TRADE UNIONS

TRADE UNIONS are associations that represent the collective interests of their employee-members in bargaining and negotiating with large employers. Trade unions generally seek to obtain higher wages, reduced working hours, and improved working conditions for employees. In addition, trade unions seek to improve workplace safety and to obtain increased benefits, such as health insurance, pensions, and disability insurance, for employees. Unions also look to protect the employment security of their members, largely by negotiating to implement seniority rules and to eliminate "at-will" employment contracts under which non-union employees traditionally have been subject to dismissal without cause.

Although trade unions did not obtain legal recognition until the 1930s, laborers first began organizing to bargain collectively with employers long before obtaining such recognition.

1780s–1880s

In addition to being the cradle of American liberty, the city of Philadelphia also served as the cradle of American labor activism. In 1786, Philadelphia printers staged America's first labor strike, successfully procuring a $6 per week minimum wage. In 1792, Philadelphia shoemakers formed America's first labor association, which lasted for one year before disbanding.

In 1834, representatives from various separate trade unions convened at the National Trades' Union (NTU) Convention, in New York City. The NTU convention, which marked the first substantial effort to create a national labor organization in the United States, set goals for the labor movement that included obtaining legal recognition for trade unions in every American jurisdiction, organizing unorganized workers, establishing universal free public education for children and adults, and eliminating child labor. Some NTU members sought to pursue their goals through political channels by creating a separate political party.

A successor to the NTU was formed in 1866, when the National Labor Union (NLU) brought together national trade organizations, local trade unions, city trade assemblies, and other reform-minded groups. The NLU's progressive agenda included equal pay for equal work regardless of race or gender, an eight-hour work day, and arbitration. Three years later, in 1869, Philadelphia tailors formed the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor (KoL), an organization that included skilled and unskilled labor and promoted arbitration over strikes. Inspired by the socialist movement, the KoL proposed to replace capitalism with workers' cooperatives.

In the following decades, however, these organizations went into decline. First, in 1872, the NLU dissolved after local issues came to overshadow national efforts. Then, a decade later, the KoL lost influence and membership after loosely organized labor was implicated in Chicago's violent Haymarket Riot of 1886.

1880s–1930s: Labor Gains Momentum

In 1886, a KoL splinter group formed the American Federation of Labor (AFL), electing cigar-maker Samuel Gompers as its first president (1886–1924, except 1895). The AFL organized skilled craftsmen by trade, but excluded unskilled workers. Stressing economic rather than political goals, the AFL under Gompers promoted the use of labor strikes and boycotts, and emphasized the need for written contracts with employers. The AFL's focus was national; Gompers discouraged involvement with local or international issues. Gompers worked within existing political parties, dampening support for a separate labor party.

In the early twentieth century, a series of statutes enacted by Congress secured legal protection for labor organizing and union activity. In 1914, the Clayton Anti-trust Act made clear that peaceful combinations of workers in labor organizations were not criminal conspiracies. In 1932, the Norris-LaGuardia Act stripped federal judges of power to enjoin strikes, making it easier for workers to strike and picket. The NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS ACT of 1935 (Wagner Act or NLRA) recognized the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively. The NLRA also created the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), whose three members were charged with supervising union elections and stopping employers' unfair labor practices.

In 1935, President John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers of America urged the AFL to begin organizing unskilled industrial workers, in addition to skilled workers. When the AFL refused, Lewis formed the Committee on Industrial Organization (CIO) within the AFL. By late 1938, however, the CIO ratified its own constitution (becoming the Congress of Industrial Organization), and split from the AFL. During Lewis's tenure as the CIO's first president (1936–1940), unskilled steel and automobile production workers were organized.

1939–1945: War Economy

After Pearl Harbor, the AFL and CIO promised to refrain from utilizing labor strikes for the duration of the war. Without the power to strike, workers lost their most important tool to offset employer power. Further, accelerated wartime productivity increased workplace accidents and injuries.

To support workers, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created a 12-member National War Labor Board in 1942, with four members each representing business, organized labor, and government. No constituency was satisfied. Workers disliked the Little Steel Formula of 1942, which restricted wage increases in order to check inflation. Business leaders chafed under Board rulings that presumed new workers at union plants to be union members, and that required employers to terminate workers who failed to pay union dues. Labor, however, remained loyal to Roosevelt, hopeful that their loyalty would pay off politically at the war's end. Japan's surrender in August 1945 ended the AFL-CIO No-Strike Pledge, and was followed by a six-month tidal wave of strikes.

1945–1960: Gains in Collective Bargaining, Stability, Affluence

In the postwar period, labor unions consolidated successes including the institutionalization of collective bargaining, the development of employee benefits packages, and the adoption of grievance procedures and unionsponsored seniority systems for individual employment decisions. These union successes improved the lot of non-union workers as well. Per capita U.S. wages rose 45 percent in the 1940s, and 56 percent in the 1950s. For many, the urgency of the worker's struggle diminished.

At the same time, new postwar legislation sought to limit union power. The 1947 Taft-Hartley Act gave individual workers a right to refuse union membership (strikinga blow against "closed shop" facilities). It also required unions to provide advance notice of strikes; reauthorized federal courts to enjoin strikes affecting national health or safety for eighty days; restricted unions' financial contributions to political candidates; defined unfair labor and union practices; outlawed mass picketing; and neutralized the NLRB's former labor advocacy position.

Labor leaders responded to Taft–Hartley by intensifying political action. Both the AFL and the CIO backed the Democratic Party, effectively ending any lingering support for a separate labor party. In the late 1940s, labor unions began expunging communists from their ranks. In 1952, staunch anticommunist George Meany became head of the AFL. Three years later, to increase labor's clout, Meany and CIO president Walter Reuther orchestrated an AFL-CIO merger. While Meany assumed the new joint AFL-CIO presidency, Reuther continued to serve as United Auto Worker (UAW) president until his death in 1970.

In 1957, Congress enacted the Landrum-Griffin Act to control union corruption, while the AFL-CIO expelled the 1.5 million-member Teamsters Union for corruption. Between 1957 and 1988, three Teamster presidents were convicted and sentenced to prison terms for corruption (Dave Beck, Jimmy Hoffa, and Roy Williams). The Teamsters Union was not readmitted to the AFL-CIO until 1987.

1960s–1970s: Labor Looks Conservative and Bureaucratic

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order encouraging union representation and collective bargaining on behalf of federal employees. Consequently, union membership ballooned among public sector employees during the 1960s. However, with the AFL-CIO and the Teamsters serving as the public face of the labor movement, unions' liberal image changed. In particular, these organizations' pro–Vietnam War positions caused declines in new union membership among America's youth.

The AFL-CIO also was widely perceived in the 1960s as being insufficiently supportive of civil rights. In particular, unions suffered from a dearth of African American union officials and from ongoing segregation and unequal treatment in the locals. In 1960, BROTHERHOOD OF SLEEPING CAR PORTERS president A. Philip Randolph (then the only African American AFL-CIO official) formed the Negro American Labor Council (NALC) in order to advance the interests of African American laborers. In 1966, however, Randolph resigned from NALC after its public criticisms of the AFL-CIO intensified.

The labor movement's public reputation was also marred in 1964, when it was revealed that Teamsters' pension funds had been loaned by union officials to organized crime figures. The ensuing scandal caused the downfall of Teamsters' president Jimmy Hoffa, who began serving a thirteen-year federal prison term in 1967, but remained president of the Teamsters Union until 1971.

Differences between AFL head Meany and UAW (and former CIO) head Reuther on issues of civil rights, political activity, funding of organizing activities, and eventually Vietnam, all led to the UAW's thirteen-year withdrawal from the AFL-CIO from 1968 to 1981. In 1972, the pro-war AFL-CIO declined to endorse pro-labor Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern, because of McGovern's antiwar stance.

Even while the established organs of organized labor were facing difficult times, however, at least one new union was gaining strength in the 1960s and 1970s. During that period, the UNITED FARM WORKERS OF AMERICA (UFWA), led by Cesar Chavez, organized Hispanic and Filipino migrant farm workers in California and Arizona. Utilizing both labor strikes and boycotts, the UFWA eventually won collective bargaining agreements from California grape and lettuce growers. In 1971, the UFWA joined the AFL-CIO.

1980–Present

In 1981, organized labor suffered a major setback when President Ronald Reagan responded to a federal air traffic controllers strike by firing the striking employees. By illustrating the ability of employers to recruit replacement workers, this episode chilled unions from calling for future labor strikes. Instead, unions in the 1980s and 1990s looked increasingly to legislatures for protection in such areas as minimum wage, family and medical leave, workplace safety, and pension protection. However, organized labor suffered a major legislative defeat in 1994 when the North American Free Trade Agreement was implemented despite heavy union lobbying against it. Since then, however, unions have successfully sponsored campaigns for a Living Wage, which have been enacted by several local governments throughout the United States.