In the U.S. and Brazil trade unionism was continually equated with communism. In the US, the specter was continually in the background of trade-union development and institutionalization in the early part of the 20th century, partly as a result of antiunion propaganda. In Brazil, the issue of communism and trade unionism was vexed by the added problem of a series of failed radical-left or radical-right throughout much of the 20th century. There, unionism was linked to the survival and/or downfall of several governments.
American unionism was fed by Progressive Era insight into the rich-poor gap: ?hile Henry Clay Frick enjoyed his private pipe organ, half the nation's steelworkers earned less than eighteen cents an hour+(Lord 140). Yet unionists were divided. Samuel Gompers's American Federation of Labor (AFL) organized skilled industrial workers, and Big Bill Haywood's socialist Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organized unskilled labor. Unions faced the American classlessness myth, a ?ingering belief+that ?omehow unions were wrong+(149).
In 1900, the AFL chartered the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), to improve wages and work rules. In New York City, ?hirtwaist+factories used scab labor, lockouts, and police to control their mostly female employees. Only after a 1910 strike by (male) cloakmakers was the ILGWU recognized. Only after the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. fire of 1911 killed 146 women trapped in the burning factory by locked doors did ?ollective rage+lead to more union solidarity (Kazin 105-6 et passim). And only with the Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act) in 1935 were workers legally guaranteed the right of collective bargaining. The Wages and Hours Act of 1938 became the first federal minimum wage law (Leuchtenburg 151-3; 260f).
Industry by industry, unions collectively bargained, sometimes bringing industry to a halt via strikes, sometimes being ordered back to work by the government, a...