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AFL splinter group becomes the indepentent congress of Industrial Organizations(CIO), headed by John L. Lewis
John L. Lewis was a driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations(CIO). He helped millions of industrial workers organize in the 1930s. He was a brutally effective and aggressive fighter and strike leader. -
Period: to
Importent Additions to the Labor Movement
Eight Importent Events. -
Fair Labor Standards Act
Fair Labor Standards act creates minimum wage, bans child labor, requires overtime pay. According to the act, workers must be paid minimum wage and overtime pay must be one-and-a-half times regular pay. Children under eighteen cannot do certain dangerous jobs, and children under the age of sixteen cannot work during school hours. -
Union membership Peaks at 35 percent.
During World War 2, there was a major surge of people joining Unions. After the war it quickly declined though. Currently at 12 percent now -
Taft-Hardley Act allows states to pass right-to-work laws
Aims to provide a general guarantee of employment to people seeking work, but rather are a government regulation of the contractual agreements between employers and labor unions that prevents them from excluding non-union workers -
AFL and CIO merge to create AFL-CIO
the largest federation of unions in the United States, made up of fifty-seven national and international unions, together representing more than 11 million workers -
Government employees begin to organize
When private sector jobs also began to look secure and stable during the growth period of the 1960s, the young militant workers who had been hired began to pressure the government for recognition and increased benefits. -
Cesar Chavez begins organizing the first farmworkers' union, which eventually establishes the first labor agreement with growers
His solution was to send two workers and a student activist to follow a grape shipment from one of the picketed growers to the end destination at the Oakland docks. Once there, the protestors were instructed to persuade the longshoremen not to load the shipment of grapes. The group was successful in its action, and this resulted in the spoilage of a thousand ten-ton cases of grapes which were left to rot on the docks. This event sparked the decision to use the protest tactic of boycotting as the -
Rise in anti-union measure by employers
The term "union busting" is used in current vernacular to describe activities in labor relations that do not favor unions. Union busting tactics can range from legal to illegal and subtle to violent. Labor laws exist country to country differing greatly in level and type of regulation or protection of unions, organizing, and other aspects of labor relations. -
Increase in public-sector unions; decline in overall union membership
drop in union membership stemmed partly from large-scale layoffs in several sectors with many union members, most notably construction, manufacturing, teaching and local government.