US labor law

History

Modern US labor law mostly comes from statutes passed between 1935 and 1974, and changing interpretations of the US Supreme Court. However, laws regulated the rights of people at work and employers from colonial times onward. Before the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the common law was either uncertain or hostile to labor rights. Unions were classed as conspiracies, and potentially criminal. It tolerated slavery and indentured servitude. From the Pequot War in Connecticut from 1636 onwards, Native Americanswere enslaved by European settlers. More than half of the European immigrants arrived as prisoners, or in indentured servitude, where they were not free to leave their employers until a debt bond had been repaid. Until its abolition, the Atlantic slave trade brought millions of Africans to do forced labor in the Americas.