How Did Early Labor Unions Affect Workers Of The Industrial Revolution?

The early labor unions were created to protect the workers of the industrial revolution. Prior to this union being created workers had virtually no rights (Schultz, 2014). There were very little safety concerns for the workers, nor concern for their well-being as humans at all. As of today, we have FMLA, workman’s comp, job security, and human resource departments to protects all our rights. These people had none of this. If they were hurt or sick to the point of missing work a lot, they were fired. The workers were still being paid very low wages while the owners were getting rich. The wages the workers were making for these long hours did not pay the bills much less feed their families; nonetheless, have anything extra to properly cloth or care for their children.

The union would help to make for more sanitized, safer work environments (“Labor Movement”, n.d.). They helped the workers gain better pay, shorter hours, and an overall happier work environment. All geared toward the laborer, not the employer for a change. At times, the union would organize strikes to try to make the employer do what they wanted; however, at this time they rarely succeeded, as do now. Some employees were met with opposition from the owners or management of the industries almost to an intimidation standpoint so not to join, in which grew worse if they did join. Some were fired or faced harsher work environment in a tactic to try to make them quit. Some others were given bribes, like the yellow dog contract to not join the union, not all of which stood true (Schultz,