Labor federation
A 'labor federation' is a group of unions or labor organizations that are in some sense coordinated. The terminology used to identify such organizations grows out of usage, and has sometimes been imprecise; For example, according to Paul Frederick Brissenden nationals are sometimes named internationals, federations are named unions, etc. The issues that divided labor federations and fostered competition were many and varied. The often conflicting philosophies between the craft unionists and the industrial unionists played a role, as did differing ideas about political vs. industrial action; electoral politics; immigration; legislation; union democracy; and, the inclusion of women, black workers, and Asians. Craft unions tended to organize skilled workers, to the exclusion of the unskilled, further complicating the issue of class among working people. Frequently, the role of government has been significant or decisive in tipping the balance of power between labor federations, or in crushing labor organizations outright. Even personalities of union leaders have sometimes guided the fortunes of labor federations. That may seem inevitable when labor organizations are headed by men likeEmployer reaction
Employers have rarely failed to notice divisions or disputes among labor unions, and in 1912 ''The American Employer'' contracted for and gleefully reproduced a cartoon depicting the labor scene chaos of the period. Curiously, the Detroit IWW (which had been expelled from the Chicago IWW four years earlier, and would soon change its name to the Workers' International Industrial Union) editorialized that the cartoon was accurate from an industrial unionism point of view, stating (according to ''The American Employer''),A.S. Van Duzer, editor, The American employer, Volumes 1-2, American Employer Pub. Co., Chamber of Commerce Building, Cleveland, Ohio, 1912, page 391"The labor movement of America at the present time could not have eenmore aptly portrayed.
" Moyer is here seen following Haywood with a knife. Haywood is shown using sabotage onSamuel Gompers Samuel Gompers (; January 27, 1850December 13, 1924) was a British-born American cigar maker, labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and served as the organization's .... The Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners are also after Sammy, as the Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor, revoked their charter. The two factions of the popularly supposed defunct K. of L. nbsp;Knights_of_Labor .html" ;"title="Knights_of_Labor.html" ;"title="nbsp;Knights of Labor">nbsp;Knights of Labor ">Knights_of_Labor.html" ;"title="nbsp;Knights of Labor">nbsp;Knights of Labor are busy soaking each other while the Detroit I. W. W. lands a right swing to the jaw of the Chicago bogus outfit. Standing aloof from the general melee are the various Railway Brotherhoods, aloof not only from the organizations and from the combatants, but aloof from each other, as the various strikes on the railroads have shown."
History
National Labor Union
The first labor federation was the National Labor Union (NLU). The NLU professed that all wealth and property were the products of labor, and that a just monetary system was necessary to ease labor's distress. Working men were receiving too little, and "nonproducing capital" was receiving too much of the wealth produced.The cause of all these evils is the WAGES SYSTEM. So long as we continue to work for wages... so long will we be subjected to small pay, poverty, and all of the evils of which we complain.The federation was anti-
If we can succeed in convincing these people to make common cause with us...we will have a power...that will shake Wall Street out of its boots... Capital is no respecter of persons and it is...a sheer impossibility to degrade one class of labor without degrading all."Exhibiting somewhat contradictory tendencies, the NLU advocated support of the
It is usually concluded that the National Labor Union disappeared because it turned political. The judgment is too simple. The National Labor Union was inherently weak from its origin because its membership held two conflicting philosophies which were never resolved: one was the politically conscious, humanitarian, and reform philosophy inherited from the ighteen-thirties and forties; the other was the "pure and simple" trade-unionist philosophy of the ighteen-fifties...A History of American Labor, Joseph G. Rayback, 1966, page 127-128.David Brundage explains ''pure and simple unionism'' as "the view that the labor movement should confine itself to fighting over wages and working conditions and avoid entanglements with those seeking more fundamental social change." Rayback continues,
When reformers urged cooperation with women and Negroes in industry, trade unionists who were inclined to look upon both groups as cheap labor competition became incensed. During the postwar recession trade unionists accepted Greenbackism as a means of establishing cooperatives which would eliminate "wage slavery" and alleviate the "miserable condition of workingmen." After 1870, however, when labor began to share in business recovery, the same trade unionists found Greenbackism "highly amusing," a description which in turn angered the reformers.By 1870, local and state workingmen's groups favoring political action were gaining strength, and the national trade unions were becoming unhappy with the direction of the NLU. The craft-based trade unions began to disaffiliate. By the time of its demise, the political and reform groups were in control. Rayback concludes,
he National Labor Unionrepresented the transition between the democratic, egalitarian, conscious, humanitarian, and reformist labor movement of theIn 1872 the NLU split into separate organizations — the industrial, and the political — a particularly important demarcation that would connote a contentious fault line in future labor organizations. The trade union organizations that left the NLU had not yet developed "pure and simple unionism" as a philosophical concept. Yet the prospect of political action — particularly for goals that seemed tangential to the perceived needs of union members — caused not only the trade unions, but also the local workingmen's organizations to lose faith in the NLU. To the unions, it seemed, the NLU had lost its balance. Reform at the national level didn't seem to conflict with the quest for a higher standard of living at the local level, so long as some balance between the goals was maintained. But by 1870, it seemed apparent that the NLU was focused more upon reform and political action, than on the goal of representing working people. But one significant cause of the tension, and the subsequent struggle for power in the NLU was the fact that a significant number of workers hadn't yet comprehended the changed nature of the industrialized system, in which corporations were not only beginning to create their own powerful combinations, they were able to rely upon their close relationship with the state to enforce their requirements upon the labor force. The workers were still thinking in terms of "the simple master-workman relationship" of a previous era. They hadn't yet developed a "mature sense of class consciousness." Workers were unaware of the importance of establishing not only a strong labor movement, but one with sufficient resources to enable it to meet employers on an equal footing. The NLU had no integral structure of its own; its constituent organizations were autonomous, and the federation could do little more than agitate, pass resolutions, or offer advice. The federation's officers had no salaries, and in 1870, its most successful year, expenses were double receipts. Bereft of resources, focused on political action almost to the exclusion of practical gains for union members, the NLU did not succeed in launching even a single new national trade union. Yet for its time, the NLU played an important role in labor history.antebellum Antebellum, Latin for "before war", may refer to: United States history * Antebellum South, the pre-American Civil War period in the Southern United States ** Antebellum Georgia ** Antebellum South Carolina ** Antebellum Virginia * Antebellum ...period, and the self-centered, wage-conscious, trade-unionist labor movement of the late nineteenth century.
The founding of the NLU, with its pioneer fight for Negro-labor solidarity, the rights of women, independent political activity, and international solidarity, had been a great step forward despite its weaknesses and despite its defeat.The problems that the federation confronted were not going away, and some of the ideas promoted by the NLU — accumulated wealth as unpaid labor; the inadequacy of traditional "bread and butter" unionism; the culpability of the wage system in the impoverishment of working people; the desire for a more equitable society; the importance of educating working people about the ways in which they are exploited — these ideas would resonate in other labor organizations in the decades yet to come, at times as a dominant theme, but increasingly as a cry of opposition against the mainstream.
Great Railway Strike, and government response
After the National Labor Union disappeared, the national trade unions attempted to form a new organization through establishment of the Industrial Congress. The effort failed after the panic of 1873 inaugurated a lengthy depression. Membership dropped throughout the union movement, and many trade unions ceased to exist during a period of increasing unemployment, wage reductions, and systematic attacks against labor organizations by employers. The success or failure of industrial actions have frequently marked turning points in the fortunes of labor organizations. Occurring after a four-year depression, the railroad strikes of 1877 were,...spontaneous upheavals of protest and rebellion involving large numbers of dissatisfied workers who were unorganized, without overall leadership and without a program of action... t wasthe first great class confrontation in America, and a portent of things to come.The railway workers were supported by farmers, small businessmen, miners, millhands, unemployed workers, black sewermen and stevedores, and others, revealing "how bitterly a portion of the American people hated the railroads..." Strike leaders arrested in
Many states enacted conspiracy laws directed against labor. State and federal courts revived the concept of malicious conspiracy and applied it to labor organizations. Employers took a stronger stand against union organization, using blacklists and strikebreakers. Harassment of union organizers by local police and officials of local governments, often with the cooperation of local courts, became a common occurrence.The Rise and Repression of Radical Labor, Daniel R. Fusefeld, 1985, pages 10-11.
The state militias... were revived... primarily as a strikebreaking force.Leaders of the strikes of 1877 were blacklisted, tracked by railroad detectives, and hounded from their jobs for years.
Knights of Labor
The National Labor Union and the Industrial Congresses were conceived as top-down organizations launched by national labor leaders. The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor (KOL) was a movement launched from the ground up.Workers and Utopia, a Study of Ideological Conflict in the American Labor Movement 1865-1900, Gerald N. Grob, 1969, page 35. The KOL was initially formed in 1869 as a secret organization in response toNeglected and downtrodden for decades, their rush to join the Knights was essentially a reaction against long oppression and degradation. Among this faction two elementary passions developed: an attitude of "give no quarter" and a fierce desire to express the power they felt in their alliance with the Knights of Labor—the great unconquered champion of the underdog.But the leadership of the Knights recalled numerous failures before 1885, and remained timid. Meanwhile, the growth of the Knights was seen as a threat by many of the older craft unions.
Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions
In 1881 theWhen the year 1884 began, labor... was not a united force. On the left were the socialists; the middle road was held by the Knights; the right was shared by F.O.O.T.A.L.U. and the independent trade unions. There was disagreement over methods. Socialists were divided between trade unionists, advocates of political action, and advocates of violence; the Knights fostered the " one big union"; the trades were vacillating between economic and legislative action... hesocialists looked to the ultimate overthrow of the capitalistic order; the Knights looked to the destruction of the wage system and the eventual establishment of a "cooperative" economic system which included both owners and laborers; the trades were becoming more and more conscious of the magical quality of high wages to solve all their troubles.Philip S. Foner observed that,
The Knights demanded government ownership of the systems of transportation and communication, but the new Federation did not. Nor did the Federation accept the monetary program of the Knights of Labor, indicating that it definitely regarded the industrial capitalist rather than the banker as the chief enemy of the wage-earners, and—unlike the Knights—had pretty nearly rid itself of the belief in financial panaceas... the Federation made no reference to producers or consumers co-operatives, and failed to recommend compulsory arbitration which the Knights supported...The
Leaders of F.O.O.T.A.L.U., who recognized the stagnation of their own union, looked upon the rise of the order with considerable dismay. Accordingly, the F.O.O.T.A.L.U. convention of October, 1884, determined to make a new bid for leadership by inaugurating a national movement for an eight hour day. The convention invited the Knights to cooperate.Frank K. Foster of the Typographical Union, affiliated with FOOTALU (which was about to become the American Federation of Labor) proposed a "universal strike" for May 1, 1886. The federation accepted the proposal, while the Knights of Labor leadership expressed no interest. The call demonstrated a rift between the Knights of Labor leadership — which advised their members not to participate, and the Knights of Labor rank and file — who embraced the call. Then the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886 initiated by the Knights of Labor began to falter, and the
Aftermath of Haymarket
The Haymarket riots sparked a wave of repression throughout the United States. Newspapers whipped public opinion into a frenzy.In many communities in all parts of the country the local police raided the offices of radical groups and labor unions and arrested their leadership, many of whom were jailed... Printshops for radical publications were wrecked, and offices of the publications themselves were raided.The Rise and Repression of Radical Labor, Daniel R. Fusefeld, 1985, page 22.
Fear-gripped state legislatures rushed laws curbing freedom of action of labor organizations onto the statute books. The courts began to convict union members of conspiracy, intimidation, and rioting in wholesale lots. Employers, taking advantage of the situation, instituted widespread anti-union campaigns, with Pinkertons, lockouts, blacklists, and yellow-dog contracts as their chief weapons.One particularly effective anti-labor technique was "the fostering of bigotry and prejudice."
Black working people were sometimes imported from the South to replace striking Pennsylvania miners. Chinese... ervedas cheap labor, frequently building railroads... Prejudices against Irish and Hungarian immigrants, as well as others, often weakened possibilities of union organization, especially in the coal fields.Railroad tycoon
...seems to have originated among local business and real-estate interests... These were tactics that were to be perfected over the next thirty years and adopted in less violent form and with legal sanctions by the federal government in 1918-1920.
FOOTALU becomes the American Federation of Labor
The face off between FOOTALU and the Knights of Labor was a struggle between skilled workers in the craft unions, and a larger number of unskilled or semiskilled workers in the KOL. Selig Perlman wrote in 1923 that this was "a clash between the principle of solidarity of labor and that of trade separatism." The craft workers were capable of demanding more from their employers due to their skills, and preferred to fight separately.Selig Perlman, A History of Trade Unionism In The United States, Forgotten Books, 1923/2011, pages 114 and 116 John Herman Randall called this the motive of individual advantage overcoming the motive of social idealism. The Knights of Labor, who were organized by territory rather than by trade, desired that the skilled workers should dedicate their greater leverage to benefit all workers. This concept would later be referred to as the "new unionism" byThe very success of the Knights of Labor intensified the split between unskilled and skilled workers and drove a wedge into the working class. Two national organizations now reflected two different philosophies, one job-consciousness, the other class-consciousness.If the reader had relied upon early rhetoric and the Preamble alone, they might have been forgiven for mistaking the AFL for that "class-conscious" entity:
A struggle is going on in the nations of the civilized world between the oppressors and the oppressed of all countries, a struggle between capital and labor, which must grow in intensity from year to year and work disastrous results to the toiling millions of all nations if not combined for mutual protection and benefit. This history of the wage-workers of all countries is but the history of constant struggle and misery engendered by ignorance and disunion; whereas the history of the non-producers of all ages proves that a minority, thoroughly organized, may work wonders for good or evil. Conforming to the old adage, 'In union there is strength,' the formation of a Federation embracing every trade and labor organization in North America, a union founded upon a basis as broad as the land we live in, is our only hope. —Preamble to the Constitution of the American Federation of Labor, 1886The AFL Preamble had been preserved intact from its FOOTALU predecessor. Years later, the Industrial Workers of the World would declare,
he AFL'spreamble is contradicted by its constitution. The one proclaims the class struggle, the other denies it.Adolph Strasser, president of the Cigar Makers' International and a founding leader of the AFL, had testified before the Senate in 1883:
We have no ultimate ends. We are going only from day to day. We are fighting only for immediate objects—objects that can be realized in a few years... we say in our constitution that we are opposed to theorists... we are all practical men...Curiously, it was the early AFL that voiced support for the Haymarket defendants. Gompers observed,
It was a shocking story of official prejudice... Though the more even balanced rank and file (of the AFL) does not approve of the radical wing, yet they cannot safely abandon the radicals to the vengeance of the common enemies.A Pictorial History of American Labor, William Cahn, 1972, page 150.However, his relationship to the defendants was carefully qualified. Gompers opened his remarks in Chicago,
I have differed all my life with the principles and methods of the condemned.But the Knights of Labor strenuously fought to distance itself from Haymarket altogether. Terence V. Powderly declared,
Let it be understood by all the world that the Knights of Labor have no affiliation, association, sympathy or respect for the band of cowardly murderers, cut-throats and robbers known as anarchists...Gompers had educated himself to the precepts of socialism and offered internationalist rhetoric, declaring, "The working people know no country. They are citizens of the world."A Pictorial History of American Labor, William Cahn, 1972, page 139. But Gompers was moving away from radical views, and increasingly embracing conservatism. Labor Historian Melvyn Dubofsky has written,
By 1896 Gompers and the AFL were moving to make their peace with Capitalism and the American system. Although the AFL had once preached the inevitability of class conflict and the need to abolish 'wage slavery', it slowly and almost imperceptibly began to proclaim the virtues of class harmony and the possibilities of a more benevolent Capitalism.Melvyn Dubofsky,'' 'Big Bill' Haywood'', 1987, page 17.Himself an immigrant, the leader of the AFL developed a vociferous hostility to immigrant labor. Gompers' philosophy about unskilled labor also evolved from one of ambivalence to exclusion.Paul Buhle, Taking Care of Business, Samuel Gompers, George Meany, Lane Kirkland, and the Tragedy of American Labor, 1999, page 41. Gompers likewise turned away from union democracy:
islieutenant Adolph Strasser voided the election victory of a left-winger to the Cigarmaker's largest local in 1881 and appointed a Gompers (and Strasser) stooge...The early days of the American Federation of Labor were marked by aggressive thought and action:
It believed in strikes when necessary. It demanded control of wealth, which was "concentrating itself into fewer hands." It believed in "compulsory education laws... prohibition of labor of children under 14 years... sanitation and safety provisions for factories... repeal of all conspiracy laws... a National Bureau of Labor Statistics... protection of American industry against cheap foreign labor... Chinese exclusion..."
Characteristics of the American Federation of Labor
In time, the AFL would redefine its methods and its mission. The federation embraced "pure and simple trade unionism." It pursued the goal of winning "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work," the standard expression of the aspirations of working people as perceived by the federation. National and international unions within the new federation were given autonomy, up to a point. The ties among the affiliates were more spiritual than material. Yet the federation bureaucracy wielded certain powers. It granted a jurisdiction to each affiliate, generally corresponding to craft, and promised to protect them from encroachment by other affiliates, or by rival unions, with a ruthless jealousy. The AFL had learned that its greatest danger could come from within, as in the event of individual organizations or groups aligning themselves with an outside rival (such as the Knights of Labor). This has resulted in a "passion for regularity" (Selig Perlman's words). Not only would the federation prevent rival unions (i.e., unions over which it could not exercise control) from joining, it would also deal ruthlessly with any subordinate body which lent support to any rival organization. The governing body of the American Federation of Labor was in essence a weak organization, allowing individual affiliates to make their own decisions on most matters, except in regard to the oversight for the protection and perpetuation of the federation itself. Thus, the federation generally cannot order affiliates to adopt a particular course of action, but it may appeal to them to do so. The AFL was victorious in its struggle to survive and outlast the Knights of Labor, which was destroyed by a combination of Haymarket backlash, poor leadership, and failed strikes in 1886-87.The Rise and Repression of Radical Labor, Daniel R. Fusefeld, 1985, page 23. But the mass-oriented labor movement hadn't been vanquished; it arose again through the actions of industrial unions in the early 1890s.Difficult choices in the 1890s
In 1892, four dramatic labor struggles put organized labor at a crossroads. The...a militant, mass-oriented union. A strong thread of class consciousness ran through its policy statements... It was the largest and strongest union in the country in 1892, with over 24,000 members when the great strike at Homestead began.Yet the organization was crushed, and "six months later the workers were back at work without a union organization." Historian J. Bernard Hogg, who wrote a dissertation on the Homestead Strike, footnotes that struggle by observing,
The survival of the struggling American Federation of Labor during this period is in part attributable to the caution of its leaders. They made no effort to aid the Homesteaders. Gompers made some fiery speeches but confined himself to that. He knew a lost cause when he saw one and gave up an important branch of the federation rather than risk the whole organization. In this policy he was undoubtedly wise.Three more defeats caught the attention of the labor movement. An 1892 uprising of hardrock miners in Idaho was brutally put down with federal forces. A strike conducted by railroad switchmen in Buffalo was broken by militia. And, a series of strikes by coal miners in
...that the corporations... were much more powerful fighting units than was generally realized, capable of defeating the strongest labor organization, and that capital had secured a firm grip on state and local governments and would use the state's power to protect its interests.A History of American Labor, Joseph G. Rayback, 1966, page 197.The methods employed to attack unions were improvingThe Rise and Repression of Radical Labor, Daniel R. Fusefeld, 1985, page 27. with each use:
...the mass media to arouse public opinion, the courts to provide a legal basis for the use of force, strikebreakers to keep operations going and for use as private armies, and jail for the leaders of the workers. All of this was done under the protective umbrella of an appeal to law and order, the sanctity of private property and the United States constitution, and "Americanism."Labor historian Joseph Rayback observed that for labor to maintain or advance,
Two roads were open: conversion of the A.F.L. into a political movement or the development of industrial unionism.Many in the AFL favored political action, but Gompers was fearful that passing a program put forward by socialist trade unionists would grant socialists control of the federation. Content to work within capitalism, Gompers opposed grand programs of reform, whether they were based upon political or economic action.Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble, 1997, page 210. He managed, using "some tricky parliamentary procedure," to defeat a proposed turn toward a political program. Gompers also wasn't about to give up craft unionism for industrial organizing. Yet the AFL didn't control all of organized labor, and organizing industrially had great appeal when unions were under attack.
Industrial unionism in the Pullman Strike
In the aftermath of the railway strike of 1877, there were two very divergent tendencies among railroad workers. The Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, the Switchmen, and the Yardmasters did not consider themselves unions, they were mutual aid societies. But men who worked in the depots, the yards, the roundhouses, and the railway machine shops were convinced by events in 1877 that they needed to become more aggressive. The two groups of workers worked peacefully side by side for the most part, until the brotherhoods got involved in a struggle with the Knights of Labor.The fight reached a climax in 1887-1888 when brotherhood scabs defeated a strike of the Knights against the Reading Railroad, and the Knights' scabs in turn defeated an engineer-fireman strike against the Burlington.The railroad workers recognized that they needed a movement toward greater unity. But such plans were defeated when the railroads, recognizing the threat of a united workforce, began to treat the brotherhoods so well that they were soon acknowledged as the "élite of the labor world."A History of American Labor, Joseph G. Rayback, 1966, page 200.
The brotherhoods, well satisfied, went their independent ways. In the meantime unionism among the yard, depot, shop, and maintenance workers deteriorated.But events in 1892 changed everything. Eugene V. Debs, secretary-treasurer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, had been considered one of the most conservative of railway labor leaders. But the attacks against labor that year convinced him that the craft unions were too weak when they went up against big business. Debs began campaigning for, and soon had launched, the American Railway Union (ARU). The ARU followed the organizational structure of the Knights, and was intended as a union for all railway employees. Its success was almost instantaneous. The first strike, against the Great Northern, won easily. While the engineers and conductors stayed with their brotherhoods, the brakemen, firemen, yard and depot workers, shop and car workers flocked to the ARU. By its second convention the ARU had 150,000 members. The ARU joined the
"Gentlemen, we can handle the various brotherhoods, but we cannot handle the A. R. U. We have got to wipe it out. We can handle the other leaders, but we cannot handle Debs. We have got to wipe him out too."The General Managers turned to the federal government, which immediately sent federal troops and United States Marshals to force an end to the strike. Debs was allowed to seek help from the American Federation of Labor. He asked that AFL railroad brotherhood affiliates present the following proposition to the Railway Managers' Association:
...that the strikers return to work at once as a body, upon the condition that they be restored to their former positions, or, in the event of failure, to call a general strike.The AFL issued a proclamation insisting that all affiliates of the AFL withdraw support for the ARU. The only mention of a general strike was a demand against participation. Gompers would later write that his concern was rebuilding the railway brotherhoods, which could not help but come at the expense of the ARU:
The course pursued by the Federation was the biggest service that could have been performed to maintain the integrity of the Railroad Brotherhoods. Large numbers of their members had left their organization and had joined the American Railway Union. It meant, if not disruption, weakening to a very serious extent.The Autobiography of Big Bill Haywood, 1929, p. 78 ppbk.Writing about the response of the AFL three decades later, Bill Haywood declared,
This was the blade of treachery, with a handle made of a double cross, that was plunged into the breasts of the strikers of the Pullman car shops. It caused the death of the American Railway Union. It sent Eugene V. Debs and his co-workers to prison.
Western Federation of Miners and the United Mine Workers of America
TheNational Civic Federation and the "labor aristocracy"
Through his appeals to government and the public, Mitchell was helping to build an alliance of conservative union leaders and liberal business men through theIn 1903, United Mine Workers President John Mitchell declared revealingly, "The trade union movement in this country can make progress only by identifying itself with the state." Mitchell provided his own best evidence when he identified the labor movement with himself... e used his position toacquire businesses and to invest in real estate. Busily organizing a far-flung bureaucracy, he quickly made himself an enemy of the union's radicals and a social friend of coal operators. He had adopted, an otherwise sympathetic biographer says, the "culture and attitudes of the employing class." He naturally became a key labor representative to the new National Civic Federation, which sought to promote labor peace (on the terms of the employers, critics claimed) and to make class consciousness and class struggle obsolete.Mitchell and Gompers were beginning to build an alliance with the Democratic Party. In 1903-04, the WFM would find itself a target of government repression that was enabled in part by Pinkerton infiltration. However, the UMWA's turn toward respectability didn't protect it from similar indignities. Mitchell and Gompers had also been criticized for failure to support steelworkers during their 1901 strike, a charge that some laid to coziness with the National Civic Federation, and which resulted in Mitchell's removal as head of the UMWA in 1908. But the Coal Strike of 1902 was a significant victory for the UMWA and for the AFL, resulting in a six-fold increase of AFL membership. However, longterm benefits for working people from the alliance between conservative union leaders and liberal businessmen proved illusory; employers had become alarmed over the aggressiveness and the success of AFL affiliates. A nation-wide employers' movement began to seriously threaten unions.
Western Federation of Miners forms the Western Labor Union
Edward Boyce, an Irish-born miner, became the sixth president of theGompers and Boyce went together like warm beer and vinegar. A stumpy Jewish immigrant from the London ghetto, Sam Gompers was shaped by the world of his father, who rolled richGompers had settled upon the belief that "pure-and-simple unionism" would serve working people well. Boyce saw things differently. Labor Historian Melvyn Dubofsky observed,cheroot The cheroot is a filterless cylindrical cigar with both ends clipped during manufacture. Since cheroots do not taper, they are inexpensive to roll mechanically, and their low cost makes them popular. The word 'cheroot' probably comes via Portug ...s and aromatic panatelas in cigar-making lofts on New York's Lower East Side... the rollers hat young Gompers joinedwere educated men, their craft an ancient skill, their union like that of the medievalguild A guild ( ) is an association of artisans and merchants who oversee the practice of their craft/trade in a particular area. The earliest types of guild formed as organizations of tradesmen belonging to a professional association. They sometimes ...s, designed as much to protect their hard-won turf from less-skilled workers as to wrest concessions from their employers. Not surprisingly, then, the AFL, which Gompers founded in 1886, was sometimes regarded as a league ofpetit-bourgeois ''Petite bourgeoisie'' (, literally 'small bourgeoisie'; also anglicised as petty bourgeoisie) is a French term that refers to a social class composed of semi-autonomous peasants and small-scale merchants whose politico-economic ideological s ...tradesmen seeking to protect their status from challenges by the industrialized masses... Gompers and his lieutenants, with their silk hats and waistcoats, their lifelong habit of philosophical disputation over glasses of steaming tea, often looked like a band of privileged elitists.
By 1900, most of the unions affiliated with the AFL spoke for members who still possessed valuable and scarce skills, took pride in their crafts, won better treatment for themselves than for the mass of workers and quarrelled with employers over their just share of the bounty of Capitalism rather than with the system itself. The WFM, by contrast, opened itself to all potential members and also to ideas and values in conflict with Capitalism. It accepted any member of a bona fide union without initiation fee upon presentation of a valid union card. It demanded neither a closed shop nor an exclusive employment contract. It sought jobs for all, not merely the organized and skilled few.Lukas explains,
Ed Boyce's brand of "industrial unionism" grew from a different constituency embedded in different social conditions. Boyce's miners were, for the most part, relatively uneducated men without highly marketable skills, who were often confronted with mine owners and state governments ready to put down labor unrest with strikebreakers, vigilantes, and militias. Such workers saw no advantage to huddling within their traditional crafts; they sought to mobilize all workers across a given industry to confront employers—and governments—with their aggregate clout. With little stake in the status quo, they invested their faith in sweeping political programs to remedy the grim conditions in which they worked and lived.When the Cloud City Miners Union in Leadville, Colorado, a local of the Western Federation of Miners, went on strike to try to win back a fifty cents per day pay cut, the mine owners imported strikebreakers. This resulted in a major struggle which a British journalist described:
No surrender; no compromise; no pity. The owners mean to starve the miners to death; the miners mean to blow the owners to atoms.Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble, 1997, page 211.On September 21, militant unionists blew up an oil tank and a wooden mine structure. Four union members were killed, and twenty-seven union members, including Ed Boyce, were jailed. The strike was crushed. Boyce sought support from the AFL, but got almost nothing beyond words. When Gompers heard a rumor that Boyce might consider leaving the federation, he wrote to the WFM president:
f someone is thinking of leaving the federationit is most injust ic improper, and destructive... There is nothing in this world which so gladdens the gaze of the enemy in battle as to divide the forces with which it is to contend.Boyce responded,
I never was so much surprised in my life as I was at the (After a response from Gompers defending the craft unionists and cautioning against the use of force by the WFM, Boyce was unsatisfied. He wrote,Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...) convention, when I sat and listened to the delegates from the East talking about conservative action when four million idle men and women are tramps upon the highways... I am not a trades unionist; I am fully convinced that their day of usefulness is past...
After mature deliberation, I am fully convinced that no two men in the labor movement differ so widely in opinion as the President of the A.F. of L. and the writer... The trades-union movement has been in operation in our country for a number of years, and through all these years the laboring masses are becoming more dependent. In view of these conditions, do you not think it is time to do something different than to meet in annual convention and fool away time in adopting resolutions, indorsing iclabels and boycotts? ... I am strongly in favor of a Western organization.After Boyce and Gompers clashed over electoral politics and the use of force, the WFM left the AFL in 1897 while expressing dissatisfaction with the AFL's conservatism. The State Trades and Labor Council of Montana issued its November 1897 proclamation which assessed the state of affairs between capital and labor, and called for a new western labor federation. In 1898, Boyce organized a rival federation called the
Such rights as tradesmen now enjoy, will be extended to the common laborer.Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble, 1997, page 213.An AFL observer wrote that "Boyce's influence with the miners is unquestionably strong. The majority believe him sincerely." Boyce declared, with words that would be echoed in the Preamble of another organization, one that would be birthed in 1905,
There can be no harmony between organized capitalists and organized labor... Our present wage system is slavery in its worst form. The corporations and trusts have monopolized the necessities of society and the means of life... Let the rallying cry be: Labor, the producer of all wealth, is entitled to all he creates, the overthrow of the whole profit-making system, the extinction of monopolies, equality for all and the land for the people.The AFL vigorously opposed dual unionism, and the formation of the WLU alarmed Gompers. He sent a delegation to the WLU convention in 1901 "to plead for a reunited labor movement." The AFL had little hope of luring the miners back to the AFL, but there were many other trades joining the WLU. Some labor entities supported the efforts of both organizations but in the West, even the construction trades — which tended to be more conservative — were heavily influenced by the philosophy of the WFM.All That Glitters-- Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek, page 77.
The Victor and Cripple Creek carpenters' locals adopposed Samuel Gompers' reelection as AFL president in 1896 and later advocated that theIn keeping with the Gompers philosophy of rewarding friends and punishing enemies, any rival federation to the AFL might quickly feel the wrath, as had the Knights of Labor. While Gompers extended his hand, AFL internationals prohibited affiliation of locals that were also connected to the WLU.David Brundage, The Making of Western Labor Radicalism: Denver's Organized Workers, 1878-1905, 1994, page 144. The AFL chose to makeUnited Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, often simply the United Brotherhood of Carpenters (UBC), was formed in 1881 by Peter J. McGuire and Gustav Luebkert. It has become one of the largest trade unions in the United State ...affiliate with the WLU instead of the AFL.
In early 1902, AFL organizer Pierce began to form rival unions among Denver workers in trades dominated by the WLU. He was especially effective in building organizations among strikebreakers in industries where WLU affiliates were engaged in strikes. Such organizations, accurately labeled "scab unions" by the Western Labor Union, were formed by Pierce at George J. Kindel's mattress factory, the Rocky Mountain Paper Mill, and several other concerns. But such a strategy, while producing results in the short run, could not but hurt the AFL's prestige among Denver's organized workers in the long run. Even Lennon, now national treasurer of the AFL and a Gompers supporter, expressed dismay over Pierce's strategy. He predicted that Pierce's scab unions would have the effect of driving all of Denver's craft unions into the WLU Trades Assembly and called on Gompers to dismiss the organizer.The Western Labor Union federation changed its name in 1902 as a direct answer to Gompers' actions.
Western Labor Union becomes the American Labor Union
The Western Labor Union became the American Labor Union (ALU) and announced its intention to organize nationwide, hoping to challenge the AFL in the East as well as the West. The American Labor Union ceased to exist in 1905 when militant labor joined together with labor anarchists and socialist political organizations to create the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).The AFL declines to support rival federations
In 1903 the WFM became embroiled in thehe WFMwas geographically remote from A.F.L. centers; the conditions it faced, bordering upon class warfare, were not understood by eastern labor; and its philosophy of political action, industrial unionism, and direct economic action was foreign to A.F.L. ideology.The WFM leadership had fully embraced the socialism espoused by
I want to tell you, Socialists, that I have studied your philosophy; read your works on economics, and not the meanest of them; studied your standard works, both in English and German—have not only read, but studied them. I have heard your orators and watched the work of your movement the world over. I have kept close watch upon your doctrines for thirty years, have been closely associated with many of you and know how you think and what you propose. I know, too, what you have up your sleeve, and I want to say to you that I am entirely at variance with your philosophy. I declare it to you, I am not only at variance with your doctrines, but with your philosophy. Economically you are unsound; socially, you are wrong; industrially, you are an impossibility.As the WFM was systematically repressed and ALU locals came under pressure from the Citizens' Alliance, the AFL saw more opportunity in what rivals had come to call "union scabbing" than in acting in solidarity with the other federations. In May, 1903, the Hurlburt Grocery Company, a Citizens' Alliance affiliate in Denver, fired ALU-organized workers for being union activists. The ALU called sympathy strikes to defend the activists. In spite of the failure of AFL-affiliated craft unions to support the strike, the workers were re-hired. Yet the labor movement had demonstrated that it could not muster solidarity among its disparate elements, and the Citizens' Alliance began a blacklist procedure which was under-appreciated by organized labor. In 1903 the WFM called out hardrock miners to support mill workers. The action was defeated when AFL railroad workers continued to haul ore from the mines to the mills, in spite of strike breakers having been introduced at mine and at mill. "The railroaders form the connecting link in the proposition that is scabby at both ends,"
WFM, ALU, and others form the Industrial Workers of the World
From its birth in Chicago in 1905, thenmoving toward revolutionary industrial unionism, Denver's labor radicals were not building from scratch; rather, they drew upon and elaborated ideas and strategies generated by the previous twenty years of Denver's labor history... lthoughthe labor wars of 1903-4 may have ''triggered'' the formation of the IWW, the ideological synthesis it would uphold had been worked out in the American Labor Union's leadership by the summer of 1903—that is, immediately before the bloody struggles of the miners that ensued.The impetus for the new organization came from contention with, and observation of American industry. A great merger movement had swept through corporations in the period from 1899 to 1903, and labor radicals believed that "the unifaction of capital represented by the rise of the new trusts needed to be countered by an equally unified organization of the entire working class." For the AFL,
...anti-war ideas were in many parts of the country forbidden in published or spoken form, and those who voiced them faced deportation, arrest, beatings by vigilantes, and even lynching.At the time of the U.S. entry into World War I, the IWW had organized effectively in the northwest timber industry, and was challenging the WFM (now the Mine Mill union) in organizing the miners of
In hoping to neutralize traditional government hostility toward unionization in return for AFL support of the war, Gompers invited government repression of his radical opponents in the labor movement, most especially the Industrial Workers of the World.
Sam Gompers had gone toWhether this is true or not, on September 5, 1917, the Department of Justice raided IWW halls across the country, arresting thousands of members and confiscating records. Additional raids, deportations, and long jail sentences seriously disrupted activities of the radical union. Government attacks were also launched against the IWW in Australia. The IWW had challenged the AFL with a different union philosophy, a different dream about the methods, goals, and ultimate possibilities of union. Although strictly speaking, the IWW were not socialists, they shared a dream of industrial democracy, a "cooperative commonwealth" in which workers were in control of their own work lives. IWW members referred to this as "building the new world within the shell of the old." Gompers would be quoted in 1923,Newton Baker Newton Diehl Baker Jr. (December 3, 1871 – December 25, 1937) was an American lawyer, Georgist,Noble, Ransom E. "Henry George and the Progressive Movement." The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, vol. 8, no. 3, 1949, pp. 259–269. w ..., thenSecretary of War The secretary of war was a member of the U.S. president's Cabinet, beginning with George Washington's administration. A similar position, called either "Secretary at War" or "Secretary of War", had been appointed to serve the Congress of the ..., and had presented to him a plan to annihilate the I.W.W. Baker refused to take the suggestion of Gompers seriously; the latter then went to theDepartment of Justice A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ..., where he met with more success.
"I pity the Socialists... I have read all their books. I know all their arguments... I do not regard them as rational beings... If the lesser and immediate demands of labor could not be obtained from society as it is, it would be mere dreaming to preach and pursue the will-o'-the-wisp, a new society constructed from rainbow materials..."After the Palmer Raids and the Red Scare, the IWW was forced to contend with costly fines, imprisonment of its leaders, and a significant split during the 1920s. Yet for a time the IWW proved resilient, particularly among miners. In Canada, the One Big Union movement had been inspired by the IWW, and generated considerable support for dual affiliation. The movement was attacked by John L. Lewis.Paul Buhle, Taking Care of Business, Samuel Gompers, George Meany, Lane Kirkland, and the Tragedy of American Labor, 1999, page 105. In Colorado, a state-wide strike of twelve thousand coal miners under the banner of the IWW was sabotaged by a UMWA partisan, a genuine hero of the
Gompers lends support to WFM leaders
In 1906, Western Federation of Miners memberEven Samuel Gompers cast his lot with the militants. Although the AFL president harbored little love for the WFM renegades who had founded the IWW, he was outraged at the manner of their arrest, and urged his union to "provide means of protection, methods of defense and channels of publicity on behalf of Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone."Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, page 97.The AFL-affiliated United Mine Workers donated $5,000, and other unions also donated. A Pinkerton report put the amount appropriated by the AFL Executive Council at another $5,000. Some affiliates, including the United Mine Workers, wanted the AFL to initiate an increased level of support, but Gompers declined. Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone were found not guilty, while Orchard spent the rest of his life in prison.
Workers' International Industrial Union
The Socialist Labor Party of America, which had helped to found the IWW in Chicago, also formed the first IWW branches in Australia. The (SLP) withdrew from the IWW in 1908, primarily over objections to the SLP's insistence that the party should exercise control over working class organizations. The SLP formed its own industrial union organization, calling it by the same name, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The original IWW began to refer to itself as the Red IWW, and the SLP group as the Yellow IWW. The SLP-originated IWW renamed itself the Workers' International Industrial Union (WIIU) in 1915. The WIIU created an industrial union structure that was similar to that of the IWW.Marion Dutton Savage, Industrial Unionism in America, 1922, page 173. Unlike the IWW, which from 1908 onwards constitutionally restricted itself from political alliances, the WIIU advocated political actions, and maintained a close association with the SLP, although (as of 1922) it declined to openly affirm this association. Like the IWW, the WIIU advocated use of the general strike.the Chicago IWW was 'non-political' rather than 'anti-political'. J.R. Conlin insists too much has been made of the deletion of the political clause in 1908; equally significant was the rejection without discussion by the 1911 Chicago IWW Convention of an amendment to the Preamble that referred to 'the futility of political action'.The WIIU was criticized for focusing more on party propaganda than on organizing workers. From 1908 to 1922, the relationship between the IWW and the WIIU was characterized as "bitter".
One Big Union
The One Big Union concept is the idea that all wage workers should join one great union to (1) fight for better wages, hours, and conditions, and to (2) form an organization so large and powerful that it may ultimately win a general victory over capital,Thomas J. Hagerty and W. E. Trautmann, One Big Union, An Outline of a Possible Industrial Organization of the Working Class, with Chart, 1st edition, Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1911. conferring power to the working class. The concept was elaborated in an IWW pamphlet in 1911, and was an important theme in the IWW's literature. A new union federation, inspired by the IWW, was formed inCongress of Industrial Organizations
American Federation of Labor merges with Congress of Industrial Organizations
Change To Win Federation splits from the AFL–CIO
In September 2005, five decades after the AFL merged with the CIO to form theOther pressures affecting labor organizations
Other pressures dictating the nature and power of organized labor organizations have included the evolution and power of the corporation, efforts by employers and private agencies to limit or control unions, and U.S. labor law.Political organizations and labor
Political organizations sometimes see alliances with organized labor as a means to increase their effectiveness, and vice versa. TheSee also
*References
{{Reflist, 2 National federations of trade unions History of labor relations in the United States Industrial Workers of the World in the United States