What is the longest labor strike in US history?
- Duration: May 10, 1993 to Dec. 14, 1993
- No. of strikers: 16,800
- Cumulative days off the job: 2,203,000 The United Mine Workers of America agreed in December 1993 to end a strike that affected miners in five states by extending the contract ...
- Duration: Feb. 25, 1913 to July 28, 1913
- No. of strikers: 23,000
- Cumulative days off the job: 2,530,000
Why were strikes so violent?
This built up anger, when organized as a union, sparked many strikes to protest the wrong the laborers were facing. Often times the strikes became violent because the military would be sent in to break up the strikes, erupting in fights where people lost their lives. Through all of the hardships endured, their efforts did find some resolution.
What is the largest strike in history?
What was the biggest strike in history?
- U.S. History’s Biggest Strikes.
- The Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886.
- The Pullman Strike of 1894.
- The Great Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902.
- The Steel Strike of 1919.
- The Railroad Shop Workers Strike of 1922.
- The Textile Workers Strike of 1934.
- United Mine Workers of America of 1946.
What was the first labor strike?
What was the first labor strike? The earliest recorded strike occurred in 1768 when New York journeymen tailors protested a wage reduction. The formation of the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers (shoemakers) in Philadelphia in 1794 marks the beginning of sustained trade union organization among American workers.
What was the first national labor strike?
The National Labor Union was the first attempt in the United States to organize a national federation of labor when labor groups met in Baltimore beginning on August 20, 1866. This is an economic perspective on the change to an 8-hour work day.
What was one of the first strikes in US history?
1. Homestead Steel Strike (1892) Illustration from Harper's Weekly depicting the Homestead Strike of 1892.
When did labor unions start in America?
Unions began forming in the mid-19th century in response to the social and economic impact of the Industrial Revolution. National labor unions began to form in the post-Civil War Era.
What was the most violent labor strike in US history?
One of the most notorious incidents of violence against management occurred in 1892 during the Homestead Strike—one of the most violent industrial disputes in American history—when Alexander Berkman attempted to assassinate Henry Clay Frick, chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company and manager of the mill where the ...
What was the biggest strike in history?
The 10 Biggest Strikes In U.S. HistoryThe Great Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902.The Steel Strike of 1919.The Railroad Shop Workers Strike of 1922.The Textile Workers Strike of 1934.United Mine Workers of America of 1946.The Steel Strike of 1959.The U.S. Postal Strike of 1970.UPS Workers Strike of 1997.More items...
What is the longest union strike in history?
1998 The longest successful strike in the history of the United States, the Frontier Strike, ends after 6 years, 4 months and 10 days.
Who started the labor movement?
Samuel GompersIt was only after the advent of the American Federation of Labor, set up by Samuel Gompers in 1886 and acting as a national federation of unions for skilled workers, that the labor movement became a real force to be reckoned with and took on more of the shape we see today.
Who started unions in America?
Samuel GompersIn the history of America's trade and labor unions, the most famous union remains the American Federation of Labor (AFL), founded in 1886 by Samuel Gompers. At its pinnacle, the AFL had approximately 1.4 million members.
What was the first strike in American history that involves many different workers?
The Great Upheaval was not the first strike in American History; it was the first mass strike to involve so many different workers separated by so much space.
What is a strike in history?
Strike action, also called labor strike, labour strike, or simply strike, is a work stoppage, caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became common during the Industrial Revolution, when mass labor became important in factories and mines.
What major labor strikes took place in the late 1800s?
As the United States became a major industrial power, conflict between workers and factory owners intensified. Read about the Homestead Strike and the Pullman Strike, two of the most famous labor battles in American history.
Why did the steel strike of 1959 happen?
The strike occurred over management's demand that the union give up a contract clause which limited management's ability to change the number of workers assigned to a task or to introduce new work rules or machinery which would result in reduced hours or numbers of employees.
Where did the factory strike take place?
We know little of the factory strike from the women’s point of view. But the Pawtucket strike set off a wave of labor organizing in Pawtucket and across the region. In Lowell, Mass., for example, the mill girls went on strike in the 1830s. They also went on factory strikes in Providence, Waltham and Woonsocket, in Lynn, Mass., and in Brunswick, Maine, to name a few.
When did child labor end?
Child labor would persist, however, as documented by photographer Lewis Hine. In 1938, Congress outlawed child labor, but women still struggle for equal pay.
Why did the Pawtucket mills petition the state legislature to organize a police force?
In 1814, the Pawtucket mill owners petitioned the state Legislature to organize a police force as ‘it has often been found difficult to preserve order and due subordination.’ . Slater had another method.
How many women were on strike at the Slater Mill?
When the Pawtucket factory owners announced the pay cut and the longer work day, the women decided to have none of it. At the Slater mill, 102 young women started the strike – then called a turnout. The strike spread to seven other mills, and 500 workers walked off the job. And they didn’t just shut down the mills.
How many workers walked off the job in the cotton mill strike?
The strike spread to seven other mills, and 500 workers walked off the job. And they didn’t just shut down the mills. They went to the owners’ houses, shouted insults at them and broke their windows. A local judge wrote that the streets were, ‘literally filled with Men Women and Children — making a mob of very daring aspect, insulting the managers of cotton mills in every shape — pulling and hauling — screaming and shouting thro the streets.’
Why did Slater not use child labor?
After about 1810, Slater could no longer rely on child labor because he started using the power loom. The machinery was too much for young children, so to run them he hired the second-cheapest workers: young women.
How did Slater introduce child labor?
Along with the modern factory, Slater also introduced child factory labor to America. He would seek out children aged 7-13 from poor white families. Then he’d hire them for 40 cents to 60 cents a week. They worked 12- hour days in winter, 16 in summer. Many children hated working in the gloomy and dangerous mills, and some ran away. Their parents sometimes took them away from work because they wanted them to earn higher wages.
What was the bloodiest labor dispute in the U.S. history?
The Louisiana Sugar Producers' Association refused these demands, leading to one of the bloodiest labor disputes in U.S. history—the Thibodaux massacre, where government militia attacked and killed black sugar workers who had been evicted from plantations. 12 / 32. Canva.
What was the strike in Ohio?
A 20% wage cut was at the heart of this coal miners' strike in the northeastern valleys of Ohio and Pennsylvania. Miners demanded a small pay increase per ton of coal, but their efforts ultimately failed. With thousands of miners on strike, mine owners hired African-American and Italian replacement workers, which sparked a violent backlash from the strikers. The employers' use of immigrant substitute workers meant that the miners were unable to successfully organize.
How long was the strike against General Motors?
The 113-day United Automobile Workers strike against General Motors was one of a series of sizable walkouts in the years following WWII. With the end of the wartime economy, which had held down wages, the UAW, headed by Walter Reuther, stopped production, demanding a 30% pay increase and calling for GM to stop artificially raising car prices through “planned scarcity,” which led to lost jobs. In the end, the UAW and GM settled on a 17.5% pay raise, overtime pay, and paid time off.
Why did the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad strike end?
Louis, and Chicago. In some cities, strikers became violent and destroyed railroad property. The strike ended primarily because of government and militia intervention, and the B&O Railroad hiring strikebreakers.
Why did steel workers strike against Carnegie Steel?
labor history skilled, steelworkers rose up against the Carnegie Steel Corporation in response to improved steel-making technologies and the subsequent mass hiring of unskilled workers and sliding scale wages. The Amalgamated Association of Iron Steel Workers organized this strike, making it one of the first highly organized and well-led labor revolt in American history. Carnegie Steel ultimately refused to recognize the union, and American steelworkers (and those in other heavy industries) were unable to gain recognition for collective bargaining until the 1930s.
Why did the postal workers stop working?
Postal workers in New York City and other cities across the country ceased work for eight days due to low wages and substandard working conditions. A meager 5.4% pay increase compared with a 41% boost in congressional pay angered postal workers, whose 200,000-strong work stoppage led to the establishment of the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970. The act combined the major postal unions into the U.S. Postal Service and facilitated collective bargaining rights.
What happened in 1893?
When the Panic of 1893 caused deflation of the price of silver and an influx of silver miners began working in gold mines, the pay of gold miners dropped and they lashed out against their employers. Leaders of the Free Coinage Union teamed up with the Western Federation of Miners demanding $3 per eight-hour work day instead of the proposed $2.50. Ultimately, the union won, which led to the organizing of other workers, as well as the growth of the WFM in the years following the strike.
Where did the labor movement originate?
Origins of The Labor Movement. The origins of the labor movement lay in the formative years of the American nation, when a free wage-labor market emerged in the artisan trades late in the colonial period. The earliest recorded strike occurred in 1768 when New York journeymen tailors protested a wage reduction.
Why did the labor movement start?
The labor movement led efforts to stop child labor, give health benefits and provide aid to workers who were injured or retired.
How did the Great Depression affect the labor movement?
It took the Great Depression to knock the labor movement off dead center. The discontent of industrial workers, combined with New Deal collective bargaining legislation, at last brought the great mass production industries within striking distance. When the craft unions stymied the ALF’s organizing efforts, John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers and his followers broke away in 1935 and formed the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), which crucially aided the emerging unions in auto, rubber, steel and other basic industries. In 1938 the CIO was formally established as the Congress of Industrial Organizations. By the end of World War II, more than 12 million workers belonged to unions and collective bargaining had taken hold throughout the industrial economy.
What did the labor movement do for the industrial sector?
For those in the industrial sector, organized labor unions fought for better wages, reasonable hours and safer working conditions. The labor movement led efforts to stop child labor, give health benefits and provide aid to workers who were injured or retired.
How did the labor movement change in the 1970s?
From the early 1970s onward, new competitive forces swept through the heavily unionized industries, set off by deregulation in communications and transportation, by industrial restructuring and by an unprecedented onslaught of foreign goods. As oligopolistic and regulated market structures broke down, nonunion competition spurted, concession bargaining became widespread and plant closings decimated union memberships. The once-celebrated National Labor Relations Act increasingly hamstrung the labor movement; an all-out reform campaign to get the law amended failed in 1978. And with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, there came to power an anti-union administration the likes of which had not been seen since the Harding era.
How many workers were organized in the 1980s?
Only in the public sector did the unions hold their own. By the end of the 1980s, less than 17 percent of American workers were organized, half the proportion of the early 1950s. The labor movement has never been swift to change.
Why did organized labor drift toward the Democratic Party?
As far back as the Progressive Era, organized labor had been drifting toward the Democratic party, partly because of the latter’s greater programmatic appeal, perhaps even more because of its ethno-cultural basis of support within an increasingly “new” immigrant working class.
When did the United Mine Workers of America strike?
United Mine Workers of America of 1946 . The United Mine Workers of America went on strike in 1946, during the months of April to December, rallying some 400,000 miners to walk off the job. The walkout became known as the Bituminous Coal Strike and affected over 26 states.
When did the Pullman Strike happen?
The Pullman Strike took place in 1894, during the months of May to July, when some 250,000-factory workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company in Chicago walked off the job. The workers had been enduring 12-hour workdays and reduced wages, due in part to the depressed economy.
Why did the Steel Strike happen?
With profits skyrocketing, members of the United Steelworkers of America went on strike to demand higher wages.
Why do people strike?
A strike is an organized stoppage of work conducted by laborers in order to impose bargaining power against employers. Strikes may be carried out in response to dangerous working conditions, unfair treatment, low wages, or any other workplace grievance that negatively impacts workers' safety or wellbeing. Strikes are usually a culmination of existing grievances that compound over time, often with an inciting, proximate incident. They can be set off by a long lack of wage increases that don't keep up with inflation, and workers may be galvanized to strike by political rhetoric or pushback from corporate management.
Why are strikes important?
While strikes are often a last resort, they are an important and often effective tool for workers to use in order to gain certain rights, privileges, or protections. The 40-hour workweek, workers' compensation laws, safety regulations, and minimum wages are all the result of labor actions. This often comes through via collective bargaining, since any one individual worker usually has little bargaining power in relation to their boss or company owners. As a group, workers are better able to negotiate and make threats, such as a strike.
How does collective bargaining work?
Collective bargaining among workers is often coordinated through a labor union, an organization of workers in a particular company or industry, that work together to achieve their collective goals. While not as prevalent today as in the past, unions still have a great deal of power as well as political influence. Because union workers can often demand higher wages and other benefits, employers can be reluctant or even hostile to the prospect of unionization. Today's unions also tend to be more diplomatic. The labor strikes of the 19th and early 20th century could be violent affairs, leaving many dead and wounded as part of the labor struggle.
What did the strikers demand?
The strikers demanded safer working conditions, health benefits, and better pay. President Truman attempted to reach a settlement with the union, but his efforts were rebuffed. In response he fined the workers $3.5 million and forced them to accept a deal, which put an end to the strike.
When did the first strike occur?
The first recorded instance of a worker strike in America occurred in 1768 when journeymen tailors protested a wage reduction. In 1794, Philadelphia shoemakers formed a union called the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers; its establishment marked the beginning of sustained trade union organization in the U.S. 2
When did the Union reach its peak?
Union power and membership reached a high point in the U.S. during the 1940s and 1950s. Today, the biggest gains in union membership are among people under 34 years of age.
Why Were Unions Created?
Labor unions were created to protect employee rights and stop exploitation. Members fight together for better pay and working conditions and collectively can be influential enough to engineer change.
How did industrialization affect trade unions?
Industrialization resulted in the aggregation of workers in large factories, creating fertile ground for union growth. Large factories also put multiple trades under one roof, eventually leading to alliances among unions. Achieving a shorter workday was one of the unions' major accomplishments. 1
Why did unions work?
Unions worked not only for improvements in pay and working conditions but also for labor reforms. 2
How did labor unions help the American people?
Thanks to the efforts of labor unions, workers have achieved higher wages, more reasonable hours, safer working conditions, health benefits, and aid for workers who have retired or been injured. Labor unions were also instrumental in ending the practice of child labor. They have exerted a broad influence on American life, including the political, economic, and cultural fabric of the country. 1
What is labor union?
Labor unions are associations of workers formed to protect workers' rights and advance their interests. Unions negotiate with employers through a process known as collective bargaining. The resulting union contract specifies workers’ pay, hours, benefits, and job health-and-safety policies.
What is the history of labor law?
History of labor law in the United States refers to the development of United States labor law, or legal relations between workers, their employers and trade unions in the United States of America.
How many states have labor combination cases?
Over the first half of the 19th century, there are twenty-three known cases of indictment and prosecution for criminal conspiracy, taking place in six states: Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Louisiana, Massachusetts and Virginia.
What act privatized the railroads?
Railroad Transportation Act 1920, privatized the railroads and established the Railroad Labor Board. In re Debs, 158 U.S. 564 (1895) upheld a federal injunction for workers to return to work and held Eugene Debs in contempt of court for continuing to organize the Pullman Strike. Vegelahn v.
When was the first criminal conspiracy law?
In England, criminal conspiracy laws were first held to include combinations in restraint of trade in the Court of Star Chamber early in the 17th Century. The precedent was solidified in 1721 by R v Journeymen-Taylors of Cambridge, which found tailors guilty of a conspiracy to raise wages.
What was the only known case of criminal prosecution of workers in the colonial era?
The only known case of criminal prosecution of workers in the colonial era occurred as a result of a carpenters' strike in Savannah, Georgia in 1746. By the beginning of 19th-century, after the revolution, little had changed.
How many artisans were there in Boston during the Industrial Revolution?
For instance, in Boston in 1790, the vast majority of the 1,300 artisans in the city described themselves as "master workman".
Which case held that the 10 hour working day was constitutional?
Oregon, 243 U.S. 426 (1917) in a change of policy, the US Supreme Court held the 10-hour working day was constitutional. Debs v. United States, 249 U.S. 211 (1919) after Eugene Debs protested World War I publicly he was arrested under the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Supreme Court held this was lawful.
Origins of The Labor Movement
Early Labor Unions
- The early labor movement was, however, inspired by more than the immediate job interest of its craft members. It harbored a conception of the just society, deriving from the Ricardian labor theory of value and from the republican ideals of the American Revolution, which fostered social equality, celebrated honest labor, and relied on an independent, virtuous citizenship. The transfo…
American Federation of Labor
- During the 1880s, that division fatally eroded. Despite its labor reform rhetoric, the Knights of Labor attracted large numbers of workers hoping to improve their immediate conditions. As the Knights carried on strikes and organized along industrial lines, the threatened national trade unions demanded that the group confine itself to its professed labor reform purposes. When it r…
Discrimination in The Labor Movement
- As sweeping technological change began to undermine the craft system of production, some national unions did move toward an industrial structure, most notably in coal mining and the garment trades. But most craft unions either refused or, as in iron and steel and in meat-packing, failed to organize the less skilled. And since skill lines tended to conform to racial, ethnic and ge…
Samuel Gompers
- Gompers justified the subordination of principle to organizational reality on the constitutional grounds of “trade autonomy,” by which each national union was assured the right to regulate its own internal affairs. But the organizational dynamism of the labor movement was in fact located in the national unions. Only as they experienced inner change might the labor movement expan…
The Labor Movement and The Great Depression
- WATCH: Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal It took the Great Depression to knock the labor movement off dead center. The discontent of industrial workers, combined with New Deal collective bargaining legislation, at last brought the great mass production industries within striking distance. When the craft unions stymied the ALF’s organizing efforts, John L. Lewis of th…
Collective Bargaining
- That this alliance partook of the nonpartisan logic of Gompers’s authorship–too much was at stake for organized labor to waste its political capital on third parties–became clear in the unsettled period of the early cold war. Not only did theCIO oppose the Progressive party of 1948, but it expelled the left-wing unions that broke ranks and supported Henry Wallace for the preside…
Women and Minorities in The Labor Movement
- Nothing better captures the uneasy amalgam of old and new in the postwar labor movement than the treatment of minorities and women who flocked in, initially from the mass production industries, but after 1960 from the public and service sectors as well. Labor’s historic commitment to racial and gender equality was thereby much strengthened, but not to the point …
Decline in Unions
- This was ultimately economic, not political power, however, and as organized labor’s grip on the industrial sector began to weaken, so did its political capability. From the early 1970s onward, new competitive forces swept through the heavily unionized industries, set off by deregulation in communications and transportation, by industrial restructuring and by an unprecedented onslau…
U.S. History's Biggest Strikes
Key Concepts in Labor History
The Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886
The Pullman Strike of 1894
The Great Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902
The Steel Strike of 1919
The Railroad Shop Workers Strike of 1922
The Textile Workers Strike of 1934
- Start Date: September 1, 1934
- End Date: September 23, 1934
- Primary Union Involved in Strike:United Textile Workers
- Number of Workers Involved: 400,000
United Mine Workers of America of 1946
The Steel Strike of 1959