of the railroads and the onset of war production, and the wage system consolidated itself. Within this context the labor movement regained its strength. Workers and reformers, inspired by the leadership of Ira Steward of Boston, agitated for legislation to shorten the workday. In the 1860s and early 1870s, several powerful unions emerged. In 1866 the National Labor Union (NLU) was formed, bringing together trade unions and reform organizations around a diverse set of demands. The NLU promoted trade unionism, producers' and consumers' cooperatives, and political activism, including the formation of a labor party and the pursuit of eight-hour legislation.

Thousands of workers participated in socialist organizations that overlapped with the labor ...