Transcript Labor Fights for Change

Labor Fights for Change
Industrialization (The Ugly)
Labor Unions Emerge
• As working conditions
worsened, and
incomes widened,
laborers began to
organize into unions
• One of the first: The
Knights of Labor
• “An injury to one is
the concern of all”.
• Opened membership
to many, discouraged
strikes
Union Movements Diverge:
• What two types of unions
would emerge?
• #1: craft unions
• skilled workers
• Samuel Gompers leads the
American Federation of Labor
• Focus on collective bargaining
• Strikes for: higher wages,
safer conditions, shorter week
Union Movements Diverge
• #2: Industrial Unions
• Ex. American Railway
Union
• AFL dies
• More radical (leftist) &
open groups emerge
• The IWW
“Commonwealth of Toil”
By IWW
Political radicals!
Socialism and Unions
• Leader of the
“Wobblies”: Eugene
V. Debs
• “abolition of the wage
system”
• Attracted western
miners and loggers,
immigrants, steel
workers
Debs making speech
(eventually runs for
President five times
under Socialist Party)
How did unions change the workplace?
Why did they get a bad name?
• Hippocampus link: unions
Think, pair, share:
What % of the workforce today is in unions?
Strikes = Violence
• Businesses did not like the union movement
• Fierce resistance on both sides
• Bus. had general public support, laissez-faire
govt., and huge supply of workers
• Govt. was suspicious of “leftist leaders”
• Courts ignored rulings
• Troops often sent in to allow industry to
continue
Violence Erupts
Workers for the
Baltimore & Ohio RR
(B&O) struck to
protest ANOTHER
wage cut!
Violence Erupts
The
Haymarket
Affair
(bombing)
Did Unions Succeed In Their Goals?
+
• Triangle Shirtwaist fire
• Most industries set
maximum work hours
(8-10)
• Worker’s
Compensation
• Minimum age
restrictions
• Health standards
(1912)
• • Management forbids
unions
• Public dislikes
violence and
socialist flair
• Sherman Anti-trust
Act used against;
injunction issued
Clip from the Story of Us: Cities- Triangle (6 min)
Union Movement
National Labor
Union
Civil War
Panic
of 1873
Knights
of Labor
Haymarket
Square
1886
Go to QT Movie on Carnegie & Homestead
Strike
AFL