Labor Unions have existed within the United States since its birth as a country. They were created to protect the working-class from unsafe conditions and abuses such as sweatshops. However, they have also found themselves on the other side of the law as they were known to cripple industries and consort with organized crimes for decades. They have confronted authority with violence and force never seen, to not only elucidate the significance of the rights they’re fighting for, but also the conviction they possess to fight for them, in all senses of the word. In doing so, they soon realized the overarching importance of organized labor movements rather than extreme, radical protests and strikes that gained them little traction in the grand scheme of the movement. Thus, transforming the labor movement in the U.S. from having no seat at an executive board’s table, to becoming a controlling force in the economy and having organized groups consisting of millions of workers unified by a common goal. These unprecedented occasions throughout the 20th and 21st centuries led to better wages, safer working conditions, more reasonable hours, etc., and stood as a reminder of the power the workforce in America possessed during ever-changing times.
With the organization of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions and the American Federation of Labor just before the turn of the century, Congress became more sympathetic to the labor movement. This resulted in the creation of the Department of Labor and the passing of the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 which allowed employees to strike and boycott their employers. The Department of Labor works to improve working conditions and the overall health of the labor market. It also intends to create opportunities for employment, to protect retirement and healthcare benefits, to help employers find workers, to encourage collective bargaining, and to track changes in a range of relevant and current economic metrics. The creation of this department as a U.S. cabinet-level agency was one of many unequaled benefits seen as a result of changing labor organization strategies. This time marked the beginning of a realization of the increased power workers held as a group rather than individual which was key in starting to turn the wheels of change throughout history.
Now it was the job of organizations like the AFL and the Department of Labor to work in tandem with each other to ensure these wheels kept moving until they reached a point of prosperity and balance between industry and the labor market. In 1914, when the Clayton Antitrust Act was passed, it served to regulate massive corporations that controlled entire industry segments in some cases by employing cutthroat business strategies such as predatory pricing, exclusive dealings, and anti-competitive mergers. It also states that peaceful strikes, picketing, agricultural cooperatives, and labor unions legal under federal law. Additionally, Public Contract and the Fair Labor Standards Act followed this and mandated a minimum wage, extra pay for overtime work, and basic child labor laws. These immense developments catalyzed the imminent reformation of the concept of organized labor for all years to come.[footnoteRef:1] [1: Mark P. Cussen, History of Unions in the United States, October 2018]
Labor unions grew in power and number even through World War I, however, during the Roaring ‘20s, the economy grew so much that the need for unionization seemed unnecessary. These attitudes were held until the Great Depression which quickly caused laborers to revert to their old unionizing ways and labor union size and strength became the strongest it had ever been. Between 1919-1921, there was a sort of “mini-recession” in which 100,000 businesses were seen close and approximately 3 million people lost their jobs. Along with that they saw inflation rising by 13% a year and the GOP decline 10%. This gave way to the over 3,300 labor strikes that occurred during this time of labor unrest, with as many as 350,000 steel workers going on strike in the Midwest. These strikes were unfortunately unsuccessful as we see union membership decline by 13% in the following years. On the other hand, we see that because of this new common ground of medium and this new “electric environment” that develops through this time of prosperity, that only through it is Mass Culture able to be created. As a result, one can observe the development of a sense of unity among the American people.
President at the time, Franklin D. Roosevelt, took it as his personal mission to restore prosperity to the many Americans that experienced hardship and suffering during the Great Depression. In doing so, he instituted The New Deal which was aimed at completing this mission and acted swiftly to stabilize the economy and provide jobs and relief to those suffering. Over the next eight years, the government employed experimental New Deal projects like the CCC, WPA, TVA, and the SEC to name some. This new legislation, however, did not have the profound effect that Roosevelt desired so he launched a second, more aggressive series of federal programs in which he created the WPA, which provided “jobs for unemployed people. WPA projects weren’t allowed to compete with private industry, so they focused on building things like post offices, bridges, schools, highways and parks. The WPA also gave work to artists, writers, theater directors and musicians.”.[footnoteRef:2] Projects such as these gave way to change in the very fundamental relationship that the government had to its citizens and reflected significant change that was ushered in during these years and those to come. [2: Tumani Edwards, Labor History Notes, 50-71]
In July 1935, the National Labor Relations Act, also known as the Wagner Act, created the National Labor Relations Board to supervise union elections and prevent businesses from treating their workers unfairly. In August, FDR signed the Social Security Act of 1935, which guaranteed pensions to millions of Americans, set up a system of unemployment insurance and stipulated that the federal government would help care for dependent children and the disabled”. During World War II, “the power of the labor unions was somewhat curtailed, as some unions, such as those in the defense industry, were forbidden by the government to strike due to the impediment that it would present to wartime production. But the end of the war saw a wave of strikes in many industries and it was at this point that union power and membership reached its zenith. The unions were a controlling force in the economy during the late ’40s and ’50s, and the AFL merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) at this point to spearhead the American labor force”.[footnoteRef:3] In the decades thereafter, as more laws were passed outlawing child labor and mandating equal pay for equal work regardless of race or gender, unions became less important to workers who were able to rely on federal laws to protect them. [3: Marc P. Cussen, The History of Unions in the United States, October 2018]
“The Box”, by Marc Levinson is one such story that exemplifies many perspectives and ideas that had to be considered throughout this period of exemplary change in the Labor Movement and unionization. He reflects how such a simple, low-tech device such as the shipping container makes its way to becoming one of the most innovative inventions of all time. The rules of the game of a society depend on the institutions which it employs and within Levinson’s story a subplot that aligns with conventional institutional assertions exists and connotes the “considerable influence of isomorphic tendencies on the development and state of the social organization”. Levinson utilizes paradigm cases to support this commonly-accepted assertion by showing “For example, although container-based transport was known to be cheaper than existing forms of transport, the shift to cost-saving containers did not occur”, or at least not at first. He supports his argument citing how “dockworkers and the unions that represented them acting against change; established ports, afraid they might lose business to new startups, doing what they could to stop adjustments, early transport innovators attempting to stop standardization movements, scores of transport-market participants not wanting profit-reducing changes in rate-structures; and governmental entities, enacting favorable subsidies and rules—all aimed at stopping change and maintaining existing status quo.”[footnoteRef:4]
Shippers had “to circumvent the public loaders’ illicit monopoly by using their own workers”. In doing so, they were still liable to find that the ship would sail with their cargo sitting on the pier, even after the newly established Waterfront Commission banned public loaders in 1953, thugs were still in control of access to the docks in reality. Institutional Transformations are usually linked with jolts or shocks to the system, which are followed by major event(s) taking place.[footnoteRef:5] Only through these disruptions in the flow can we even possess the influence needed to instill change and ensure that it stays that way. In many ways, the new form of organized labor that took place was this change. Although, it took countless strikes and lives, as they got larger and more determined, the employers could not afford to let workers negatively affect business, so compromise was found, and change was created.
However, unions would eventually let efforts die down after reaching a period of prosperity and then a cycle of the same events would occur. During the 20th century, Roosevelt’s New Deal, Second New Deal, and most importantly, his outright commitment to giving back prosperity to his citizens gave the push necessary to ensure permanent change. His policies permeated the highest levels of government and the lowest classes of people in America to restore the country to former glory after the Great Depression. Moreover, Levinson’s story is one which is useful in the examination of the difficulties of initiating and carrying out beneficial change, as well as, the role of key individuals and specific events in impacting change. Without careful analysis and consideration, one can not build a strong foundation with which to facilitate short- or long-term change. [4: Marc Levinson, “The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger”, 191] [5: Mark Jacobs, Enterprise and Society, 1-2]
Cohen’s, “Making A New Deal”, reflects her perspectives on industrial labor during the early 1900s in Chicago and how the tenets of welfare capitalism backfired on those employers who tried to employ them in order to “Americanize” workers to their companies. This system split up the workplace which “resulted in more working-class solidarity across ethnic lines, while more broadly workers came to expect these benefits as legitimate responsibilities of an employer (would give their later demands legitimacy when employers couldn’t provide them).”.[footnoteRef:6] Subsequently, instead of dividing the different classes, “the rise of consumerism and mass culture [in the years following] served to strengthen these ethnic ties. Workers listened to Old World music on their radios and phonographs, saw films at small theaters in their own neighborhoods, and obtained credit from their local grocer. In sum, ‘whether they were ethnic workers who eased into mass culture through the local store, neighborhood theater, and ethnic radio program or black and young workers who refashioned commercialism to their own needs,'[footnoteRef:7] Cohen notes (against the standard interpretation of an all-homogenizing consumerism), ‘mass culture would not make them feel any less Polish, Jewish, or black or any less of a worker.’ (158).[footnoteRef:8] Cohen concludes then, that ‘having lost faith in the capacity of their ethnic communities and welfare capitalist employers to come to the rescue, Chicago’s industrial workers had found new solutions.
By the mid-1930s, they, and their counterparts elsewhere in America, where championing an expanded role for the state and the organization of national-level industrial unions… American industrial workers sought to overcome the miseries and frustrations that long had plagued their lives neither through anti-capitalist and extra-governmental revolutionary uprisings nor through perpetuation of the status quo of welfare capitalism but rather through their growing investment in two institutions they felt would make capitalism more moral and fair — an activist welfare state concerned with equalizing wealth and privilege and a national union movement of factory workers committed to keeping a check on self-interested employers.” (253, 365).[footnoteRef:9] [footnoteRef:10] Thus, Cohen can show the foundational changes undergone that catalyzed what one considers to be the labor movement through the 20th century. America’s industrial workers were tired of not getting what they wanted so they had to make small jolts and shocks to the system, coupled with a major event(s) that would enable the wheels of change to start moving, therefore, facilitating the labor movement to take place and change to take authority over “old-world” perspectives and ideals. [6: Cameron Blevins, “Making a New Deal”, 1] [7: Kevin C. Murphy, 20th Century, 1] [8: Lizabeth Cohen, “Making a New Deal”, 158] [9: Lizabeth Cohen, “Making a New Deal”, 253] [10: Lizabeth Cohen, “Making a New Deal”, 365]
Fast forward to the present, “Despite the erosion in their power and influence, labor unions continue to prove their importance, as they were instrumental in getting President Obama elected in 2008 and reelected in 2012. The unions hoped that Obama would be able to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, a measure of legislation intended to streamline and shorten the process that unions must use to bring in new members. This act would have shifted the balance of power in the workplace in the unions’ favor and allowed their memberships to grow rapidly but failed when Democrats were unable to collect the necessary votes. Union membership ended up decreasing during this time, which many say led members to switch their support to Trump in the 2016 election. Although the effect the Employee Free Choice Act could have had on the economy is unclear, there’s no question that unions will continue to play a role in the U.S. labor force for decades to come.”.[footnoteRef:11] [11: Marc P. Cussen, The History of Unions in the United States, 1]
The labor movement in the United States grew out of the need to protect the common interests of workers. The earliest recorded strike was in 1768 against a wage reduction, from that day to the present, workers across the globe have been strategizing and fighting for the rights that they need no matter the cost. We have seen union members lay down their lives, forgo wages, food, and precious resources all in fight for fair rights in the workplace. The hardship and suffering they endure is a message to all about their determination and commitment to having a mutually beneficial relationship with their employer. As we see these organizations gradually learn throughout history the importance of the organized man versus the non-organized. We see that change is only able to be started by the hands of the organized man with a plan, and a stubborn attitude towards getting your way. When this key idea was found by laborers decades ago, it revolutionized the way the labor movement went about fighting for their rights and changed the average unorganized worker into one of cooperation, intelligence, and tenacity like no other.
Works Cited
- Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939. (n.d.). Retrieved December 14, 2018, from http://cameronblevins.org/cblevins/Quals/BookSummaries/Cohen_MakingaNewDeal.html
- (n.d.). Retrieved December 14, 2018, from http://www.kevincmurphy.com/cohen.html
- Jacobs, M. (2010, March 10). The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger (review). Retrieved from https://muse.jhu.edu/article/375596/summary
- Labor Movement. (2009, October 29). Retrieved December 14, 2018, from https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/labor
- Cussen, M. P. (2018, November 17). The History of Unions in the United States. Retrieved from https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0113/the-history-of-unions-in-the-united-states.aspx
- Labor History Notes, December 2018, from Tumani Edwards
- “Making a New Deal” Lizabeth Cohen
- “The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger” Marc Levinson
