Labor Movement

By riahh10

  • Knights of Labor Founded

    -An eight-hour work day
    -To take away child labor
    -Take away the convict contract labor system (the concern was not for the prisoners; the Knights of Labor opposed competition from this cheap source of labor)
    -Establishment of cooperatives to replace the traditional wage system and help tame capitalism's excesses
    -Equal pay for equal work
    -Government ownership of telegraph facilities and the railroads
    -A public land policy designed to aid settlers and not speculators
    -A graduated income tax.

  • Haymarket Riot

    A labor protest rally near Chicago's Haymarket Square turned into a riot after someone threw a bomb at police. At least eight people died of the violonce that day. Eight radical labor activists were convicted in connection with the bombing.

  • Samuel Gompers founds the American Federation of Labor

    Samuel Gompers was a diehard capitalist and saw no need for a radical restructuring of America.He quickly learned that the issues that workers cared about most deeply were personal. They wanted higher wages and better working conditions. These issues would always unite the labor class. By keeping it simple, unions could avoid the pitfalls that had drawn the life from the National Labor Union and the Knights of Labor

  • Wagner Act gives workers right to organize

    National Labor Relations(NLR)
    This act gave employees and organizations the right to engage in protective activity and to gain union representation.
    Prior to implementing the NLRA, the individual states had the responsibility of regulating Labor Law. Prior to the implementation of the NLRA, states were establishing policies and laws that were pro business. The unions were organizing and voting for recognition, but the courts did not force the employers to the bargaining table.

  • AFL Splinter group becomes the independent CIO headed by John Lewis

    John Lewis saw no future for industrial unions within the AFL, so he decided to withdraw them and created the Congress of Industrial Organizations. This was important to the labor movement because it helped industrial workers and industrial unions which the AFL seen as unskilled laborors.

  • Taft Hartley Act

    The taft-Hartly Act was passed over the veto of Harry S. The act delcared the closed shop illegal and permitted the union shop only after a vote of a majority of the employees. It also forbade jurisdictional strikes and secondary boycotts. Also gave the United States Attorney General the power to obtain an 80 day injunction when a threatened or actual strike that he/she believed "imperiled the national health or safety".

  • AFL and CIO merge to create AFL-CIO

    The AFL and the CIO were rivals for the twenty year's when separated as two organizations. This split between the AFL and the CIO became a crippling force in a movement that is only strong with solidarity. By the 1950’s the groups realized that they would be much stronger and more effective as a single organization. In 1955 the two groups merged and became known as the AFL-CIO, the same organization which continues their struggle today.

  • Government Employees begin to organize

    Bargaining did not come until the government employees began to organize. When they organized, the population grew.