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The National Trades Union
The first national union. -
Commonwealth v. Hunt
a Massachusetts court ruled that unions were legal. -
American Federation of Labor
founded by Samuel Gompers, organized skilled workers by crafts. They fought for higher wages, shorter hours, and improved working conditions through collective bargaining. -
Haymarket Riots
in Chicago. Striking McCormick Harvester Workers clashed with police, four strikers were killed. -
United Mine Workers
founded to improve wages and working conditions of coal mine workers. -
The Homestead Strike
Steel workers in Homestead, Pennsylvania struck against the Carnegie Steel plant because the company had reduced wages. The Homestead Strike of 1892 became violent when the steel company hired private police to protect strike breakers. In the ensuring confrontation, nine strikers and seven police officers were killed. -
American Railway Union
founded by railroad fireman Eugene V. Debs -
Pullman Company
manufactured sleeping and dining cars, went on strike because their wages had been cut. Acting out of sympathy for the Pullman workers, conductors and engineers of the American Railway Union refused to handle trains with Pullman cars attached. A federal judge ordered the strikes back to work, and when they refused, President Grover Cleveland sent in federal troops. The ensuring violence turned public opinion against the strikers, and their president, Eugene Debs, was jailed. -
Knights of Labor
The first major union, founded by Uriah Stephens, a Philidelphia tailor. By 1879, its membership of nine thousand included women, African Americans, and immigrants, both skilled and unskilled. By 1866, they boasted a membership of seven hundred thousand. They won several important strikes, but their influence declined after they were blamed for killing seven police officers who attempted to break up a meeting in Haymarket Square, Chicago. -
The International Workers of the World
was organized in 1905 for unskilled workers and immigrants, advocated one large national union that would use strikes and sabotage to achieve its goals as opposed to the more peaceful American Federation of Labor. (also known as Wobblies) -
Clayton Act
allowed picketing and limited the use of injunctions in labor disputed. -
The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
created by A. Philip Randolph -
National Labor Relations Act
(Wagner Act) protected the rights of workers to organize and elect representatives for collective bargaining. Also in this year the CIO, Congress of Industrial Organization, was formed by several AFL unions to promote unionismin industry. -
Fair Labor Standards Act
established a minimum wage (twenty-five cents an hour) and time and a half for over forty hours of work a week. -
Fair Labor Act
prohibited child labor -
AFL and CIO
these two merged together in 1955 -
Air Traffic Controllers
President Ronald Regan fired 11,500 air traffic controllers for striking in violation of a no-strike clause in their contract.
