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National Labor Union
Attracted 600,000 members including the skilled, unskilled, and farmers. It pushed social reform, an eight-hour day, and arbitration of labor disputes. -
Knights of Labor
The first mass labor organization created among America’s working class. The Knights of Labor attempted to bridge boundaries of ethnicity, gender, ideology, race, and occupation to build a “universal brotherhood” of all workers. Excluded the Chinese. Wanted workplace safety laws, prohibition of child labor, a federal tax on the nation’s highest incomes, public ownership of telegraphs and railroads, and government recognition of workers’ right to organize. -
Granger Laws
A series of laws passed in western states of the United States after the American Civil War to regulate grain elevator and railroad freight rates and rebates and to address long- and short-haul discrimination and other railroad abuses against farmers. These laws were passed, but eventually reversed. Part of Greenback labor party platform -
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Yellow Dog Contracts
An agreement some companies forced workers to take that forbade them from joining a union. This was a method used to limit the power of unions, thus hampering their development. -
Farmers Alliance
Organization that united farmers at the statewide and regional level; policy goals of this organization included more readily available farm credits and federal regulation of the railroads. -
Great Railroad Strike
A group of railroad workers on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad rose up and began to strike due to wage cuts. This spread up and down the railroad line across the nation. Railroads were torched. President Rutherford B. Hayes sent in troops to stop the strike. 100 people died in the strike. Eugene Debs organized it. -
Terence Powderly (becomes leader of the Knights of Labor)
Irish-American leader of the Knights of Labor who won several strikes for the eight-hour day. By 1886, his organization was a force to be reckoned with. -
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Lock Outs
The refusal by an employer to allow employees to work unless they agree to his or terms. Practiced by Carnegie Steel -
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Scabs
A non-union worker who usually worked for low wages. They were used as strikebreakers since they were not part of a union. -
Haymarket Square Riot
In Chicago, home to about 80,000 Knights and a few hundred anarchists that advocated a violent overthrow of the American government, tensions had been building. Chicago police were advancing on a meeting that had been called to protest brutalities by authorities when a dynamite bomb was thrown, killing or injuring several dozen people. This was called the Haymarket Square Bombing. Destroyed the Knights of Labor. -
American Federation of Labor
Run by Samuel Gompers, a federation of North American labor unions that merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1955. They had bread and butter unionism: they wanted better wages and conditions and would strike -
Samuel Gompers (founds the AFL)
English- born president of the American Federation of Labor from 1886 to 1924. -
Sherman Anti-trust Act
First law to limit monopolies in the US. An act passed in 1890 which prohibited any "contract, combination, in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce." Prohibits trusts. -
James B. Duke (opens first textile mill)
Mechanized the tobacco industry and made cigarettes into machine made items instead of hand rolled. It was a trust giant, and Duke founded duke university. Only hired single women. -
Homestead Strike
It was near Pittsburgh against the Homestead Steel Works, which was part of the Carnegie Steel Company, in Pennsylvania in retaliation against wage cuts. The riot was ultimately put down by Pinkerton Police and the state militia, and the violence further damaged the image of unions. Ten workers were killed in a riot when "scab" labor was brought in to force an end to the strike. -
Western Federation of Miners
A radical labor union that gained a reputation for militancy in the mines of the western United States and British Columbia. organize both hard rock miners and smelter workers brought it into A call to transform American economic system. It formed many strikes every time owners refused to renegotiate. -
American Railway Union
Led by Eugene Debs, they started the Pullman strike, composed mostly of railroad workers. Ordered no violence. One of the first industrial unions. an industrial union for all railroad workers. -
Pullman Palace Car Strike
Employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company began a strike in response to recent reductions in wages, bringing traffic west of Chicago to a halt. President Grover Cleveland ordered federal troops to Chicago to end the strike, causing debate within his own cabinet about whether the President had the constitutional authority to do so. Caused by increased working hours, cut wages and cut jobs. -
National Association of Manufactures
This was an organization that was created by businessmen who supported the creation of schools of business administration. dealt with standards and regulations of manufacturing and was backed by powerful businesses. -
Anthracite Coal Strike
Strike by the United Mine Workers of America in the anthracite coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania. Miners struck for higher wages, shorter workdays and the recognition of their union. Theodore Roosevelt summoned both sides to the White House and, after threats of seizure and use of troops, reached a compromise of a 10% pay increase and a nine-hour day. -
National Child Labor Committee
Florence Kelley helped create the Committee. a reform association that worked (unsuccessfully) to win a federal law banning child labor. This group hired photographer Lewis Hine to record brutal conditions in mines and mills where thousands of children worked. -
Lochner v. New York
Declared unconstitutional a New York act limiting the working hours of bakers due to a denial of the 14th Amendment rights. This supreme court case debated whether or not New York state violated the liberty of the fourteenth amendment which allowed Lochner to regulate his business when he made a contract. The specific contract Lochner made violated the New York statute which stated that bakers could not work more than 60 hours per week, and more than 10 hours per day. -
Industrial Workers of the World
This radical union aimed to unite the American working class into one union to promote labor's interests. It worked to organize unskilled and foreign-born laborers, advocated social revolution and led several major strikes. Stressed solidarity. Led by "Mother" Jones, Elizabeth Flynn, Big Bill Haywood, and Eugene Debs. It strove to unite all laborers, including unskilled workers and African Americans;
Its goal was to create "One Big Union”. -
Eugene Debs (founds Industrial Workers of the World)
The American Railway Union was led by Eugene V. Debs. Debs encouraged the American Railway Union to put pressure on the railroad companies so that they would challenge Pullman. He was a convert for socialism and applied his beliefs to labor. -
Loewe v. Lawlor
A case in 1908 that ruled that secondary boycotts, aimed by strikers at other companies doing business with their employer, such as suppliers of materials, were illegal the Sherman Antitrust Act. -
Muller v. Oregon
Louis D. Brandeis persuaded the Supreme Court to accept the constitutionality of laws protecting women workers by presenting evidence of the harmful effects of factory labor on women's weaker bodies. -
Clayton Anti-trust Act
It added to the Sherman law's list of objectionable trust practices by forbidding price discrimination; a different price for different people, and interlocking directorates; the same people serving on "competitors" boards of trustees. It also exempted labor unions from being considered trusts and legalized strikes as a form of peaceful assembly. Ultimately it helped cut down on monopolies. -
La Follette Seamen’s Act
It required good treatement of America's sailors. It sent merchant freight rates soaring as a result the cost to maintain a sailor's health. -
The Adamson Act
This law established an eight-hour day for all employees on trains involved in interstate commerce, with extra pay for overtime. It was the first federal law regulating the hours of workers in private companies, and was upheld by the Supreme Court Wilson v. New (1917). -
Workingmen's Compensation Act
It granted assistance of federal civil-service employees during periods of instability. It was invalidated by the Supreme Court. -
War Industries Board
Created in July 1917, the War Industries Board controlled raw materials, production, prices, and labor relations It was intended to restore economic order and to make sure the United States was producing enough at home and abroad. -
John L. Lewis (elected president of the United Mine Workers of America)
He was the boss of the United Mine Workers who also succeeded in forming the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) within the ranks of the AF of L in 1935.v He was responsible for the Fair Labor Standards Act. -
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Closed Shop
A union-organizing term that refers to the practice of allowing only unionized employees to work for a particular company. The AFL became known for negotiating closed-shop agreements with employers, in which the employer would agree not to hire non-union members. -
Civilian Conservation Corps
It employed about 3 million men to work on projects that benefited the public, planting trees to reforest areas, building levees for flood control, and improving national parks, etc. Men only keep 20-25% of their wages, and the rest was sent back to family. -
National Labor Relations Board
An independent federal agency created by the U.S. Congress in 1935 to administer the National Labor Relations Act (also called the Wagner Act). The act was amended in 1947 through the Taft-Hartley Act and in 1959 through the Landrum-Griffin Act. -
Wagner Act
Its main purpose was to establish the legal right of most workers (notably excepting agricultural and domestic workers) to organize or join labor unions and to bargain collectively with their employers. -
The Bracero Program
Program established by agreement with the Mexican government to recruit temporary Mexican agricultural workers to the United States to make up for wartime labor shortages in the Far West. The program persisted until 1964, by when it had sponsored 4.5 million border crossings. -
Taft Hartley Act
Condemned by Labor leaders as a "slave labor law". It outlawed the "closed" shop, made unions liable for damages that resulted from jurisdictional disputes among themselves, and required union leaders to take a non-communist oath. -
United Farm Workers
A union of farm workers founded in 1962 by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta that sought to empower the mostly Mexican American migrant farm workers who faced discrimination and exploitative conditions, especially in the Southwest. Peaceful grape protest. -
Affirmative Action
First advanced by the Labor Department in 1968, affirmative action was refined by a series of court rulings that identified acceptable procedures, including hiring and enrollment goals, special recruitment and training programs, and set-asides (quotas). Blacks moved into white-collar professions, found new opportunities in civil service, or got better access to union jobs. Critics fired back that this was “reverse discrimination.”