The Rise of Labor Unions

Employers (Power) vs. Workers

• Yellow Dog Contracts• Blacklisting • Company Towns• No Job Security • Child Labor • Working Conditions • Long hours & Low

wages

Labor Unions

• What did they do?

• Why were they needed?

• What is a closed shop?

National Labor Union 1866

• William Sylvis 8-hour workday

Knights of Labor

• founded~1869

• Important person ~Terence Powerly

• Who were they representing?

~Skilled and unskilled workers 1886 – 700,000 Workers

• What did they try to accomplish?

~1st important labor organization

• Demands

~8hr day, end child labor, equal pay for equal work, safety codes, graduated income tax

American Federation of Labor

• founded

~1886• important person

~ Samuel Gompers• Who were they

representing? ~Craft union, separate union for every skill, Excluded African Americans

• What did they try to accomplish?

~ Working conditions, pay and control over jobs, later merged with the CIO

(Congress of Industrial Organizations)

• Why did this union last?

American Railway Union

• founded

~1893• Important people

~Eugene V. Debs (Socialist)

• Who were they representing?

~All railway workers, regardless of craft or

service

• What did they try to accomplish?

~Workers’ wages

~Was the largest union of its time

~The first industrial union in the United States

(Didn’t last because of its leaders)

Strikes

• Scabs, Blacklisted, closed shop,

collective bargaining, injunction

What was the purpose?

What did people risk?

Great Upheaval

• When it occurred1886• Where it occurredThroughout the U.S.Identify the labor union and

people involved1,500 strikes400,000 WorkersWhy were they striking?Better wagesBetter working conditionsResults of the strikeViolence

Haymarket Riot

• When it occurred

4 May 1886

Where it occurred

Chicago

Identify the labor union and people involved

40,000 Chicago workers

Anarchists

Why were they striking?

8hr day

• Results of the strikeUnknown person threw a bomb at policeViolenceAt least fifty dead or wounded civilians lay in the

streets60 officers lay wounded7 dead8 anarchists found guilty of murder4 hanged1 committed suicide, later the rest were pardoned

Homestead Strike

• When it occurred~1892

• Where it occurred~Homestead, Pennsylvania

• Identify the labor union and people involved~Amalgamated Association of Iron and

Steel Workers (the AA, formed in 1876)~Henry Clay Frick – Carnegie Steel Company

• Why were they striking?

~Protest a wage cut and working conditions

• Results of the strike

~Replacement workers hired

~Broke the union

Pullman Strike

• When it occurred

~1894• Where it occurred

~Pullman, Illinois • Identify the labor union

and people involved

~George Pullman~Eugene Debs

~ARU – American Railway Union