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This was the first national union.
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In this court case, a Massachusetts court ruled that unions were legal.
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This was founded by Samuel Gompers, organized skilled workers by crafts. They fought for higher wages, shorter hours, amd improved working conditions through collective bargaining.
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During Chicago's Haymarket Riots, in which striking McCormick Harvester Workers clashed with police, four strikers were kiled.
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This was founded to improve wages and working conditions of coal mine workers.
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Steel workers in Homestead, Pennsylvania struck against the Carnegie Steel plant because the company had reduced waages. The Homestead strike became violent when the steel company hired private police to protect strike breakers. In the ensuing confrontation, nine strikers and seven police officers were killed.
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Railroad fireman Eugene V. Debs founded the American Railway union.
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Workers which manufactured sleeping and dining cars, went on strike because their wages had been cut. Acting out of sympathy for the Pullman workers, conductors and engineers of the American Railway union refused to handle trains with Pullman cars attatched. A federal judge ordered the strikers back to work, and when they refused, President Grover Cleveland sent in federal troops. The ensuing violence turned public opinion against the strikers, and their president, Eugene Debs, was jailed.
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This first major union was founded in 1869 by Uriah Stephens, a Philadelphia tailor. By 1879, its membership of nine thousand included women, African Americans, and immigrants, both skilled and unskilled. By 1886, they boasted a membership of seven hundred thousand. They won several important strikes, but their influence declined after they were blamed for killing seven police officers who attempted to break up a meeting in Haymarket Square, Chicago.
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This was organized for unskilled workers and immigrants, advocated one large national union that would use strikes and sabotage to achieve its goals as opposed to the more peaceful American Federation of Labor.
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This allowed picketting and limited the use of injunctions in labor disputes.
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A. Philip Randolph created this
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This protected the rights of workers to oraganize and elect representatives for collective bargaining. Also in this year, the CIO, Congress of Industrial Organization, was formed by several AFL unions to promote unionism in industry.
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This established a minimum wage (25 cents an hour) and time and a half for over forty hours of work a week.
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An admendment to the Fair Labor Act prohibited child labor.
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They merged in 1955.
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President Ronald Reagan fired 11,500 air traffic controllers in 1981 for striking in violation of a no-strike clause in their contract.
