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Labor Union History

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According to Dictionary.com, a labor union is a group of people who represent workers in different occupations and work to protect the rights of the workers, such as working conditions, wages, and benefits. In America’s early days, there were no such things as labor unions. An employer could demand anything he wanted from his workers and pay them any amount he saw fit (Hallgrimsdottir, 2007). Many employers abused this system, cutting wages or making the workers put in exorbitant hours in treacherous conditions. As corruption in the workplace led to declining wages, benefits, and work conditions, workers became increasingly alarmed at the state of the enterprise. They wanted protection from arbitrary decisions and needed a way to force management …show more content…

The goal of these early unions was to combat wage cuts and long hours. There was little coordination in these unions, so the payoff was moderate at best. The unions kept going as they were for the next 35 years until the post-Civil War labor market gave workers an opportunity to revitalize the fledgling unions and build them into something with staying power. This revitalized union was called the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor and was founded in 1869 (Hallgrimsdottir, 2007). The popularity of this new union spread rapidly as workers began to realize they had a voice and options. The Knights of Labor was open to all workers, including women and African Americans, but as a symptom of the times, was mostly composed of white males. In just a few years, the Knights of Labor grew to a few thousand members nationwide. The Knights of Labor set off a chain of events that eventually made way for the federal laws that govern our unions today. These are the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA), the Labor Management Relations Act (also known as the Taft-Hartley Act), and the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act

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