Labor history of the United States

This article is missing information about the broader events & cause of the strikes. While the AFL did call some strikes, many independent strikes occurred, the AFL was not the cause, it was the end of the war. Please expand the article to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page . (August 2023)

In 1919, the AFL tried to make their gains permanent and called a series of major strikes in meat, steel,^[72] and many other industries. Management counterattacked, claiming that key strikes were run by Communists intent on destroying capitalism.^[73] Nearly all the strikes ultimately failed,^{[dubious – discuss]} forcing unions back to positions similar to those around 1910.^[74]

Coal strike of 1919

The

Lewis, facing criminal charges and sensitive to the propaganda campaign, withdrew his strike call. Lewis did not fully control the faction-ridden UAW and many locals ignored his call.[77] As the strike dragged on into its third week, supplies of the nation's main fuel were running low and the public called for ever stronger government action. Final agreement came after five weeks with the miners getting a 14 percent raise.^[78][79]

Women telephone operators win strike in 1919

One important strike was won by labor. Moved to action by the rising cost of living, the president of the Boston Telephone Operator's Union, Julia O'Connor, asked for higher wages from the New England Telephone Company. Wages of operators averaged a third less than women in manufacturing.^[80] In April, 9,000 women operators in New England went on strike, shutting down most telephone service. The company hired college students as strikebreakers, but they came under violent attack by men supporting the strikers. In a few days a settlement was reached giving higher wages. After the success O'Connor began a national campaign to organize women operators.^[80]

Weakness of organized labor, 1920–1929

The 1920s marked a period of sharp decline for the labor movement. Union membership and activities fell sharply due to many factors including generalized economic prosperity, a lack of leadership within the movement, and anti-union sentiments from employers, governments and the general population. Labor unions were much less able to organize strikes. In 1919, more than 4 million workers (or 21 percent of the labor force) participated in about 3,600 strikes. In contrast, 1929 witnessed about 289,000 workers (or 1.2 percent of the labor force) stage only 900 strikes.

After a short recession in 1920, the 1920s was a generally prosperous decade outside of farming and coal mining. The GNP growth 1921-29 was a very strong 6.0 percent, double the long-term average of about 3 percent.[83] Real annual earnings (in 1914 dollars) for all employees (deducting for unemployment) was $566 in 1921 and $793 in 1929, a real gain of 40 percent.^[84] The economic prosperity of the decade led to stable prices, eliminating one major incentive to join unions.^[85] Unemployment fell from 11.7 percent in 1921 to 2.4 percent in 1923 and remained in the range of 2 to 5 percent until 1930.^[86]

The 1920s also saw a lack of strong leadership within the labor movement.

Employers across the nation led a successful campaign against unions known as the "American Plan", which sought to depict unions as "alien" to the nation's individualistic spirit.[89] In addition, some employers, like the National Association of Manufacturers, used Red Scare tactics to discredit unionism by linking them to subversive activities.^[90]

US courts were less hospitable to union activities during the 1920s than in the past. In this decade, corporations used twice as many court injunctions against strikes than any comparable period. In addition, the practice of forcing employees (by threat of termination) to sign yellow-dog contracts that said they would not join a union was not outlawed until 1932.^[90]

Although the labor movement fell in prominence during the 1920s, the Great Depression would ultimately bring it back to life.

Battle of Blair Mountain

The Battle of Blair Mountain, August 25, 1921 – September 2, 1921, was the largest labor uprising in United States history. The conflict occurred in Logan County, West Virginia, as part of the Coal Wars, a series of early-20th-century labor disputes in Appalachia.

For five days from late August to early September 1921, some 10,000 armed coal miners confronted 3,000 lawmen and strikebreakers recruited and backed by coal mine operators during the miners' attempt to unionize the southwestern West Virginia coalfields. The battle ended after the United States Army, represented by the West Virginia Army National Guard, intervened by presidential order, and the miners, many of whom were veterans, declined to shoot at the soldiers. In the short term the battle was an overwhelming victory for coal industry owners and management. United Mine Workers of America membership plummeted from more than 50,000 miners to approximately 10,000 over the next several years.

New England Textile Strike of 1922

The New England Textile strike was widespread textile mill strike throughout New England, starting on January 23. Anywhere from 40,000 to 68,000 workers struck and it lasted until around November for most mills. The immediate cause was a proposal for a 20% wage cut and increased working hours. The strike led to a reversal of the wage cut for most workers.^[91][92][93]

Great Railroad Strike of 1922

The Great Railroad Strike of 1922, a nationwide railroad shop workers strike, began on July 1. The immediate cause of the strike was the Railroad Labor Board's announcement that hourly wages for railway repair and maintenance workers would be cut by seven cents on July 1. This cut, which represented an average 12 percent wage decrease for the affected workers, prompted a shop workers vote on whether or not to strike. The operators' union did not join in the strike, and the railroads employed strikebreakers to fill three-fourths of the roughly 400,000 vacated positions, increasing hostilities between the railroads and the striking workers.^[94]

On September 1, a federal judge issued the sweeping "Daugherty Injunction" against striking, assembling, and picketing. Unions bitterly resented the injunction; a few sympathy strikes shut down some railroads completely. The strike eventually died out as many shopmen made deals with the railroads on the local level. The often unpalatable concessions — coupled with memories of the violence and tension during the strike — soured relations between the railroads and the shopmen for years.^[94]

Organized labor, 1929–1955

The Great Depression and organized labor

The stock market crashed in October 1929, and ushered in the Great Depression. By the winter of 1932–33, the economy was so perilous that the unemployment rate hit the 25 percent mark.^[95] Unions lost members during this time because laborers could not afford to pay their dues and furthermore, numerous strikes against wage cuts left the unions impoverished: "one might have expected a reincarnation of organizations seeking to overthrow the capitalistic system that was now performing so poorly. Some workers did indeed turn to such radical movements as the Communist Party, but, in general, the nation seemed to have been shocked into inaction".^[96]

Though unions were not acting yet, cities across the nation witnessed local and spontaneous marches by frustrated relief applicants. In March 1930, hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers marched through New York City, Detroit, Washington, San Francisco and other cities in a mass protest organized by the Communist Party's Unemployed Councils. In 1931, more than 400 relief protests erupted in Chicago and that number grew to 550 in 1932.^[95]

The leadership behind these organizations often came from radical groups like Communist and Socialist parties, who wanted to organize "unfocused neighborhood militancy into organized popular defense organizations".^[95]

However the Great Depression spawned labor action in

Organized labor became more active in 1932, with the passage of the Norris–La Guardia Act. On March 23, 1932, Republican President

The passage of the Norris–La Guardia Act signified a victory for the American Federation of Labor, which had been lobbying Congress to pass it for slightly more than five years.^[88] It also marked a large change in public policy. Up until the passage of this act, the collective bargaining rights of workers were severely hampered by judicial control.^[100]

FDR and the National Industrial Recovery Act

President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933, and immediately began implementing programs to alleviate the economic crisis. In June, he passed the National Industrial Recovery Act, which gave workers the right to organize into unions.^[88] Though it contained other provisions, like minimum wage and maximum hours, its most significant passage was, "Employees shall have the right to organize and bargain collectively through representative of their own choosing, and shall be free from the interference, restraint, or coercion of employers."

This portion, which was known as Section 7(a), was symbolic to workers in the United States because it stripped employers of their rights to either coerce them or refuse to bargain with them.^[98] While no power of enforcement was written into the law, it "recognized the rights of the industrial working class in the United States".^[101]

For example, the now

Although the National Industrial Recovery Act was ultimately deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935 and replaced by the Wagner Act two months after that, it fueled workers to join unions and strengthened those organizations.^[88]

In response to both the

The elections of 1934 might have reflected the "radical upheaval sweeping the country", as Roosevelt won the greatest majority either party ever held in the Senate and 322 Democrats won seats in the United States House of Representatives versus 103 Republicans. It is possible that "the great social movement from below thus strengthened the independence of the executive branch of government".^[101]

Despite the impact of such changes on the United States' political structure and on workers' empowerment, some scholars have criticized the impacts of these policies from a classical economic perspective. Cole and Ohanian (2004) find that the New Deal's pro-labor policies are an important factor in explaining the weak recovery from the Great Depression and the rise in real wages in some industrial sectors during this time.^[105]

The American Federation of Labor: craft unionism vs. industrial unionism

The AFL was growing rapidly, from 2.1 million members in 1933 to 3.4 million in 1936. But it was experiencing severe internal stresses regarding how to organize new members.^[106] Traditionally, the AFL organized unions by craft rather than industry, where electricians or stationary engineers would form their own skill-oriented unions, rather than join a large automobile-making union. Most AFL leaders, including president William Green, were reluctant to shift from the organization's long-standing craft unionism and started to clash with other leaders within the organization, such as John L. Lewis.^[98]

The issue came up at the annual AFL convention in San Francisco in 1934 and 1935, but the majority voted against a shift to industrial unionism both years. After the defeat at the 1935 convention, nine leaders from the industrial faction led by Lewis met and organized the Committee for Industrial Organization within the AFL to "encourage and promote organization of workers in the mass production industries" for "educational and advisory" functions.^[98]

The CIO, which later changed its name to the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), formed unions with the hope of bringing them into the AFL, but the AFL refused to extend full membership privileges to CIO unions. In 1938, the AFL expelled the CIO and its million members, and they formed a rival federation.^[107] The two federations fought it out for membership; while both supported Roosevelt and the New Deal, the CIO was further to the left, while the AFL had close ties to the big city machines.

John L. Lewis and the CIO

Lewis threw his support behind Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) at the outset of the New Deal. After the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935, Lewis traded on the tremendous appeal that Roosevelt had with workers in those days, sending organizers into the coal fields to tell workers "The President wants you to join the Union." His UMW was one of FDR's main financial supporters in 1936, contributing over $500,000.^[109]

Lewis expanded his base by organizing the so-called "captive mines", those held by the steel producers such as

Lewis was the first president of the Committee of Industrial Organizations. Lewis, in fact, was the CIO: his UMWA provided the great bulk of the financial resources that the CIO poured into organizing drives by the

The most dramatic success was the 1936-7 sit-down strike that paralyzed General Motors. It enabled CIO unionization of GM and the main automobile firms (except the Ford Motor Company, which held out for a few years).^[110] However it had negative ramifications, as the Gallup Poll reported, "More than anything else the use of the sit-down strike alienated the sympathies of the middle classes".^[111]

The CIO's actual membership (as opposed to publicity figures) was 2,850,000 for February 1942. This included 537,000 members of the auto workers (UAW), nearly 500,000 Steel Workers, almost 300,000 members of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, about 180,000 Electrical Workers, and about 100,000 Rubber Workers. The CIO also included 550,000 members of the United Mine Workers, which did not formally withdraw from the CIO until later in the year. The remaining membership of 700,000 was scattered among thirty-odd smaller unions.^[112]

Historians of the union movement in the 1930s have tried to explain its remarkable success in terms of the rank and file—what motivated them to suddenly rally around leaders (such as John L. Lewis) who had been around for decades with little success. Why was the militancy of the mid-1930s so short lived?^{[113][114][115]}

Union upsurge in World War II

Union membership grew very rapidly from 2.8 million in 1933 to 8.4 million in 1941, covering 23% of the non-farm workforce, reaching 14 million in 1945, about 36 percent of the work force. By the mid-1950s, the merged AFL-CIO still collected dues from over 15 million members, a third of the non-farm workforce. Unionization was strongest in large northern cities, and weakest across the south, where repeated mobilization efforts failed. The 1937 split off of the CIO cost the AFL over a million members, but it added 760,000 on its own. Between 1937 and 1945 the CIO recruited two million new members, but the AFL recruited nearly 4 million. After some bitter battles in the late 1930s, the AFL and CIO had relatively few jurisdictional disputes, each focusing on its own specialized industries. The CIO was strongest in large manufacturing industries especially auto, steel, meatpacking, coal, and electrical appliances. The AFL affiliates were strongest in construction trades, trucking, department stores, and public service. The railway brotherhoods continued their independent status.^[116]

Both the AFL and CIO supported Roosevelt in 1940 and 1944, with 75 percent or more of their votes, after spending millions of dollars, and mobilizing tens of thousands of precinct workers.^[117][118]

However, Lewis opposed Roosevelt on foreign policy grounds in 1940, but his members ignored his advice to voted against FDR and he resigned as CIO chief. During the 22 months 1939-1941 when Stalin and Hitler supported each other, the far-left opposed American aid to Britain's war against Germany. They called strikes in war industries that were supplying Lend Lease to Britain. The most dramatic case came in early June 1941, when a wildcat strike near Los Angeles closed the plant that produced a fourth of the fighter-planes. With the approval of CIO leadership, President Roosevelt sent in the national guard to reopen the plant. However, when Germany suddenly invaded the USSR in late June 1941, the Communist activists suddenly became the strongest supporters of war production; they crushed wildcat strikes.^{[119][120][121]}

Lewis realized that he had enormous leverage over the nation's energy supply. In 1943, the middle of the war, when the rest of labor was observing a policy against strikes, Lewis led the coal miners out on a twelve-day strike for higher wages. The bipartisan Conservative coalition in Congress passed anti-union legislation over liberal opposition, most notably the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947.^[122]

A statistical analysis of the AFL and CIO national and local leaders in 1945 shows that opportunity for advancement in the labor movement was wide open. In contrast with other elites, the labor leaders did not come from established WASP families with rich, well-educated backgrounds. Indeed, they closely resembled the overall national population of adult men, with fewer from the South and from farm backgrounds. The union leaders were heavily Democratic. The newer CIO had a younger leadership, and one more involved with third parties, and less involved with local civic activities. Otherwise the AFL and CIO leaders were quite similar in background.^[123]

Women take new jobs in World War II

The war caused the military mobilization of 16 million American men, leaving a huge hole in the urban work force. (Men in farming were exempt from the draft.) In 1945, 37% of women were employed, encouraged by factors such as patriotism^[124] and the chance for high wages.^[125] One in 4 married women were working by 1945.^[126] Many domestic workers took jobs that paid much better, especially in war factories.^[127] During the war nearly 6 million women joined the workforce. They filled roles that men had monopolized, such as steel workers, lumber workers, and bus drivers.^[68] By 1945 there were 4.7 women in clerical positions which was an 89% increase from 1940. Another 4.5 million women working in factories, usually in unskilled positions, up 112%.^[127] The aviation industry saw the highest increase in female workers during the war. By 1943 310,000 women worked there, or 65% of the industry's workforce.^[126]

While women's wages rose more relative to men's during this period, real wages did not increase due to higher wartime income taxes.^[128] Although jobs that had been previously closed to women opened up, demographics such as African American women who had already been participating more fully experienced less change. Their husbands' income effect was historically even more positive than white women's. During the war, African American women engagement as domestic servants decreased from 59.9% to 44.6%, but Karen Anderson in 1982 characterized their experience as “last hired, first fired.”^[129]

At the end of the war, most of the munitions-making jobs ended. Many factories were closed; others retooled for civilian production. In some jobs, women were replaced by returning veterans who did not lose seniority because they were in service. However, the number of women at work in 1946 was 87% of the number in 1944, leaving 13% left the labor force to become housewives.^[130]

Walter Reuther and UAW

The Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1936–37 was the decisive event in the formation of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW). During the war

New enemies appeared for the labor unions after 1935. Newspaper columnist Westbrook Pegler was especially outraged by the New Deal's support for powerful labor unions that he considered morally and politically corrupt. Pegler saw himself a populist and muckraker whose mission was to warn the nation that dangerous leaders were in power. In 1941 Pegler became the first columnist ever to win a Pulitzer Prize for reporting, for his work in exposing racketeering in Hollywood labor unions, focusing on the criminal career of William Morris Bioff. Pegler's popularity reflected a loss of support for unions and liberalism generally, especially as shown by the dramatic Republican gains in the 1946 elections, often using an anti-union theme.^[132]

Strike wave of 1945

With the end of the war in August 1945 came a

The results were mixed, with the unions making some gains, but the economy was disordered by the rapid termination of war contracts, the complex reconversion to peacetime production, the return to the labor force of 12 million servicemen, and the return home of millions of women workers. The conservative control of Congress blocked liberal legislation, and "Operation Dixie", the CIO's efforts to expand massively into the Southern United States, failed.^[133]

The Republican Party exploited public anger at the unions in 1946, winning a smashing landslide. Labor responded afterwards by taking strong actions. The CIO systematically purged communists and far-left sympathizers from leadership roles in its unions.^[135] The CIO expelled some unions that resisted the purge, notably its third-largest affiliate the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), and set up a new rival IUE to take away the UE membership.^[136]

Meanwhile, the AFL in 1947 set up its first explicitly political unit, Labor's League for Political Education. The AFL increasingly abandoned its historic tradition of nonpartisanship, since neutrality between the major parties was impossible. By 1952, the AFL had given up on decentralization, local autonomy, and non-partisanship, and had developed instead a new political approach marked by the same style of centralization, national coordination, and partisan alliances that characterized the CIO.

The Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, also known as the Taft–Hartley Act, in 1947 revised the Wagner Act to include restrictions on unions as well as management. It was a response to public demands for action after the wartime coal strikes and the postwar strikes in steel, autos and other industries that were perceived to have damaged the economy, as well as a threatened 1946 railroad strike that was called off at the last minute before it shut down the national economy. The Act was bitterly fought by unions, vetoed by President Harry S. Truman, and passed over his veto. Repeated union efforts to repeal or modify it always failed, and it remains in effect today.

The Act was sponsored by Senator

The Taft-Hartley Act amended the Wagner Act, officially known as the National Labor Relations Act, of 1935. The amendments added to the NLRA a list of prohibited actions, or "unfair labor practices", on the part of unions. The NLRA had previously prohibited only unfair labor practices committed by employers. It prohibited jurisdictional strikes, in which a union strikes in order to pressure an employer to assign particular work to the employees that union represents, and secondary boycotts and "common situs" picketing, in which unions picket, strike, or refuse to handle the goods of a business with which they have no primary dispute but which is associated with a targeted business. A later statute, the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, passed in 1959, tightened these restrictions on secondary boycotts still further.

The Act outlawed closed shops, which were contractual agreements that required an employer to hire only union members. Union shops, in which new recruits must join the union within a certain amount of time, are permitted, but only as part of a collective bargaining agreement and only if the contract allows the worker at least thirty days after the date of hire or the effective date of the contract to join the union. The National Labor Relations Board and the courts have added other restrictions on the power of unions to enforce union security clauses and have required them to make extensive financial disclosures to all members as part of their duty of fair representation. On the other hand, a few years after the passage of the Act Congress repealed the provisions requiring a vote by workers to authorize a union shop, when it became apparent that workers were approving them in virtually every case.

The amendments also authorized individual states to outlaw union security clauses entirely in their jurisdictions by passing "right-to-work" laws. Currently all of the states in the Deep South and a number of traditionally Republican states in the Midwest, Plains and Rocky Mountains regions have right-to-work laws.

The amendments required unions and employers to give sixty days' notice before they may undertake strikes or other forms of economic action in pursuit of a new collective bargaining agreement; it did not, on the other hand, impose any "cooling-off period" after a contract expired. Although the Act also authorized the President of the United States to intervene in strikes or potential strikes that create a national emergency, the President has used that power less and less frequently in each succeeding decade.

Historian James T. Patterson concludes that:

By the 1950s most observers agreed that Taft-Hartley was no more disastrous for workers than the Wagner Act had been for employers. What ordinarily mattered most in labor relations was not government laws such as Taft-Hartley, but the relative power of unions and management in the economic marketplace. Where unions were strong they usually managed all right; when they were weak, new laws did them little additional harm.^{[141][neutrality is disputed]}

Anti-communism

The AFL had always opposed communists inside the labor movement.^{[speculation?]} After 1945 they took their crusade worldwide. The CIO had major communist elements who played a key role in organizational work in the late 1930s and war years. By 1949 they were purged. The AFL and CIO strongly supported the Cold War policies of the Truman administration, including the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and NATO.

Left-wing elements in the CIO protested and were forced out of the main unions. Walter Reuther of the United Automobile Workers purged the UAW of communist members. He was active in the CIO umbrella as well, taking the lead in expelling eleven communist-dominated unions from the CIO in 1949.^[142]

As a leader of the anti-communist center-left, Reuther was a founder of the liberal umbrella group Americans for Democratic Action in 1947. In 1949 he led the CIO delegation to the London conference that set up the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in opposition to the communist-dominated World Federation of Trade Unions. He had left the Socialist Party in 1939, and throughout the 1950s and 1960s was a leading spokesman for liberal interests in the CIO and in the Democratic Party.^[143] James B. Carey also helped influence the CIO's pullout from the WFTU and the formation of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions dedicated to promoting free trade and democratic unionism worldwide. Carey in 1949 had formed the International Union of Electrical Workers, a new CIO union for electrical workers, because the old one, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, was tightly held by the left.^{[144][self-published source]}

Marxian economist Richard D. Wolff argues that anti-communism was part of a strategy by big business, Republicans and conservatives to single out and destroy the members of the coalition that forced through the New Deal, namely organized labor, socialist and communist parties.^[145]

Union decline, 1955–2016

Since its peak in the mid-20th century, the American labor movement has been in steady decline, with losses in the private sector larger than gains in the public sector. In the early 1950s, as the AFL and CIO merged, around a third of the American

By the 1970s, a rapidly increasing flow of imports (such as automobiles, steel and electronics from Germany and Japan, and clothing and shoes from Asia) undercut American producers.[149] By the 1980s there was a large-scale shift in employment with fewer workers in high-wage sectors and more in the low-wage sectors.^[150] Many companies closed or moved factories to Southern states (where unions were weak).^[151] The effectiveness of strikes declined sharply, as companies after the 1970s threatened to close down factories or move them to low-wage states or to foreign countries.^[152] The number of major work stoppages fell by 97 percent from 381 in 1970 to 187 in 1980 to only 11 in 2010.^[153][154] The accumulating weaknesses were exposed when President Ronald Reagan—a former union president—broke the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) strike in 1981, dealing a major blow to unions.^[155]

Union membership among workers in private industry shrank dramatically, though after 1970 there was growth in employees unions of federal, state and local governments.^[156][157] The intellectual mood in the 1970s and 1980s favored deregulation and free competition.^[158] Numerous industries were deregulated, including airlines, trucking, railroads and telephones, over the objections of the unions involved.^[159]

Republicans, using conservative think tanks as idea farms, began to push through legislative blueprints to curb the power of public employee unions as well as eliminate business regulations.^[152]

Union weakness in the South undermined unionization and social reform throughout the nation, and such weakness is largely responsible for the anaemic US welfare state.^[160]

AFL and CIO merger 1955

The friendly merger of the AFL and CIO marked an end not only to the acrimony and jurisdictional conflicts between the coalitions, it also signaled the end of the era of experimentation and expansion that began in the mid-1930s. Merger became politically possible because of the deaths of Green of the AFL and Murray of the CIO in late 1952, replaced by George Meany and Reuther. The CIO was no longer the radical dynamo, and was no longer a threat in terms of membership for the AFL had twice as many members.^[161]

Furthermore, the AFL was doing a better job of expanding into the fast-growing white collar sector, with its organizations of clerks, public employees, teachers, and service workers. Although the AFL building trades maintained all-white policies, the AFL had more black members in all as the CIO. The problem of union corruption was growing in public awareness, and CIO's industrial unions were less vulnerable to penetration by criminal elements than were the AFL's trucking, longshoring, building, and entertainment unions. But Meany had a strong record in fighting corruption in New York unions, and was highly critical of the notoriously corrupt Teamsters.^[161]

Unification would help the central organization fight corruption, yet would not contaminate the CIO unions. The defeat of the New Deal in the 1952 election further emphasized the need for unity to maximize political effectiveness. From the CIO side the merger was promoted by David McDonald of the Steelworkers and his top aide Arthur J. Goldberg. To achieve the successful merger, they jettisoned the more liberal policies of the CIO regarding civil rights and membership rights for blacks, jurisdictional disputes, and industrial unionism. Reuther went along with the compromises and did not contest the selection of Meany to head the AFL-CIO.^[161]

Fearing the fallout of a drawn-out negotiation process, the AFL and CIO leadership decided on a "short route" to reconciliation. This meant all AFL and CIO unions would be accepted into the new organization "as is," with all conflicts and overlaps to be sorted out after the merger.^[162] Negotiations were conducted by a small, select group of advisors. The draft constitution was primarily written by AFL Vice President Matthew Woll and CIO General Counsel Arthur Goldberg, while the joint policy statements were written by Woll, CIO Secretary-Treasurer James Carey, CIO vice presidents David McDonald and Joseph Curran, Brotherhood of Railway Clerks President George Harrison, and Illinois AFL-CIO President Reuben Soderstrom.^[163]

Conservative attacks

Labor unions were a whole high-profile target of Republican activists throughout the 1940s and 1950s, especially the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. Both the business community and local Republicans wanted to weaken unions, which played a major role in funding and campaigning for Democratic candidates.^[164] The strategy of the Eisenhower administration was to consolidate the anti-union potential inherent in Taft-Hartley.^[165] Pressure from the Justice Department, the Labor Department, and especially from congressional investigations focused on criminal activity and racketeering in high-profile labor unions, especially the Teamsters Union. Republicans wanted to delegitimize unions by focusing on their shady activities. The McClellan Committee hearings targeted Teamsters president James R. Hoffa as a public enemy. Young Robert F. Kennedy played a major role working for the committee.^[166] Public opinion polls showed growing distrust toward unions, and especially union leaders — or "labor bosses," as Republicans called them. The bipartisan Conservative Coalition, with the aid of liberals such as the Kennedy brothers, won new Congressional restrictions on organized labor in the form of the Landrum-Griffin Act (1959). The main impact was to force more democracy on the previously authoritarian union hierarchies.^[167][168] However, in the 1958 elections, taking place during a sharp economic recession, the unions fought back especially against state Right to Work laws and defeated many conservative Republicans.^[169][170]

The Teamsters union was expelled from the AFL for its notorious corruption under president Dave Beck. Its troubles gained national attention from highly visible Senate hearings.^[171] The target was Jimmy Hoffa (1913–1975), who replaced Beck and held total power until he was imprisoned in 1964.

1960s: Liberal achievement in Civil Rights and backlash

The UAW under Reuther played a major role in funding and supporting the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s.^[172] More traditional unions favored their white members and encountered federal court intervention.^[173]

After the smashing reelection victory of

Hispanics comprise a large fraction of the farm labor force, but due to the fact that agricultural workers were not protected under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935,^[176] there was little successful unionization before the arrival in the 1960s of Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) and Dolores Huerta (1930), who mobilized California workers into the United Farm Workers (UFW) organization.^[177]

Chavez's use of non-violent methods combined with Huerta's organizational skills allowed for many of the bigger successes of the organization.^[178]

A key success for the UFW was in partnering with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), which primarily worked with Filipino farm workers, and creating the eventual United Farmworkers Union in 1972.^[179] Together, they organized a worker strike and consumer boycott of the grape growers in California that lasted for over five years. Through collaboration with consumers and student protesters, the UFW was able to secure a three-year contract with the state's top grape growers to increase the safety and pay of farm workers.^[180]

Chavez had a significant political impact; as Jenkins points out, "state and national elites no longer automatically sided with the growers." Thus, the political insurgency of the UFW was successful because of effective strategizing in the right kind of political environment.^[181] In the decades following its early success, the UFW experienced a steep decline in membership due to purges of key organizational leaders by Chavez.^[182] With Chavez unable to lead effectively, the Teamsters Union moved in and replaced the UFW.^[183][184] In 2015 José-Antonio Orosco pointed out that the UFW, "devolved from a powerful labor union for farmworkers to a fragile organization that today draws most of its support from mailed donations and represents fewer than five thousand workers in an industry that employs tens of thousands." In her biography of Chavez, Miriam Powell blames one person for the collapse: Chavez himself.^[185][186]

Hotels

Nationwide unions have been seeking opportunities to enroll Hispanic members. Much of their limited success has been in the hotel industry, especially in Nevada.^[187]

Reagan era, 1980s

Dana Cloud argues, "the emblematic moment of the period from 1955 through the 1980s in American labor was the tragic PATCO strike in 1981."^[188] Most unions were strongly opposed to Reagan in the 1980 presidential election, despite the fact that Reagan remains the only union leader (or even member) to become president. On August 3, 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) union — which had supported Reagan — rejected the government's pay raise offer and sent its 16,000 members out on strike to shut down the nation's commercial airlines. They demanded a reduction in the workweek to 32 from 40 hours, a $10,000 bonus, pay raises up to 40 percent, and early retirement.^[189]

Federal law forbade such a strike, and the United States Department of Transportation implemented a backup plan (of supervisors and military air controllers) to keep the system running. The strikers were given 48 hours to return to work, else they would be fired and banned from ever again working in a federal capacity. A fourth of the strikers came back to work, but 13,000 did not. The strike collapsed, PATCO vanished, and the union movement as a whole suffered a major reversal, which accelerated the decline of membership across the board in the private sector.^[189]

Schulman and Zelizer argue that the breaking of PATCO, "sent shock waves through the entire U.S. labor relations regime. ... strike rates plummeted, and union power sharply declined."^[190] Unions suffered a continual decline of power during the Reagan administration, with a concomitant effect on wages. The average first-year raise (for 1000-plus–worker contracts) fell from 9.8 percent to 1.2 percent; in manufacturing, raises fell from 7.2 percent to negative 1.2 percent. Salaries of unionized workers also fell relative to non-union workers. Women and blacks suffered more from these trends.^[191][192]

Decline of private sector unions

By 2011 fewer than seven percent of employees in the private sector belonged to unions. The UAW's numbers of automobile union members are representative of the manufacturing sector: 1,619,000 active members in 1970, 1,446,000 in 1980, 952,000 in 1990, 623,000 in 2004, and 377,000 in 2010 (with far more retired than active members).^[194]

By 2014, coal mining in the United States had largely shifted to open-pit mines in Wyoming, and there were only 60,000 active coal miners. The UMW has 35,000 members, of whom 20,000 were coal miners, chiefly in underground mines in Kentucky and West Virginia. By contrast it had 800,000 members in the late 1930s. However it remains responsible for pensions and medical benefits for 40,000 retired miners, and for 50,000 spouses and dependents.^[195]

Rise in union activity (2016-present)

The number of union members nationwide increased from 2016 to 2017, and some states saw union growth for the first time in several years or decades.^[196] Nearly half a million workers went on strike in 2018 and 2019, the largest numbers in three decades.^[197] Union growth in 2017 was primarily millennial workers. For instance, about 76 percent of new UAW union members during their increase came from workers under the age of 35.^[198] Although the total number of union members increased 1.7 percent in 2017, the Economic Policy Institute noted that year-to-year union membership often fluctuates due to hiring or layoffs in particular sectors, and cautioned against interpreting one-year changes as trends.^[199] The percentage of the workforce belonging to unions was 10.7 percent in 2017, unchanged over the previous year, but down from 11.1 percent in 2015, and 12.1 percent in 2007.^[200]

In recent years, efforts have also been made to extend the protections of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which excluded domestic workers and farm workers, to those groups on the state level. The National Domestic Workers' Alliance has successfully advocated for a Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights in New York, California, and Hawaii,^[201] while several states have passed legislation expanding the rights of farm workers.^[202]

On July 15, 2022, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reported that the amount of union representation petitions filed with the board increased by 58% in the first three quarters of the 2022 fiscal year. This was more than the total amount of petitions filed in the entire 2021 fiscal year.^[203]

Teacher strikes

In 2018, a series of

The relatively new high tech sector, typically dealing with the creation, design, development, and engineering of computer hardware and software products, has typically not been unionized as it is considered white-collar jobs, often with high pay rates and benefits. There has been worker activism to try to get the employer to change their practices related to labor, such as a November 2018 walkout at Google by 20,000 employees to make the company change its policy on sexual harassment.^[214] However, these efforts have traditionally stopped short of the need for unionization, and achieving the scale of employee involvement to bring a union to their workplace can be difficult due to the numerous benefits these employees may already have and the blue-collar nature that union association may bring.^[215]

One area where unionization efforts have become more intense is in the video game industry. Numerous publicized events since 2004 have revealed the excessive use of "crunch time" at some companies; where there is a reasonable expectation in the industry that employees may be needed to put in more time near the release of a game product, some companies were noted for using a "crunch time" approach through much longer periods or as a constant expectation of their employees; further, most of those employed in the video game market are exempt from overtime, compounding the issue. Major grassroots efforts through the game industry since 2018 have promoted the creation of a new union or working with an existing union to cover the industry.^[216] One of the first high tech companies to establish a union was Kickstarter, whose employees voted in favor of unionizing in February 2020.^[217]

On April 1, 2022,

From May 2 to November 9, 2023, a series of long labor disputes within the film and television industries of the United States took place, mainly focused on the strikes of the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA.

Unionization in the food service and grocery industries

The food service industry has one of the lowest unionization rates in the United States, with just 1.2% of workers belonging to a union in 2020 and 2021.^[219]

Starbucks

In late 2021, a Starbucks store located in Buffalo, New York, became Starbucks' only unionized location among 9,000 stores in the United States, joining Workers United of the Service Employees International Union.^[220] A second location in Buffalo followed, winning an election certified by the NLRB in January 2022. During this time, the number of stores filing petitions to the NLRB grew to over ten locations, seven of them being outside of the Buffalo area.^[221]

The number of Starbucks stores that have decided to vote on unionization has since grown significantly. As of August 2022, 209 Starbucks locations have voted for unionization, with another 45 locations voting against unionization.^[222]

Trader Joe's

In late July 2022, workers at a Trader Joe's in Hadley, Massachusetts, voted to become the first unionized location in the grocery store chain.^[223] Workers at this location chose to create an independent union called Trader Joe's United, and received administrative and legal support from already existing unions, but decided not to become a part of any larger established union.^[224] Two locations, one in Boulder, Colorado, and one in Minneapolis, also filed for unionization around this time.^[223] On August 12, 2022, the Minneapolis location went on to become the second store to unionize, joining Trader Joe's United.^[225] Comparisons to the unionization efforts of Starbucks locations were made following the success of the Minneapolis vote, with workers of the two respective unions both publicly supporting one another.^[226]

As of September 23, 2022, workers in Brooklyn, New York, have petitioned for unionization with the NLRB, and would potentially become the third unionized location out of over 500 Trader Joe's stores.

Chipotle

In late June 2022, a Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant in Augusta, Maine, became the chain's first location to petition for a union election, looking to organize independently as Chipotle United, citing issues regarding understaffing as well as crew and food safety.^[227] In that same month, Chipotle decided to permanently close the location, leading to workers filing a complaint with the NLRB and accusing Chipotle of union-busting. Chipotle has denied such claims, and have stated that the company was unable to provide enough staffing for the location.^[228]

In late August 2022, workers at a Chipotle in Lansing, Michigan, voted to unionize, becoming the fast food chain's first union in the United States.^[229] Workers at this location voted 11 to three, opting to unionize with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.^[230]

Public-sector unions

Labor unions generally ignored government employees because they were controlled mostly by the patronage system used by the political parties before the arrival of civil service. Post Office workers did form unions. The National Association of Letter Carriers started in 1889 and grew quickly. By the mid-1960s it had 175,000 members in 6,400 local branches.^[231]

Several competing organizations of postal clerks emerged starting in the 1890s. Merger discussions dragged on for years, until finally the NFPOC, UNMAPOC and others merged in 1961 as the United Federation of Postal Clerks. Another round of mergers in 1971 produced the American Postal Workers Union (APWU). In 2012 the APWU had 330,000 members.^[232] The various postal unions did not engage in strikes.

Historian Joseph Slater, says, "Unfortunately for public sector unions, the most searing and enduring image of their history in the first half of the twentieth century was the Boston police strike. The strike was routinely cited by courts and officials through the end of the 1940s."^[233] Governor Calvin Coolidge broke the strike and the legislature took control of the police away from city officials.^[234]

The police strike chilled union interest in the public sector in the 1920s. The major exception was the emergence of unions of public school teachers in the largest cities; they formed the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), affiliated with the AFL. In suburbs and small cities, the National Education Association (NEA) became active, but it insisted it was not a labor union but a professional organization.^[235]

New Deal era

In the mid-1930s efforts were made to unionize Works Progress Administration workers, but were opposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.^[236] Moe points out that Roosevelt, "an ardent supporter of collective bargaining in the private sector, was opposed to it in the public sector."^[237] Roosevelt in 1937 told the nation what the position of his government was: "All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.... The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with government employee organizations.^[238]

"Little New Deal" era

Change came in the 1950s. In 1958 New York mayor Robert Wagner, Jr. issued an executive order, called "the little Wagner Act," giving city employees certain bargaining rights, and gave their unions with exclusive representation (that is, the unions alone were legally authorized to speak for all city workers, regardless of whether or not some workers were members.) Management complained but the unions had power in city politics.^[239]

By the 1960s and 1970s public-sector unions expanded rapidly to cover teachers, clerks, firemen, police, prison guards and others. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10988, upgrading the status of unions of federal workers.^[240]

Recent years

After 1960, public sector unions grew rapidly and secured good wages and high pensions for their members. While manufacturing and farming steadily declined, state- and local-government employment quadrupled from 4 million workers in 1950 to 12 million in 1976 and 16.6 million in 2009.^[241]

In 2009, the US membership of public sector unions surpassed membership of private sector unions for the first time, at 7.9 million and 7.4 million respectively.^[242]

In 2011, states faced a growing fiscal crisis and the Republicans had made major gains in the 2010 elections. Public sector unions came under heavy attack especially in Wisconsin, as well as Indiana, New Jersey and Ohio from conservative Republican legislatures.^{[243][244][245]} Conservative state legislatures tried to drastically reduce the abilities of unions to collectively bargain. Conservatives argued that public unions were too powerful since they helped elect their bosses, and that overly generous pension systems were too heavy a drain on state budgets.^[246][247]

A 2023 study published by

According to labor historians, the US has the most violent labor history of any industrialized nation.[250]^[251][252]

Some historians have attempted to explain why a labor party did not emerge in the United States, in contrast to Western Europe.

• AFL–CIO
• Anti-union violence in the United States
• AFL–CIO
• Communists in the United States labor movement (1937–1950)
• Gilded Age
• History of labor law in the United States
• History of unfree labor in the United States
• Immigration policies of American labor unions
• International comparisons of labor unions
• Labor federation competition in the United States
• Labor unions in the United States
• List of strikes (many in the United States)
• List of US strikes by size
• List of worker deaths in United States labor disputes
• Minimum wage in the United States
• New Deal coalition
• Union violence in the United States
• United States labor law

Notes

Bibliography

For a more detailed guide, see

Labor unions in the United States/References

.

Surveys

• Arnesen, Eric, ed. Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History (2006), 2064pp; 650 articles by experts; excerpt and text search
• Beik, Millie, ed. Labor Relations: Major Issues in American History (2005) over 100 annotated primary documents; excerpt and text search
• Boone, Graham. "Labor law highlights, 1915–2015." Monthly Labor Review (2015). online
• Boris, Eileen, Nelson Lichtenstein, and Thomas Paterson, eds. Major Problems in the History of American Workers: Documents and Essays (2002); primary and secondary sources.
• Brenner, Aaron Brenner et al. eds. The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History (ME Sharpe, 2009) 789 pp.
• Brody, David. In Labor's Cause: Main Themes on the History of the American Worker (1993); excerpt and text search
• Commons, John R. and Associates. History of Labour In The United States. [1896–1932] (4 vol. 1921–1957), highly detailed classic to 1920. online
• Derks, Scott. Working Americans, 1880-1999: The Working Class (2000)
• Dubofsky, Melvyn. Industrialism and the American worker, 1865-1920 (1975); online
• Dubofsky, Melvyn. Labor Leaders in America (1987).
• Dubofsky, Melvyn, and Foster Rhea Dulles. Labor in America: A History (8th ed. 2010); wide-ranging survey
• Dubofsky, Melvyn, ed. American labor since the New Deal (1971); online
• Faue, Elizabeth. Rethinking the American Labor Movement (2017); excerpt
• Fink, Gary M., ed. Labor Unions (Greenwood Press, 1977) online
• Fink, Gary M., ed. Biographical Dictionary of American Labor (Greenwood Press, 1984).
• Kessler-Harris, Alice. Out to work: A history of wage-earning women in the United States (Oxford UP, 1982, 2003); online.
• Loomis, Erik (2020). A History of America in Ten Strikes.
  ISBN 978-1620976272
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• Minchin, Timothy J. Labor under Fire: A History of the AFL-CIO since 1979 (UNC Press, 2017).
• Lichtenstein, Nelson (2003). State of the Union: A Century of American Labor.
• Perlman, Selig. A theory of the labor movement (1928); online
• Taylor, Paul F. The ABC-CLIO Companion To The American Labor Movement (ABC-CLIO, 1993); an encyclopedia
• Zieger, Robert H., and Gilbert J. Gall. American Workers, American Unions: The Twentieth Century (2002).

Specialized studies

See also: History of coal mining § Coal miners and unions

• Archer, Robin (2007). Why Is There No Labor Party in the United States?. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Arnesen, Eric. "'Like Banquo's Ghost, It Will Not Down': The Race Question and the American Railroad Brotherhoods, 1880-1920." American Historical Review 99.5 (1994): 1601–1633. online
• Arnold, Andrew B. Fueling the Gilded Age: Railroads, Miners, and Disorder in Pennsylvania Coal Country (2014) Excerpt and text search
• Brenner, Aaron et al. The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History (2009).
• Brody, David. Steelworkers in America: The nonunion era (U of Illinois Press, 1960).
• Brody, David. Workers in Industrial America: Essays on the Twentieth Century Struggle.
• Campbell, D'Ann. Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era (Harvard UP, 1984) women workers in World War II.
• DiGirolamo, Vincent. Crying the News: A History of America's Newsboys (2019).
• Dubofsky, Melvyn; Time, Warren Van (1986). John L Lewis. best biography of key 20th century leader
• Foner, Philip (1980). Women and the American Labor Movement from World War I to the Present.
• Fraser, Steve (1993). Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the rise of American labor.
• Fraser, Steve (2015). The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power.
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• Frymer, Paul (2008). Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party. Princeton University Press.
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• Greene, Julie (1998). Pure and Simple Politics: The American Federation of Labor and Political Activism, 1881–1917.
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• Grossman, Jonathan. "The Coal Strike of 1902 – Turning Point in U.S. Policy" Monthly Labor Review October 1975. online
• Gutman, Herbert G. "Work, culture, and society in industrializing America, 1815-1919." American Historical Review 78.3 (1973): 531-588 online.
• Hazard, Blanche E. "The organization of the boot and shoe industry in Massachusetts before 1875." Quarterly Journal of Economics 27.2 (1913): 236–262. online
• Hill, Herbert. "The problem of race in American labor history." Reviews in American History 24.2 (1996): 189–208. online
• Isaac, Larry W., Rachel G. McKane, and Anna W. Jacobs. "Pitting the Working Class against Itself: Solidarity, Strikebreaking, and Strike Outcomes in the Early US Labor Movement." Social Science History 46.2 (2022): 315–348. online
• Josephson, Matthew. Sidney Hillman: Statesman of American Labor (1952) online.
• Kampelman, Max M. The Communist Party vs The CIO (1957) online
• Kersten, Andrew E. Labor's home front: the American Federation of Labor during World War II (NYU Press, 2006). online
• Laslett, John H M (1970). Labor and the Left; a study of socialist and radical influences in the American labor movement, 1881–1924.
• Lichtenstein, Nelson. Labor's War at Home: The CIO in World War II. (1987)
• Lipold, Paul F., and Larry W. Isaac. "Striking deaths: Lethal contestation and the ‘exceptional’ character of the American labor movement, 1870–1970.” International Review of Social History (2009) 54 (2): 167–205.
• Lipsitz, George. Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940s. (U of Illinois Press, 1994).
• Livesay, Harold C (1993). Samuel Gompers and Organized Labor in America.
• McCartin, Joseph A. Collision course: Ronald Reagan, the air traffic controllers, and the strike that changed America (2011) online
• Milkman, Ruth, ed. Women, work, and protest: a century of US women's labor history (Routledge, 2013).
• Mink, Gwendolyn (1986). Old labor and new immigrants in American political development: union, party, and state, 1875–1920. Cornell University Press.
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• Montgomery, David (1987). The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925.
• Montgomery, David. "Strikes in Nineteenth-Century America," Social Science History (1980) 4#1 pp. 81–104 in JSTOR
• Phelan, Craig. William Green: Biography of a Labor Leader (1989), 20th century AFL leader .
• Reich, Steven A. A Working People: A History of African American Workers since Emancipation (2015)
• Rodgers, Daniel T. The work ethic in industrial America 1850-1920 (U of Chicago Press, 2014).
• Rosenfeld, Jake (2014). What Unions No Longer Do.
  ISBN 0674725115
• Taft, Philip (1957). The AF of L in the Time of Gompers. online
• Taft, Philip (1959). The AF Of L From the Death of Gompers to the Merger. online
• Taillon, Paul Michel. Good, Reliable, White Men: Railroad Brotherhoods, 1877-1917 (U of Illinois Press, 2009).
• Tomlins, Christopher L (1985). The state and the unions: labor relations, law, and the organized labor movement in America, 1880–1960.
• Trotter Jr, Joe William. Workers on arrival: Black labor in the making of America (U of California Press, 2019).
• van der Linden, Marcel. American Labor's Global Ambassadors: The International History of the AFL-CIO during the Cold War (Springer, 2013).
• Vargas, Zaragosa. Proletarians of the North: A history of Mexican industrial workers in Detroit and the Midwest, 1917-1933 (Univ of California Press, 1993).
• Wilentz, Sean. Chants democratic: New York City & the rise of the American working class, 1788-1850 (1984) online
• Zieger, Robert H (1995). The CIO 1935–1955. University of North Carolina Press.
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Historiography

• Barrett, James R (2015). "Making and Unmaking the Working Class: E.P. Thompson and the 'New Labor History' in the United States". Historical Reflections. 41 (1).
• Faue, Elizabeth. Rethinking the American labor movement (Routledge, 2017).
• Fink, Leon. In Search of the Working Class: Essays in American Labor History and Political Culture (1984)
• Fink, Leon. "'Intellectuals' versus 'Workers': Academic Requirements and the Creation of Labor History." American Historical Review 96.2 (1991): 395–421. online
  • Fitzpatrick, Ellen. "Rethinking the Intellectual Origins of American Labor History." American Historical Review 96.2 (1991): 422–428. online
• Krueger, Thomas A. "American labor historiography, old and new." Journal of social history (1971): 277-285 online.
• McCoy, Austin (2016). "Bringing the social back: rethinking the declension narrative of twentieth-century US labour history". Social History. 41 (1): 1–13.
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• Mapes, Kathleen; Storch, Randi (2016). "The Making and Remaking of a Labor Historian: Interview with James R. Barrett". Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas. 13 (2): 63–79.
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• Pearson, Chad. "Twentieth century US labor history: Pedagogy, politics, and controversies Part 1" History Compass (Dec 2017) 15#2
  doi:10.1111/hic3.12433 abstract
• Shelton, Jon. "Labor and Working Class—A Historiographical Survey." in The Routledge History of the Twentieth-Century United States (Routledge, 2018) pp. 149–160.
• Tomlins, Christopher (2013). "The State, the Unions, and the critical synthesis in labor law history: a 25-year retrospect". Labor History. 54 (2): 208–221.
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• Walkowitz, Daniel J.; Haverty-Stacke, Donna T., eds. (2010). Rethinking U.S. Labor History: Essays on the Working-Class Experience, 1756-2009. New York: Continuum.
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• Zieger, Robert H. "Workers and scholars: Recent trends in American labor historiography." Labor History 13#2 (1972): 245–266. https://doi.org/10.1080/00236567208584204
• Kessler-Harris, Alice. "Labor Movement in the United States." Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. 31 December 1999. Jewish Women's Archive. (Viewed on October 31, 2023) <https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/labor-movement-in-united-states>.
• Herberg, Will. “Jewish Labor Movement in the United States: World War I to the Present.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 6, no. 1 (1952): 44–66. https://doi.org/10.2307/2518609. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2518609?searchText=jewish+women+labor+movement&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Djewish%2Bwomen%2Blabor%2Bmovement&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A56697a756895c03441cb8dc8c51f751a
• Yellowitz, Irwin. “Jewish Immigrants and the American Labor Movement, 1900–1920.” American Jewish History 71, no. 2 (1981): 188–217.
  JSTOR 23882031
  . https://www.jstor.org/stable/23882031?searchText=jewish+women+labor+movement&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Djewish%2Bwomen%2Blabor%2Bmovement&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3Ab7c8a3ccea63c6b4f158ba3af8917c97
• Hardman, J. B. S. “The Jewish Labor Movement in the United States: Jewish and Non-Jewish Influences.” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 52, no. 2 (1962): 98–132.
  JSTOR 23873714
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• Antler, Joyce. "The History of Jewish Women in the United States." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. 24 May. 2023; Accessed 1 Nov. 2023. https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-1011. https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-1011?rskey=rkv7s1&result=1#acrefore-9780199329175-e-1011-div1-5
• Walkowitz, Daniel. "The Jewish Working Class in America." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. 29 Nov. 2021; Accessed 1 Nov. 2023. https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-935. https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-935?rskey=ysL3Ra&result=2#acrefore-9780199329175-e-935-div2-6

Primary sources

• Dubofsky, Melvyn, and Joseph McCartin, eds. American Labor: A Documentary Collection (Palgrave Macmillan US), 2004 312pp
• Rees, Jonathan, and Z. S. Pollack, eds. The Voice of the People: Primary Sources on the History of American Labor, Industrial Relations, and Working-Class Culture (2004), 264pp
• Gompers, Samuel. Seventy Years of Life and Labor (1925, 1985 reprint) online
• Gompers, Samuel. The Samuel Gompers Papers (1986– ) definitive multivolume edition of all important letters to and from Gompers. 9 volumes have been completed to 1917. The index is online Archived September 23, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
• Powderly, Terence Vincent. Thirty years of labor, 1859–1889 (1890, reprint 1967). online

External links

Library resources about
Labor history of the United States

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