Labor unions

Labor unions, also known as trade unions, are worker-led organizations that unite to protect workers’ shared interests. Through a process known as collective bargaining, labor unions engage with employers to reach binding contractual agreements containing provisions that govern wages, employment benefits, worker safety, and working conditions, among other employment-related areas. Labor unions vary in size, from small collectives whose members work for a single employer to large, cross-industry national and international organizations with thousands of members.

Historically, labor unions have played a critical role in improving working conditions, establishing fair limits on working hours, and securing higher and fairer pay for their members. Labor unions did not make these gains without conflict: during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, labor organizations regularly clashed with corporations and governments, occasionally resulting in violent outbreaks between workers, law enforcement, and military units. While such conflicts have largely been absent from modern iterations of the organized labor movement, unions continue to occupy an important role in ongoing labor force efforts to secure fairer employment terms.

Background

The origins of organized labor are closely associated with the Industrial Revolution (ca. 1750–ca. 1840), which began in Great Britain. Widely regarded by historians as one of the most impactful and important turning points in human history, the Industrial Revolution was defined by rapid technological advancement and the mechanization of industries that had previously operated exclusively with human labor. The Industrial Revolution had far-reaching and transformational impacts on human society; it marked a shift from agrarian to industrialized society and was a driving catalyst of major international economic growth. Employment opportunities and consumer markets dramatically expanded, with the resultant prosperity directly fueling the mass-scale construction of road, rail, and marine transportation networks and the development of modern urban infrastructure. Historians and economists have also associated the Industrial Revolution with rising fertility and population growth rates and sharp declines in child and infant mortality.

Despite these benefits, industrialization also brought many disadvantages and downsides, the brunt of which were disproportionately absorbed by the working classes. Wide wealth inequality gaps opened, with a relatively small class of industrialists and investors pocketing enormous sums of money from profitable industrial operations, while many workers had to toil for long hours at low wages just to earn enough to survive. Working conditions in industrial facilities were unregulated, and in many cases, they posed serious health and safety risks.

Realizing that industrial production could not continue without their participation, workers began to organize and fight for higher wages, shorter hours, and better conditions. Strike action, in which workers attempt to address common grievances or earn concessions by unifying and refusing to work, emerged early on as a preferred and effective tactic. With reference to labor, the first recorded use of the term strike in Great Britain dates to 1768. The concept emerged about the same time in the United States. The first recorded US labor strike predates the American Revolutionary War (1775–83).

Brief History

By the turn of the nineteenth century, workers in Great Britain, the United States, and other nations had established what are now known as the first labor unions. Historians acknowledge the 1794 establishment of the Philadelphia-based Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers as the first formal US labor union to coalesce in what became a sustained and frequently contentious campaign of organized labor pressure on employers during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, US labor unions remained relatively small, with their activities confined to the local and regional levels. That began to change with the 1866 founding of the National Labor Union, which is widely regarded as a key moment in the history of US organized labor. The National Labor Union, which marked the first attempt on the part of labor activists to establish a workers’ organization with nationwide reach, immediately began pressuring Congress to institute a standardized eight-hour workday. While the National Labor Union ultimately failed to achieve this objective and became defunct in 1873, it nonetheless demonstrated the far-reaching potential of organized labor action and inspired many successor movements. These movements played a major role in a series of subsequent conflicts commonly known as the Labor Wars.

The Labor Wars emerged during the Reconstruction era that followed the American Civil War (1861–65). They were accelerated by a confluence of factors, including increasingly rapid rates of industrialization and fast-growing wealth gaps between workers and members of the investor and industrialist classes. Beginning in the 1870s, the Labor Wars were marked by a series of charged and violent confrontations between striking workers and their employers, who frequently received government backing during periods of overt conflict. Examples include the Molly Maguires, the Great Railroad Strike, and the Haymarket Affair.

The Molly Maguires were a group mainly made up of Irish-born Pennsylvania mine workers who were accused of carrying out violent attacks against mine operators beginning in late 1874. Twenty members of the secret society were convicted of murder and executed. The Great Railroad Strike began in West Virginia in July 1877 after railroad operators imposed wage rollbacks on workers for the second time in less than a year. Mass-scale railroad strike action soon extended into multiple states, prompting state governments to respond by mobilizing militias to force workers to release locomotives locked in the roundhouse. Localized episodes of violence were ensured, most notably in Cumberland, Maryland, where ten railroad workers were killed. The Haymarket Affair took place in May 1886, after a union demonstration in favor of an eight-hour workday evolved into a general protest in Chicago against police brutality. As police attempted to disband protesters who had gathered in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, someone threw a bomb, triggering a riot that claimed the lives of seven police officers and four protesters. Though there was no evidence against them, eight labor activists were convicted.

Other major organized labor events of the era include the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892, the Pullman Strike of 1894, and the Bread and Roses Strike of 1912. The September 1916 passage of the Adamson Act marked the formal institution of a standardized eight-hour workday, marking a major victory for US organized labor. However, workers quickly became engaged in a new struggle as runaway consumer price inflation triggered by World War I (1914–18) caused food prices to increase by more than twofold and clothing prices to soar by more than threefold during the period spanning 1915–20.

Labor tensions escalated in the aftermath of World War I and took on an increasingly political dimension as organized labor became more aligned with the Bolshevist ideals associated with the Communist government of the newly formed Soviet Union. These complex and dynamic sociopolitical tensions were at the root of a tumultuous 1919, during which more than four million workers, who combined to represent approximately 20 percent of the entire US labor force, participated in a nationwide spate of strikes. Fearing the unprecedented mass-scale labor action portended a potential Communist uprising, influential industrialists successfully persuaded governments to side with them in the intensifying conflicts. Using contentious tactics including blacklisting, spying, and a wholesale rejection of attempts at collective bargaining, industrialists exploited their economic control to crush the organized labor movement. Consequently, many hard-fought organized labor gains were scaled back or abolished, and union labor membership plummeted by approximately 40 percent. However, the US labor union movement would soon prove resurgent as the economic devastation of the Great Depression (1929–39) set in.

During the throes of the Great Depression, the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) adopted pro-union positions as it sought to steer the country out of intense economic turmoil. Key aspects of Roosevelt’s New Deal, which covered a series of interrelated regulatory reforms and public works projects, included the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. The former facilitated union-led collective bargaining, while the National Labor Relations Act compelled businesses to negotiate with any labor union endorsed by a democratic majority of their workers.

Expert commentators frequently identify the 1955 reunion of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as the moment at which labor unions ascended to the zenith of their economic and political influence in the United States. The AFL was founded in 1886, while the CIO originated as a Great Depression-era breakaway faction of the AFL. After engaging for years in a heated rivalry, the reunion of the two organizations marked the beginning of a major victory for US organized labor. Following the AFL–CIO merger, approximately one-third of the entire US labor force held union membership.

Overview

Labor unions vary in their size, organizational structures, and mandates. However, most share several defining common features. Among them are democratically elected officials who are required by union laws to advance and defend the rights and interests of their members with regard to pay, benefits, and working conditions. Union leaders are also authorized to negotiate with employers and governments on behalf of the workers they represent. Meanwhile, union members typically pay fees known as dues to finance union activities. Dues can take the form of flat fees, or they can be calculated as a percentage of the union member’s gross (pre-tax) wages. Unions engage in collective bargaining negotiations that may specifically cover pay rates, working days and hours, employment benefits, training and professional development programs, retirement packages, and scheduled pay raises designed to ensure that employee earnings at least keep pace with inflation rates. Contemporary labor unions also increasingly work to address issues of workplace discrimination and race- and gender-based income inequality.

In the United States, state-level organized labor laws broadly subdivide into two categories: those that allow compulsory union membership in order for a worker to obtain or maintain a job, and those that recognize a worker’s right to choose not to join a union or pay union dues. States in the latter category are known as right-to-work states. However, the scope of state-level right-to-work laws is tempered by federal statutes, including the National Labor Relations Act and the Railway Labor Act of 1926, which jointly establish the ability of unions to attach the payment of union fees as a precondition for employment.

Beyond the ongoing and unresolved issues surrounding compulsory union membership, opponents of organized labor cite additional shortcomings and drawbacks of labor unions. For example, critics have long argued that some collective bargaining agreements make it too difficult for employers to terminate underperforming workers, even when they have just cause to do so. This, they argue, puts companies at an inherent competitive disadvantage and can negatively impact their financial performance. Additional downsides of labor unions include reduced levels of employee autonomy and obstacles to career advancement. Union members are contractually obligated to abide by the decisions of their labor unions, particularly regarding strike action. Thus, they risk losing their union status and the protections afforded by their union membership if they engage in actions that the union formally opposes, such as working during a strike. Labor unions also commonly adopt rules designed to protect workers with seniority, which leaves newer and younger workers more vulnerable to job losses while also potentially inhibiting their ability to advance into higher-ranking and better-paid positions.

Corruption also has a long history of negatively impacting labor unions. After the 1955 AFL–CIO merger, congressional officials launched an investigation into corrupt union activities, which ultimately spotlighted the widespread presence of illegal activities including racketeering, bribery, fraud, and other financial crimes. Labor union leaders have also been accused of misappropriating union dues or otherwise misusing them to supply high-ranking union leaders with lavish salaries that far exceed the typical earnings of rank-and-file members. James Riddle “Jimmy” Hoffa (1913–75?) ranks among the most notorious examples of a corrupt union chief. Hoffa was president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Union from 1957 to 1971. His period of leadership was marked by multiple criminal convictions on charges including fraud, bribery, and jury tampering.

Topic Today

While labor market experts and economists generally consider labor unions to be a declining force in the United States of the twenty-first century, organized labor remains a high-profile feature of the country’s employment landscape. According to a Maryville University analysis, 34.8 percent of US workers employed in the public sector and 6.3 percent of US private-sector workers held membership in labor unions in 2020. Employment groups with the highest unionization rates included law enforcement and protective services (36.6 percent), education and library services (35.9 percent), and construction and resource extraction (17.7 percent). The lowest unionization rates, according to the analysis, were found in the food service (3.4 percent), sales (3.2 percent), and farming, fishing, and forestry (2.6 percent) industries.

In the early twenty-first century, multiple major corporations have been drawn into high-profile public conflicts with employees attempting to unionize. One of the best-known such examples involves the e-commerce giant Amazon, which has been engaged in a contentious dispute with labor leaders attempting to institute the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) and its ability to engage in collective bargaining on behalf of the company’s employment base of approximately 1.54 million people. Amazon has fiercely resisted unionization attempts among members of its warehouse labor staff, who have been fighting for higher pay and safer and more humane working conditions. The ongoing battle is widely considered emblematic of the contemporary mega-corporation labor landscape.

Meanwhile, US lawmakers have introduced multiple bills with organized labor implications. In 2019, congressional Republicans introduced the National Right-to-Work Act, which sought to remove federal statutes that permit compulsory union membership and would have functionally instituted right-to-work laws in all US jurisdictions. The proposed legislation received two readings before sputtering at the committee stage but was reintroduced in 2023. In 2021, the US House of Representatives passed the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which recognized, at the federal level, the right of workers to form unions and engage in collective bargaining. However, the act failed to reach a Senate vote during the congressional session and thus did not pass into law.

By mid-2024, twenty-six US states had enacted right-to-work laws, three of them since 2015. Michigan became the first state in history to repeal its right-to-work law, when a Democratic-led state legislature voted to overturn the law in early 2024. Pro-labor union activists noted the repeal signaled a shift in the labor union movement, which experienced growing support in the 2020s amid high-profile victories such as the success of the United Auto Workers strike against major American automakers in 2023 and numerous grassroots union organizing efforts that have taken place at workplaces around the nation.

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