The Achievements and Aspirations of Labor
Samuel Gompers served as a delegate to the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States of America and Canada in 1881. When the American Federation of Labor (AFL) formed in 1886, it absorbed the older organization, and Gompers stepped in as the AFL’s founding president. Labor found an interested ear in President Woodrow Wilson, who was elected in 1912. In 1914 Gompers spoke before the federal government’s Commission on Industrial Relations on behalf of the AFL, focusing on higher wages, shorter working days, voting rights for women, and a larger share for workers in the products of their labor. His speech was later published as a pamphlet, excerpts from which are reprinted here.
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A labor union represents its members in negotiations with an employer over all aspects of an employment contract, including wages and working conditions. These contract negotiations are known as collective bargaining. By giving workers a united voice, a union can often negotiate higher wages, shorter hours, and better fringe benefits (such as insurance and pension plans) than individual workers can negotiate on their own. When an employer and a union cannot reach an agreement through the collective bargaining process, the union may conduct a strike (organized work stoppage). Or, an employer may prevent workers from entering the workplace in a lockout.
In many countries, labor unions have official affiliations with political parties and seek to bring about social change through legislative and political action. In other countries, including the United States, no formal ties of this kind exist. The United States has a tradition of so-called business unionism, in which the main goal of the labor movement is to improve wages and working conditions. Unions in the United States, however, often engage in political activities. These activities include lobbying for legislation that furthers the aims of the labor movement and providing financial support to political candidates who are friendly to union causes.
In the early 19th century all aspects of the employment contract, including wages and hours of work, usually resulted from direct negotiation between employers and individual workers. Because of the imbalance of power, such negotiations favored employers. Labor unions began to form in the 19th century to help relieve the damaging effects of industrialization on workers, especially the long hours and low pay that factory work entailed. The earliest organizations of workers in the United States appeared in New York City and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, shortly before 1800. These organizations represented the crafts of printers and shoemakers.
Social and political sentiment against unions was widespread in Europe and North America at first. Many governments considered unions to be illegal associations or conspiracies in the restraint of trade. However, after 1900 unions gained strength and governments began to make efforts to prevent industrial strife.
The U.S. Congress began to pass labor relations laws in the 1930s, as part of the social and political reforms constituting the New Deal. These laws gave workers in the private sector of the economy the right to bargain collectively through a union. They also established procedures outlining how workers can select a union to represent them in the collective bargaining process, and they outlawed unfair practices by employers. Public-sector workers—government employees—began to gain most of these rights in the 1960s. Many public-sector workers, however, still do not have the right to strike.
Prior to the 1930s, fewer than 13 percent of nonagricultural workers in the United States belonged to unions. By the early 1950s, about a third were unionized. A steady decline in union membership began in the 1960s, and the decline accelerated in the 1980s. In 2004, about 12.5 percent of wage and salary workers, or about 15 million workers, belonged to unions, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The sharp decline in union membership in the private sector meant that only 7.9 percent of private-sector workers, about 8 million workers, were unionized in 2004, according to the BLS, which is part of the Department of Labor. The decline in union membership has also occurred in other developed countries. In Britain, the Trades Union Congress represents nearly 7 million workers, or about 30 percent of the nonagricultural workforce, but its power and membership declined during the 1980s and 1990s. In France, union membership fell by more than one-third from 1985 to 1995, and in 2000 unions represented less than 10 percent of wage earners there. Unions represented about 25 percent of Germany’s nonagricultural workforce and about 65 percent of Italy’s.
Vladimir Ilich Lenin wrote What Is To Be Done? in 1902 as a polemic for members of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party at what he saw as a crucial turning point for the party. In particular, he is responding to the author of an article in the journal Svoboda, whose arguments regarding the inclusion of the masses in revolutionary activity he disputes. In this passage from a section about the proper organization of workers and revolutionaries, Lenin focuses on the necessity of a core group of professional, trained revolutionaries.
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In the United States, workers can become members of a union by voting to certify a union as their collective bargaining agent. Voting typically occurs after 30 percent of the workers petition for a certification election. The union wins the right to represent the workers if it obtains the votes of a simple majority (more than 50 percent) of the workers who will make up the bargaining unit. If the union wins the certification election, management has a legal obligation to bargain in good faith with the union chosen by the workers. Workers who become dissatisfied with their union representation can use the same process to petition for a de-certification election.
Some states give workers the right not to join a union even if they work in a unionized establishment. These laws, called right-to-work laws, prohibit unions from requiring that workers become union members as a condition of employment in unionized firms. In 2000, 21 states had right-to-work laws.
When the management of the United States Steel Corporation refused to negotiate with workers organized under the American Federation of Labor on issues including standardized wages and an eight-hour working day, the union took action. About 350,000 workers went on strike on September 19, 1919. Violence soon erupted between union members and strikebreakers in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Indiana. The corporation’s chairman, Elbert H. Gary, called for the state militia and, eventually, federal troops to forcefully end the strike and disband the union. The strike was finally broken in January 1920. That same year, labor leader and founder of the Communist Party of the United States William Z. Foster published the correspondence that had taken place between labor and management just prior to and during the strike.
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If agreement on the terms of the employment contract cannot be reached through collective bargaining, the union has the right to strike. A strike occurs when union members withhold their labor from the firm, effectively shutting down operations. The firm can also initiate a lockout, which prevents union workers from entering the firm’s premises. The federal government can delay a strike action in industries considered vital to the public interest, such as railroads. It does so by ordering a cooling-off period, during which the workers must return to work. The cooling-off period typically lasts 80 days.
