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AFL and Samuel Gompers
One of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. Founded by an alliance of craft unions that broke off by the Knights of Labor. Their president was Samuel Gompers who was originally of the Cigar Makers' International Union. -
International Ladies Garment Workers Union
The largest labor union to represent workers in the women's garment industry. It was formed by the merging of several NYC unions in 1900. It continued until it merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union to form UNITE in 1995. -
Collective Bargaining, Contracts, Closed/Open Shop
Collective bargaining is an industrial relations mechanism and an aspect of negotiation. They usually negotiate wages, hours, and working conditions. Generally their is a resulting contract, which is an agreement entered into voluntarily by two or more parties, and they are bound to this agreement by legal obligations. An example of an agreement that could be made is "closed shop", which means the employer agrees to hire union members only. In "open shop", this is not required. -
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Labor Movement
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Mother Jones
She was a prominent labor and community organizer. She helped coordinate major strikes and cofounded the Industrial Workers of the World. -
Industrial Workers of the World and Eugene V. Debs
An international union that contends that all workers should be united as a class and that the wage system should be abolished. It was founded at a convention in 1905 of 200 anarchists, socialists, and radical trade unionists who opposed the policies of the AFL. Eugene V. Debs was one of the founding members, and also ran for the U.S. presidency several times for the Socialist Party of America. He was arrested in 1918 for his speech denouncing American participartion in WWI. -
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her writings, speeches, and political activism. She was a part of the development of the anarchist political policy in North America. In 1906 she founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth. -
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
This was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of New York. It caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or falling or jumping to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent Jewish and Italian immigrant women aged sixteen to twenty-three. As a result, the American Society of Safety Engineers was founded in 1911 in New York City. -
Department of Labor
The purpose of the Department of Labor is to promote and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United States, improve working conditions advance profitable employment oppurtunities, and assure work-related benefits and rights. On this day, President William Howard Taft signed a bill establishing the DoL as a Cabienet-level Department. -
Clayton Act
This was an amendment to the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. It prohibited exclusive sales contracts, local price cutting to freeze out competitors, rebates, interlocking directorates in corporations capitalized at million or more in the same field of business, and intercorporate stock holding. It refused to treat human labor as a commodity. -
Ludlow Massacre
1200 striking coal miners and their families were attacked by the Colorado National Guard and the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company camp guards. It was the single deadliest incident in the souther Colorado Coal Strike. The UMWA failed to gain and recognition, but it had a lasting effect on Colorado mine conditions and labor relations nationally. -
World War I
This was a global war centered in Europe which involved all the world's great powers, which in two opposing alliances: the Allies (based on the Triple Entente of the United Kingdom, France and Russia) and the Central Powers (originally the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. The trigger was the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. -
Adamson Act
A U.S. federal law that established an eight-hour workday, with additional pay for overtime work, for interstate railroad workers. -
Yellow-Dog Contract
This is an agreement between an employer and an employee in which the employee agrees not to be a member of a labor union. -
Great Depression
This was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place during most of the 1930's. It began with the stock market crash on 10/29/29, or "Black Tuesday". -
Davis-Bacon Act
This is a U.S. federal law that establishes the requirement for paying the local wages on public works projects. -
Norris-LaGuardia Act
This was a U.S. federal law that banned yellow-dog contracts, barred the federal courts from issuing injunctions against nonviolent labor disputes, and gave the right of noninterference by employers against workers joining trade unions. -
Wagner Act
This is a U.S. federal law that protects the rights of employees in the private sector to discuss workplace issues, strike, and engage in collective bargaining. -
CIO
The Congress of Industrial Organizations was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the U.S. and Canada. -
Fair Labor Standards Act and Minimum Wage
This is a federal statute of the U.S. that introduced a maximum 44-hour seven-day workweek, established a national minimum wage, guaranteed "time-and-a-half" for overtime in certain jobs, and prohibited most employment of minors in "oppressive child labor". Minimum wage is the lowest salary that employers may legally pay to workers (hourly, daily, or monthly).
