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Atlanta washerwoman strike
In the summer of 1881, the laundresses took on Atlanta’s business and political establishment and gained so much support that they threatened to call a general strike, which would have shut the city down. -
southwest railway strike
By the end of the 1800s, the American railroad was expanding quickly. In 1886, the Knights of Labor went on strike at the Union Pacific and Missouri Pacific railroads, owned by robber baron Jay Gould. Hundreds of thousands of workers across five states refused to work, citing unsafe conditions and unfair hours and pay. -
Holmstead Strike
Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers had bargained exceptionally good wages and work rules. Homestead's management, with millionaire Andrew Carnegie as owner, was determined to lower its costs of production by breaking the union. -
Cripple Creek
Cripple Creek had become a boom town after gold was discovered. Some 150 mines sprang up. So did a strong miners union—the Free Coinage Union No. 19, which was part of the militant Western Federation of Miners -
Railway union
In 1894, members of the American Railway Union, led by Eugene V. Debs, walked off their jobs at the Pullman Palace Car Company. Owner George Pullman manufactured his railroad sleeping cars in a company town near Chicago. Because of the depression that had hit a year earlier, Pullman cut wages 25-40%. The union called for a nationwide strike and boycott. -
Pullman
Facing 12-hour work days and wage cuts resulting from the depressed economy, factory workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company walked out in protest. The workers were soon joined by members of the American Railway Union (ARU), who refused to work on or run any trains, including Pullman-owned cars. Soon enough, 250,000 industry workers joined in the strike, effectively shutting down train traffic to the west of Chicago. -
McKnees Rock Strike
Eugene V. Debs, arguably the foremost union activist in American history, described the 1909 McKees Rock, Pa., strike this way: "The greatest labor fight in all my history in the labor movement." Yet today, few remember this struggle when immigrant workers rose up and changed the course of American unionism. -
Taft-Hartley
pro-labor Wagner Act of 1935 led to union growth; anti-union Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 led to union decline -
Wagner Act
The Wagner Act gave unions the right to organize workers without being harassed or intimidated by employers. It established a National Labor Relations Board, which had the responsibility to assure that elections to determine if a union would represent workers were fair, and to oversee the collective bargaining that took place between union representatives and management once a company was unionized.
