Labor Movement

1. Labor Movement

2. Labor Force Distribution1870-1900

3. The Changing American Labor Force

4. Living and Working conditions • While industrialization brought with it a number of innovations and increased job opportunities • It also produced problems within the cities • For poor, unskilled citizens and newly arrived immigrants, urban life could be hard and challenging

5. Over and over and over for 12-14 hours a day • Working conditions were often difficult for everyone involved. • Factories relied on the work of specialized laborers with machines that performed the same task over and over and over • Work was really monotonous and left employees feeling very little sense of pride

6. And you thought you had it bad!!! • Whole families tended to work because wages were low and no one person could make enough to support a whole household • Men, women, and children worked in mills and factories • Usually at least twelve hours a day • Women tended to be limited to running simple machines and were given almost no opportunity at all for advancement

7. The Workers • Chronically low wages • average wages $400-500 per year • salary required for decent living $600 per year • Dangerous working conditions • railroad injury rate 1 in 26, death rate 1 in 399 • factory workers suffer chronic illness from pollutants

9. Oooo sweat! • Sweatshopswere also hazardous • These were makeshift factories set up by private contractors in small apartments or unused buildings • Since factories often needed more production than they had room to produce, they would hire these contractors and then pay them by production • Often poorly lit, poorly ventilated and unsafe, sweatshops relied on poor workers, usually immigrants, who worked long hours for very little pay

10. Tailoring was the industry that used sweatshops most often

11. Child Labor • “child labor” means under 14 • children poorly paid • girls receive much lower wages than boys

13. Can you imagine? • Children, some as young as five years old- had to leave school in order to work • This not only meant that they missed out on a childhood • But without education they were inevitably caught in an endless cycle of poverty as well

14. Young Miners, South Pittston Pa., January 6, 1911 Young Driver - West Virginia, September 1909.

15. Adolescent girls from Bibb, Mfg. Co. in Georgia

16. Mill workers mending broken threads on bobbins.

17. Young cigar makers in Engelhardt and Co.

18. Child Labor • To keep them awake, their bosses beat them. • Their tiny hands could fix broken bobbins and thread the machines. • The dangerous machinery injured many of the children. • The fluff from the cloth would fill their lungs. • Many of them were victims of stunted growth because they were never outside in the sunshine.

20. And I Quote: "The spinning-room overseer had the task of maintaining production. He did it by instilling fear and inflicting pain - children were beaten simply to keep them awake towards the end of their 14 or 15-hour day."

24. “Galley Labor”

25. Can you believe this? • One event that highlighted how dangerous industrial work could be was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 • On March 25 of that year, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City • Many of the exit doors to the factory were locked to keep employees from stealing • The fire killed 146 people and led to increased demands for safer working conditions

32. And after the fire women began to march for a union

33. Labor Unions • Knights of Labor: 1st industrial union • unskilled/skilled workers demanded reforms in child labor, safety, hours (8 hr day), equal pay for women (Radical) • 1886--Samuel Gompers founds American Federation of Labor • A.F.L. seeks practical improvements for wages, working conditions • focus on skilled workers • ignores women, African Americans

34. Goals of the Knights of Labor • Eight-hour workday. • Workers’ cooperatives. • Worker-owned factories. • Abolition of child and prison labor. • Increased circulation of greenbacks. • Equal pay for men and women. • Safety codes in the workplace. • Prohibition of contract foreign labor. • Abolition of the National Bank.

35. How the AF of L Would Help the Workers • Catered to the skilled worker. • Represented workers in matters of national legislation. • Maintained a national strike fund. • Evangelized the cause of unionism. • Prevented disputes among the many craft unions. • Mediated disputes between management and labor. • Pushed for closed shops.

36. Labor Unrest • Crossed purposes • employees seek to humanize the factory • employers try to apply strict laws of the market

37. An era of strikes • Great RR Strike of 1877: RR shut down, Hayes used army to end strike • Haymarket Square Riot: bomb killed 7 policeman, police fired on strikers • Homestead Strike: Carnegie hired Pinkertons to violently end strike • Pullman Strike: RR shut down, federal troops brought in and people get hurt and lose their jobs. • Bread and Roses: Lawrence ,MA, habeas corpus denied, military law declared, favored workers

38. Management vs. Labor “Tools” of Management “Tools” of Labor • boycotts • sympathy demonstrations • informational picketing • closed shops • organized strikes • “wildcat” strikes • “scabs” • P. R. campaign • Pinkertons • lockout • blacklisting • yellow-dog contracts • court injunctions • open shop

39. A Striker Confronts a SCAB!

40. Labor Strikes, 1870-1890

41. The “Formula” unions + violence + strikes + socialists + immigrants = anarchists

42. Business leaders react • Unions were prevented by: • Not hiring union workers • Banning union meetings • Using the courts and troops to stop unions

43. Labor Union Membership

44. Workers Benefits Today

45. The Rise & Decline of Organized Labor

46. Right-to-Work States Today