The Organized Labor Movement

Mr. HoodU.S. History

In factories, owners sought to maximize profit by cutting the wages of workers.

Some factories became known as sweatshops because workers would be forced to work for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, in small, hot, dark, and dirty conditions.

Sweatshops employed mainly women.

Sweatshop owners kept close watch over workers hours and clocked times in and out.

Workers Endure Hardship

Women took a huge leap forward when they entered the industrial work force.

But, they were still not equals to men in both type of work and pay.

Children also entered the workplace to make extra money for their families. They were paid much less than adults.

Woman and Child Labor

Company Towns- isolated communities near the workplace, owned by the business and rented out to the employees. Also had a company store.

This allowed business owners to further cash in on cheap labor by choosing where they lived and what items were sold to them at the prices they chose.

Company Towns

Collective Bargaining- negotiating as a group for higher wages or better working conditions.

Strikes-workers agreed to cease work until certain demands were met.

Labor Unions Form

Socialism-a movement that began in the 1830s, it is an economic philosophy that favors public, instead of private, control of property and income. Idea expanded by Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto.

Socialism

Knights of Labor-labor Union that included all workers; skilled, unskilled, and of any trade, also allowed African Americans to join.

Terence V. Powderly- eventually assumed control of the KoL, he continued to pursue the goal of leading factory workers out of “wage bondage”. Encouraged boycotts and negotiation with employers.

Knights of Labor

Samuel Gompers formed the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

Gompers was a poor English immigrant who wanted to change working conditions of his fellow workers.

The AFL included all workers but was considered a craft Union because it was a loose organization of skilled workers from some 100 local unions

Samuel Gompers and the AFL

Gompers set high dues to join the AFL.

The money was set up to create a strike and pension fund for needy workers.

It did not focus on social gains, but it did focus on very specific workers issues such as wages, working conditions, and working hours.

Did not gain the members like the KoL mainly because it did not support equality for women and many African Americans were excluded.

The AFL

Haymarket Riot-thousands of workers united by the KoL wanted an 8 hour workday so they take to the streets in strike. A fight broke out when a radical threw a bomb killing a policeman. Eight men were tried for murder and executed.

Significance-The American public came to be afraid of workers Unions and the KoL slowly died out.

Strikes!

Homestead Strike-epidemic of steelworkers and miners strikes that took place as economic depression spread across America. In each case troops were called out to suppress the workers.

Significance-a private police force was brought in to subdue the strike, they were called Pinkertons, they killed and wounded several workers to show their no tolerance policy for a strike.

Strikes!

Pullman Strike-Railway strike led by Eugene V. Debs who formed the American Railway Union (ARU). Called for a strike of all railways by workers. Movement in the nation stopped. Owners cited the Sherman Antitrust act because the workers were stopping passage between the states.

Significance-said to be illegally stopping free trade as protected in the Sherman Antitrust Act. Strike was put down and Debs was thrown in jail for conspiring against interstate trade.

Strikes!

Industrial Workers of the World- a radical Union of unskilled workers with many socialists among its leaders. The IWW led many strikes that were often very violent.

Significance-shift to a new economic policy called socialism is taking place for some workers. Not just in the U.S. but all over the world. The goal is to off set the “negative” effects of capitalism.

IWW (Wobblies)