Trade Unions in the United States remained
weak throughout the 19th century. Only 2 per cent of the total labour
force and less than 10 per cent of all industrial workers, were members
of unions. In 1881 the Federation of Trades and Labor Unions was founded.
Five years later the organization changed its name to the American
Federation of Labor. Based on the Trade Union
Congress in Britain, the AFL's first president was Samuel
Gompers. He held conservative political views and believed that
trade unionists should accept the economic system.
The decision of attorney-general, Richard Olney,
to use the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, against
the trade unionists involved in the Pullman
Strike in 1894, made some workers to question the AFL's moderate
approach. One of those imprisoned as a result of Olney's action, Eugene
Debs, president of the American Railway Union, was converted to
socialism and believed that capitalism
should be replaced by a new cooperative system. In 1905 representatives
of 43 groups, who opposed the policies of American Federation of Labor,
formed the radical labour organization, the Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW).
In 1921 John L. Lewis, leader of the
United Mine Workers of America, failed in
his attempt to challenge Samuel Gompers
for the presidency of the American Federation of Labor. Gompers finally
left in 1924 and was replaced by William Green.
In 1935 John L. Lewis joined with the
heads of seven other unions to form the Congress
for Industrial Organization (CIO). Lewis became president of this
new organization and over the next few years attempted to organize
workers in the new mass production industries.
This strategy was successful and by 1937 the CIO
had more members than the American Federation of Labor.
William Green remained president of the
AFL until 1952 when he was replaced by George
Meany. In 1955 the CIO merged with the American
Federation of Labour. Walter Reuther,
the president of the CIO became vice-president of the AFL-CIO. Meany
became president of this new organization that now had a membership
of 15,000,000.
Walter Reuther found George
Meany conservative and dictatorial and in 1968 led the out of
the AFL-CIO federation. The following year he joined with the Teamsters
Union to form Alliance for Labor Action.
(1)
Samuel Gompers, evidence given before
a Senate Committee (1913)
With the power of wealth
and concentration of industry, the tremendous development in machinery,
and power to drive machinery; with the improvement of the tools of
labor, so that they are wonderfully tremendous machines, and with
these all on the one hand; with labor, the workers, performing a given
part of the whole product, probably an infinitesimal part, doing the
thing a thousand or thousands of times over and over again in a day
- labor divided and subdivided and specialized, so that a working
man is but a mere cog in the great industrial modern plant; his individuality
lost, alienated from the tools of labor; with concentration of wealth,
concentration of industry, I wonder whether any of us can imagine
what would be the actual condition of the working people of our country
today without their organizations to protect them.
What would be the condition
of the working men in our country in our day by acting as individuals
with as great a concentrated wealth and industry on every hand? It
is horrifying even to permit the imagination full swing to think what
would be possible. Slavery!Slavery! Demoralized, degraded slavery.
Nothing better.
To say that the men and
women of labor may not do jointly what they may do in the exercise
of their individual lawful right is an anomaly.
Gentlemen, the individual
working men accept conditions as they are, until driven to desperation.
Then they throw down their tools and strike, without experience, without
the knowledge of how best to conduct themselves, and to secure the
relief which they need and demand. But the working men know where
to go. It may be true that there are some workers who are opposed
to organizations of labor, but they are very, very few. Those that
do not come to us are either too helpless or too ignorant. But let
no man fool himself. When in sheer desperation, driven to the last,
where they can no longer submit to the lording of the master, they
strike, they quit, and all the pent up anger gives vent in fury -
they then come to us and ask us for our advice and our assistance,
and we give it to them, whether they were indifferent to us or whether
they were antagonistic to us. They are never questioned. We come to
their assistance as best we can.
I do not pretend to say
that with organizations of labor that strikes are entirely eliminated.
I do not fool myself with any such beliefs, and I would not insult
the intelligence of any other man by pretending to believe, much less
to make, such a statement. But this one fact is sure: That in all
the world there is now an unrest among the people, and primarily among
the working people, with the present position they occupy in society
- their unrequited toil; the attitude of irresponsibility of the employer
toward the workers; the bitter antagonism to any effective attempt
on the part of workers to protect themselves against aggression and
greed, and the failure of employers to realize their responsibilities.
The demand of the workers
is to be larger sharers in the product of their labor. In different
countries they have unrest and this dissatisfaction takes on different
forms. In our own country it takes on the form of the trade-union
movement, as exemplified by the American Federation of Labor - a movement
and a federation founded as a replica of the American governments,
both the Federal Government and the State and city governments. It
is formed to conform as nearly as it is possible to the American idea,
and to have the crystallized unrest and discontent manifested under
the Anglo-Saxon or American fashion; to press it home to the employers;
to press it home to the lawmakers; to press it home to the law administrators,
and possibly to impregnate and influence the minds of judges who may
accord to us the rights which are essential to our well-being rather
than guaranteeing to us the academic rights which are fruitless
and which we do not want.
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