History of Labor Unions in the 20th Century

The history of labor unions in the twentieth century is the history of the rise and fall of an American institution. Unionism moved from the fringe position it occupied in the nineteenth century to a central position in the American economy, and more recently it has been noted that unionism has fallen on hard times, with waning membership, loss of political power, and changes in law that have undercut the movement in a variety of ways. An analysis of the development of the labor union movement in this century should point to the primary reason or reasons leading to change in union density, first contributing to the increasing density of union membership and then to the lessening of that density in recent years.

Unionism started in the nineteenth century with the coming of the industrial revolution and the expansion of the United States both in terms of territory and economic structure. The government also became involved in labor matters at that time, and government involvement in labor relations has been varied in form over the history of the country. In the nineteenth century, the government often sided with management as a matter of course, protecting the rights of owners and refusing to admit that the labor force had any right to organize for the protection of its rights. After a century of struggle over this issue, Congress settled the matter with the National Labor Relations Act, also known as the Wagner Act, in 1935. The underlying conception of the Wagner Act

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strial conditions and created a climate in which Congress was willing to experiment with new approaches; 2) the harshness of industrial life during the 1930s, particularly low wages and job insecurity, caused part of the labor movement to reach out to the long-ignored workers in the mass production industries; and 3) the fear of revolutionary social formulas from the Far Left and Right persuaded opinion-makers that meaningful reform in the workplace was vital to the maintenance of a democratic society (7-9). It was during the 1935 convention when 32 of the participating unions in the AFL were expelled because they wanted to organize all the workers in the mass-production industries with no restriction as to trade or craft. These expelled unions formed a Committee for Industrial Organization and in 1938 made this a permanent organization known as the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The two labor groups would merge in 1955 into the AFL-CIO after two decades of jurisdictional disputes (Zollitsch & Langsner, 1955, p. 33). During the course of this century, labor increased its power as it added new industries to its rosters and as it learned how to cope with the different types of worker. The major weakness of labor un

Category: History - H