Trade Unions Flashcards
What was the situation of labour rights in 1865?
- Trade unions were small and limited to skilled workers
- No legal obligation to recognise unions
- Mainly closed shop unions
- Industrialisation ed to an increase in semi/unskilled workers
What was the impact of industrialisation?
- Immigration
- Technology
- East vs West - industrialisation quicker in the East
- Rural vs Urban work
What were the issues for workers during industrialisation?
- Children working in mines
- 12 hour shifts
- Dangerous conditions
- Health and safety expensive and opposed by employers
What were the aims, methods, effectiveness of the AFL? (American Federation of Labour) Date?
Aims: Link all unions, reform through legislation, stand up to large corporations
Methods: Harnessed bargaining power of skilled workers, concentrated on practical goals of raising wages and reducing hours, used boycotts and strikes
Effectiveness: 2 million members by 1914, some unions retained a degree of independence, AFL played a part in labour relations until 1992
Date: 1886
What were the aims, methods, effectiveness of the Wobblies? Date?
Aims: Defended rights of poor and illiterate workers such as immigrants
Methods: Use of violence and sabotage
Effectiveness: Employers had suspicions, divisions within leadership , membership peaked at 100,000, arrests and persecution
Date: 1905
What were the aims, methods of the NLU? (National Labour Union) Date?
Aims: To form a single association that wold cross craft lines and draw mass membership- also promoted cause of working women
Methods: Campaigned for 8 hour days, currency and banking reform, the end of convict labour, a fed labour department and immigration restrictions, opposed strikes
Date: 1866
What were the aims, methods, effectiveness of the Knights of Labour? Date?
Aims: 8 hour day, end to child labour, equal pay for equal work
Methods: Strikes
Effectiveness: Success in 1884 and 1885 but Haymarket Affair reduced influence
Date: 1869
What was the impact of Great Depression on Labour Rights?
- Total collapse of the economy led to factory closures and bankruptcy for businesses
- Unemployment rose to 25% in 1933 amounted to 13million
- Incidents of strikes and sit ins increased
- Employers called in the police or their own strike breakers to end industrial action
- Only 10% of workforce unionised in 1933
- Employers had the right to sack striking workers
What were the major Alphabet Agencies affecting Trade Unions and what did they do?
- National Recovery Administration (NRA): Encouraged minimum wage, abolition of child labour
- Social Security Act (SSA): Pensions and benefits for disabled
- Farm Security Administration (FSA): Lent money to sharecroppers
- Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC): Employed 2.5million young men, tree planting/flood control/conservation of national parks
What was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA)? When was it passed?
- Passed in June 1933
- Agreed codes of practice about issues such as production levels, wage rates, working hours, prices and TU rights
- Gave workers the right to organise TUs
- Positive effects limited
- Henry Ford refused to sign code
- Under fire by Supreme Court
What was the National Labour Act (Wagner Act)? When was it passed?
- Passed in 1935
- Promotes trade unionism
- Aimed to regulate and reduce labour disputes by providing a structure for bargaining
- Aimed to reduce picket line violence and disruption to production caused by strikes
What was the significance of the Wagner Act?
- First legislation to recognise rights of workers to elect their own reps
- Supreme Court declared act constitutional in 1937 - this support was crucial
- Spies on shop floors banned
- Set up National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) which could bargain on behalf of workers
- Expansion of TU membership from 3.7 million in 1933 to 9 million in 1938
How effective was the Wagner Act in extending TUs?
- TU membership increased but disputes continued to occur
- Divisions within TU movement continued to deprive unskilled workers of their rights
- 1937 - Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO) formed from 8 unions within the AFL
- Split weakens the labour movement until it reformed in 1955
What was the Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO) and its aims?
- Attempted to organise labour in mass production industries
- Established closed shop and was resisted by employees
- Sit ins and sit downs became the new form of protest - used against car industry Win 1937
- Supported women and AA labour rights
What did the New Deal do for disadvantaged workers?
- Positive impact on unionisation - extending rights
- Supported skilled workers
- Still no leadership/limited support for unskilled/domestic workers
- AAs were also limited - agricultural policies did not support them but FEPC tried to help
- Women were on minimum wage but upheld different pay levels
- Still conflict between state and federal govt. with welfare support
What were the positives of the New Deal on the position of workers?
- NIRA set up National Recovery Administration to improve relations between employers and employees
- Wagner Act gave workers the right to elect their own reps to take part in bargaining and gave workers right to join unions
- Union membership grew from 3.7 million in 1933 to 9 million in 1938
- Major industries which had resisted recognition now recognised unions
- Minimum weekly wage created by Fair Labor Standards Act
- CIO encouraged whole industry based unions but other ethnic groups to join in
What were the negatives of the New Deal on the position of workers?
- Employers like Henry Ford did not recognise the NIRA or the Wagner Act
- The Supreme Court declared NIRA unconstitutional
- Employers used those willing to break strikes or strong arm tactic to intimidate workers- continued violence
- Unskilled workers didn’t benefit from the improvements nor did women as pay differentials were upheld by the NIRA and Fair Labor Standards Act
- Welfare reforms helped some of the poorer paid BUT there were limits to this because of conflicts between state and federal rights
What were the impacts of WW2 on organised labour?
- Control of industry taken away from manufacturers and owners
- Weakening of employers tipped the balance in favour of the workers - they were essential for war effort
- Levels of production increased
- Office of War Mobilization (1943) established priorities and set production targets
- National War Labor Board adjudicated wage disputes
- TUs grew massively in size from 8.9 million to 14.8 million (1940 to 1945)
- President had power to seize any plant where strike action threatened to intefere with war production
- 1941 - Ford recognised the Autoworkers Union
- Increase in wartime production, the expansion of armed forces and halting of immigration led to a fall in unemployment
- Labour shortages provided employment opportunities for young people, handicapped, AAs and women
- Number of women at work increased by 50%
What was the impact of WW2 on black labour?
- More than 1 million black Americans found jobs in the industrial centres of the north and west
- Black factory workers remained restricted to the more menial jobs
- To object to this - A Philip Randolph, leader of the Pullman Porters Union, threatened a march on Washington in June in 1941
- The President then responded with an order forbidding racial discrimination in all defence projects
- This created the Fair Employment Practices Committee
- Black migration led to riots in northern cities
What was labour like post WW2?
- Massive wave of strikes due to end of wartime controls
- Belief that unions were becoming too powerful
- Republicans won both houses of Congress in 1946 - wanted to restrain union activity
- Taft- Hartley Act: restrained powers of trade unions and sought to purge organised labour of communists
- Republicans had no desire to court support of the unions and their membership
- By 1950s there was a pa code linked to standard of living cost
Summary of WW2 progress?
- Rights of labour recognised and established in law
- Increasing membership of TUs
- Divisions between skilled and unskilled workers as well as the inequality determined by racial and ethnic differences remained as a barrier to effective solidarity
- Growing influx of females - further divisions
What was the impact of WW1 on workers?
- Increase in TU membership from 2.7 million to 5 million
- Yellow Dog Contracts
- Decrease in number of people involved in strikes but increase in actual strikes
- 8 hour working day implemented by NWLB
- Nativism grew - need to protect American businesses from Communism
- ‘Welfare Capitalism’ - welfare services to employees - cafeteria plans, lunchrooms, water fountains, retirement benefits, health care
