HAMEX FINAL - labor

• Knights of Labor: 

  • 1869 by Uriah Smith Stephens and a group of Philadelphia garment cutters

  • established as a secret society to protect members from being fired or blacklisted by hostile employers.

  • Under the leadership of Terence V. Powderly, the group dropped its secrecy and surged to nearly one million members by 1886

  • all wage-earners into a single body, welcoming 

    • Women

    • African Americans

    •  unskilled workers—groups widely excluded by other unions of the era.

• AFL (American Federation of Labor): 

• 1886, is a historic federation of labor unions that merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1955

• Protecting rights to fair wages, health care, safe working conditions, and retirement benefits.

• Lobbying for 

  • pro-worker legislation

  • livable minimum wage

  • protection of Social Security.

• Helping workers acquire valuable job-readiness skills and supporting new sectors (such as professional athletes) in forming unions.

• Goals of unions (wages, safety, hours)

• Minimum wage (that is fair)

• Restriction on how many hours one can work so they aren’t overworked

• Needed to have proper safety equipment so situations like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory did not become recurring

• Evolution from the Knights of Labor (broad/unskilled) to the AFL (skilled craft workers).

• The Knights of Labor (1869–Late 1880s)

  • Highly inclusive

    • Welcomed skilled and unskilled workers, women, and Black workers.

  • Advocated for an anti-capitalist, "cooperative commonwealth"

    • believed in sweeping social reforms, such as ending child labor and establishing the eight-hour workday

  • Avoided strikes whenever possible

    • preferring political action

    • Education

    • the creation of worker-owned cooperatives

• The Shift to the AFL (1886)

  • Skilled craft workers, such as cigar makers and iron workers, grew frustrated. 

  • felt the Knights of Labor 

    • drained their union funds, 

    • diluted their bargaining power by grouping them with unskilled workers

    • ignored specific trade grievances

  • December 1886, leaders from several independent trade unions led by Samuel Gompers of the Cigar Makers' International Union, founded the AFL in Columbus, Ohio 

• Strikes 

• Larry Itliong (AWOC) and Cesar Chavez (NFWA) unions combined

• Over 1,500 workers walked off fields to halt the grape harvest (DELANO GRAPE STRIKE)

• Boycotts

• • Farmers and people as such stopped buying wine to support the movement 

  • Activists blocked grocery store chains across the country

• Nonviolent Protests and Marches

• Chavez led a 280-mile march to highlight worker exploitation.

• Strategic fasts maintained group discipline and won national sympathy.

• Civil rights groups and other organizations joined in  

• Employer tactics: Hiring guards, replacing strikers

• employers hired armed security to intimidate and physically attack picketers

• replaced striking workers with out-of-state strikebreakers → kept operations running

• evicted strikers from company-owned housing 

• Ex.: would replace filipino workers with mexican workers, vice versa (basically replace with any group not striking) 

• The Homestead Strike (1892)

• Chairman Henry Clay Frick (on behalf of Andrew Carnegie) lowered wages for members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers

• Frick locked out the workers and attempted to bring in armed guards from the Pinkerton Detective Agency to break the union

• gun battle erupted between the workers and Pinkertons

•  leaving multiple people dead

• PA state militia was eventually called in to break the strike

• ended organized labor in the steel industry for decades

• It soured public opinion on Carnegie's business tactics 

• The Haymarket Square Riot (1886)

• peaceful rally held by labor activists to protest the police killing of striking workers at the McCormick Reaper Works 

• Workers were fighting for an 8-hour workday

• police arrived to disperse the crowd → unknown person threw a dynamite bomb

  • which killed seven police officers

• The police opened fire, killing and wounding several demonstrators

• Eight labor leaders were controversially convicted of conspiracy

  • lack of evidence → four were executed

• public opinion against the labor movement → became a rallying cry for union rights

• The Pullman Strike (1894)

• Pullman Palace Car Company laid off workers, cut wages, 

  • refused to lower rents in the company-owned town where workers resided

• Workers w/ the American Railway Union boycotted trains carrying Pullman cars

  • severely hurt rail traffic across the country

• The federal government intervened, using an injunction and sending federal troops to break the boycott.

• The strike collapsed, Debs (leader) → imprisoned

• government established a precedent of using court injunctions to stop strikes

• highlighted the national crisis of class conflict

•  resulting in the creation of Labor Day as a conciliatory federal holiday

• Muckrackers

• Journalists that would dig up the ‘Muck’ of society

  • Muckraking: a movement during the progressive era that involved journalists publishing exposés, revealing corruption + business practices.

  • Articles circulated through magazines

  • women were muckrakers too

    • helped push legislation for fairness

  • Famous ones- Jacob Riis, Ida Tarbell

  • Became the voice of the people

• Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and the resulting government regulations (FDA, food safety).

• Sinclair was a muckraker aligned with the socialist movement

• The Jungle: Focused on Family of Lithuanian Immigrants struggling in America and was trying to show the dangerous labor

  • Didn’t work as intended

  • People were more disgusted about the conditions of how their food was being prepared→ led to investigations from Roosevelt→ 

    • FDA, Meat inspection Act, Pure food and Drug Act

• Meat Inspection Act 1906

• Ensured that livestock were slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions

  • A result of The Jungle

  • Signed by Theodore Rooselevelt in June of 1906

  • required federal inspection on all meat processing facilities to ensure hygiene, safety and proper labelling 

  • signed in by Teddy Roosevelt in 1906- result of muckraker reporting on the unsanitary meatpacking conditions

• Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (need for safety standards).

• A second exit was bolted shut. 

  • second door was locked to keep employees from stealing spools of thread. 

  • the door was bolted to keep outside labor protesters from getting inside to incite the workers.

• New York State → enacted over 30 new labor laws addressing factory inspection, sprinkler systems, fire escapes, and building safety

• Helped alice paul with her movement since she came a few months after this incident 

• Fair Labor Standards Act (minimum wage, child labor laws, 40-hour work week).

• Established in 1938 after being signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 25th

• Focused on repairing and improving economic conditions → a stop on corrupted leadership

• The act created the first national concept of minimum wage, maximum working hours, and overtime pay

  • First reenacted: minimum wage was $0.25 per hour

• this act received backlash from groups such as 

  • business men who believed the government should not have authority over private enterprise

  • southern congressmen who worried that creating a national minimum wage would remove the south's advantage of low cost labor 

  • free labor leaders → thought the government setting wages would lead to collective bargaining 

• final version of this act → large exemptions for sectors such as agriculture, retail, domestic work, etc

  •  african Americans and children laborers were most commonly working

• laws set to protect children by this act only did so by a fraction in manufacturing areas