What institutional precursors enabled labor unions to emerge in the United States?
score:6
The earliest form of unions were guilds which identified people who specialized in certain skills. These guilds would consist of masters, journeymen, and apprentices, each with different levels of experience. As cities became more urbanized, many industries found it more practical to hire unskilled labor and train them to have the necessary skills.
The earliest form of organized unions were called craft unions, and they consisted of workers within a specific industry who possessed critical skills. They found that by removing these critical workers they could make demands on their employers that would often be met in order to resume production. These generally did little to help unskilled workers, but they did establish a model upon which future unions would be built.
In the late 19th century, trade unions started popping up. These were very similar to craft unions in that they focused on workers with skills in a particular trade. Another form of union that began to appear was industrial unions, which organized workers without regard to trade.
Perhaps the earliest organized union to represent a mass of unskilled workers in the US was a group called the Knights of Labor (KOL). They were formed in Philadelphia in 1869 and grew to a million members by the end of the century. The KOL united workers without consideration of occupation, industry, race or gender.
All information taken from Labor Unions in the United States by Gerald Friedman, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Upvote:0
The origins of American labor unions took place shortly after the founding of the country, beginning in key cities like Philadelphia. These were initially trade and craft unions. Later, a group of unions formed the Mechanical Union ("guild, actually) of Trade Associations in Philadephia in 1827.
In the middle and later part of the 19th century, immigrants from central and eastern Europe flooded the country, brought their own labor Union heritage with them, and joined the American strains. This led, in 1886 to the formation of the American Federation of Labor under Samuel Gompers, an immigrant from England who spent a lot of time with German immigrant workers, acted as a "bridge" between American- and foreign born laborers.
Upvote:4
Its common to see union histories begun in the late 19th century, but the institutional precursors for labor unions--even unions that organize workers regardless of trade or craft--goes back to the founding of the country. The earliest I know of is the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesman, founded as a mutual aid society for skilled workers in New York City in 1785.
The first wave of formal organization of wage earners started in the 1820s. In Philadelphia, different trades were organized by the Mechanics' Union of Trade Associations, founded in 1827. A similar organization called the General Trades Union was founded in New York City.
Just as important were the political vehicles of the working class, the Working Men's Parties. First founded in 1828, state-by-state experiences varied quite a bit. However, they generally ended up being absorbed by the Democratic Party.
The Panic of 1837 hit these labor organizations hard. Many native workers gave up their political goals and focused on immediate problems like subsistence. During this period, labor activism was kept alive by Irish and German immigrants, who imported their homelands' radical labor culture (Wilentz 1984, pp. 252-253).
In response to these immigrants, a whole new wave of labor organizations were founded in the 1840s and 1850s. These organizations often exhibited a pronounced nativism. They include the Mechanics Mutual Protection Association (Buffalo, 1841), the Order of United American Mechanics (Philadelphia, 1845), and the American Laboring Confederacy. There were also umbrella organizations such as New York's Industrial Congress, which during the 1850s and 1860s received delegates from labor organizations all across the city and met in City Hall.
Source: Sean Wilentz's Chants Democratic is the best single-volume study I know for antebellum labor history.
More post
- 📝 Diminishing powers of the Roman Catholic church in international matters
- 📝 Why were blacks still victimized in the Northern states after slavery's abolition?
- 📝 Why did Western Christian monasticism really take off in Ireland?
- 📝 Did all the the -stan sovereign state names appear synchronously?
- 📝 When and where did socks become common?
- 📝 Are these outfits of children of Nazis historically accurate, and if so, what is their meaning?
- 📝 When has serious unemployment among educated young populations not led to revolution or war?
- 📝 Why is the term "Ancestral Puebloans" used and not simply "Puebloans"?
- 📝 Does Japan have the constitutional and legal right to have its own army or navy?
- 📝 What is the difference between a typescript and manuscript?
- 📝 What was the population of the Roman Empire?
- 📝 Why did Pakistan get involved in Soviet-Afghan war from 1979 to 1989?
- 📝 What was the first spy agency?
- 📝 What led Extremadurans to take a leading role in the conquest of Spain's territories in the Americas?
- 📝 A counterpoint/corrections list to "A Peoples' History of the United States"
- 📝 Where can I find American circus or carnival grounds plans?
- 📝 Are modern handguns a major reason for democratization?
- 📝 What was a plausible timetable for a train journey across Europe in 1870?
- 📝 How do historians decide who to refer to as 'the allies?'
- 📝 How did Magnus IV of Sweden come of age at 15?
- 📝 What economic incentives (if any) did France have to aid the American army during the revolution?
- 📝 Who were the chief executives of the United States in the thirteen years before George Washington?
- 📝 How and when was Portugal created?
- 📝 Why didn't the English overrun France when the king was their captive?
- 📝 How many Spartan boys survived army training?
- 📝 Has chattel slavery ever been used as a criminal punishment in the USA since the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment?
- 📝 Was Romania under German command during WWII?
- 📝 US Congress in WW2 Compared with other legislative bodies
- 📝 What is this SSR of the USSR in 1923?
- 📝 What is the meaning of the hand gesture performed by King James II in the portrait by Peter Lely?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What institutional precursors enabled labor unions to emerge in the United States?
- 📝 At what point did the United States have a truly federal army?
- 📝 What were the factors that led to stagflation in the United States during the 1970s?
- 📝 What did anti-Greek stereotyping look like in the United States in the early 20th century?
- 📝 What factors contributed to the United States having a larger proportion of Jews than other British colonies?
- 📝 What was the goal behind the 9 state approval of the United States constitution?
- 📝 What role did the United States government and major corporations have in controlling dissent and protest starting in the late 1940s?
- 📝 To what extent has the United States become (in 1870) the nation that it originally set out to be?
- 📝 Why does the United States keep using "old" date representations and imperial system, while being in the minority?
- 📝 Is there any evidence to support the claim that the United States was "suckered into WW1" by Zionists, made by Benjamin Freedman in his 1961 speech?
- 📝 Why didn’t Japan attack the West Coast of the United States during World War II?
- 📝 Has the United States ever had a non-Christian President?
- 📝 Why did the United States not resort to nuclear weapons in Vietnam?
- 📝 Why would silk underwear disqualify you from the United States military draft?
- 📝 How was the United States able to produce excellent tanks in 1942?
- 📝 Did the United States have a third atomic bomb to drop on Japan?
- 📝 How did gold come to symbolize lower ranks than silver in the United States Air Force?
- 📝 Was slavery in the United States legally limited to blacks?
- 📝 Why are the signatures on the United States Declaration of Independence structured as they are?
- 📝 Why did the Japanese expect the United States navy would attack the Home Islands?
- 📝 Why did the United States not invade North Vietnam?
- 📝 Why did the United States enter World War I?
- 📝 Was the concept of religious freedom in the early United States applied to native American faiths?
- 📝 Why did the United States drop a uranium bomb instead of a plutonium bomb on Hiroshima?
- 📝 What factors enabled Europe to conquer almost the whole world?
- 📝 Who is the woman in this United States military propaganda image representing?
- 📝 What events led to the fall of the Zhou Dynasty during the Warring States period?
- 📝 What kind of labor was used to build the Egyptian pyramids?
- 📝 Has the United States ever been formally condemned by the United Nations?
- 📝 Why is the United States the only developed country whose labour laws leave most up to the employer?