Labor unions used collective bargaining and strikes to attempt to improve working conditions for workers. Through collective bargaining, unions would negotiate with employers to reach agreements on issues like wages, hours, and safety conditions. If negotiations failed, unions would call strikes as a tactic to put pressure on employers. However, early strikes were often met with violence from employers, police, and use of federal troops. Over time, unions continued to organize and use strikes to gain bargaining power and protections, such as the Wagner Act which legally protected the right to unionize.

1. Labor Unions & Strikes
How did Labor Unions attempt to
improve working conditions?

3. ▪ Capitalism: an economic and political system in
which a country's trade and industry are controlled by
private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
= accumulating wealth
▪ Socialism: a social system or theory in which the
government owns and controls the means of
production (as factories) and distribution of goods.
▪ Communism: an economic system in which the
government owns the things that are used to
make and transport products and there is no
privately owned property
= Sharing the Wealth

4. What is a Labor Union?
▪ an organization of workers formed
for the purpose of fighting to
provide workers with better wages,
benefits, and working conditions.
▪ Labor Unions used collective
bargaining to achieve their goals.

5. ▪ Collective bargaining is a process of
negotiation between employees and
employers with the goal of reaching an
agreement to improve working conditions
and salaries.

6. Knights of Labor
• First important national union
• Wanted to organize ALL
workers: skilled, unskilled and of
all backgrounds (no racial
restrictions)
• Set the example: negotiate, then
strike if needed
• Goals: 8 hour day; end of child
labor
• Lost influence after violent
strikes

7. Other Unions
• American Federation of Labor (AFL):
– Smaller local unions with a national organization
– Wages, hours, conditions
– Strikes, collective bargaining
– Barred African-Americans
• Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW)
Wobblies name for IWW members
Wobblies Socialists and favored a
communist system and believed
Capitalism was unfair

8. Railroad Workers Organize
❖The Great Railroad
Strike of 1877
– Railway workers protested
unfair wage cuts and unsafe
working conditions.
– The strike was violent and
unorganized.
– President Hayes sent federal
troops to put down the
strikes.
−From then on, employers relied on federal and state
troops to repress labor unrest.

9. ❖Debs and the
American Railway
Union
–At the time of the 1877 strike,
railroad workers mainly
organized into various
“brotherhoods,” which were
basically craft unions.
–Eugene V. Debs proposed a new
industrial union for all railway
workers called the American
Railway Union (A.R.U.).
–The A.R.U. would replace all of
the brotherhoods and unite all
railroad workers, skilled and
unskilled.
Railroad Workers Organize

11. •May 3, 1886, joining a nation wide
strike for an 8 work day Chicago
workers protested against the
McCormick Reaper plant.
•A riot broke out and Chicago police
officers killed several protesters
•To protest the killing, protesters
planned a rally for May 4
• 3,000 gather at Chicago’s Haymarket Square
• During the protest, a bomb exploded
• 7 police officers were killed and civilians killed and injured
• Chicago police hunt down murderers
• 8 anarchists were convicted of conspiracy to murder

12. • 4 were hung and 1
committed suicide
• This caused the
public to look down
on labor unions
especially the
Knights of Labor
• Gov. of Illinois later
issued pardons for
the remaining
accused

13. •1892, Carnegie Steel workers
strike over pay cuts
•Management locks out workers
and hires scab workers.
•Violence erupted between
strikers and scab workers.
•Pinkerton Security called in to
settle violence
•Strikers ambush them and forced Pinkerton’s to walk the gauntlet
between striking families.
•Some killed and many injured
•National Guard was called in by the governor of Pennsylvania to
stop violence and reopen plant

14. • Railway car company owned by George Pullman
• Over 6,000 workers
• Workers had lived in “company town”
• Rent was 25% higher than other areas
• Pullman cuts workers’ wages
• But doesnt cut rent for
apartments
• May 10, 1894- Workers
walk out

15. • President Grover
Cleveland sends in
troops
• Presence of Federal
troops sets off riots
• Rioters burn buildings,
troops kill 4 and
wound 20
• By August, strike fall apart
• 1000 union workers fired
• New workers have to sign contracts promising not to join a
union
• Debs arrested and jailed for 6 months

16. The Great Strikes
• Haymarket Riot (1896)—8 hour workday national
strike; scabs hired in Chicago (fights); rally—bombing &
gunfight between police & strikers; Ill. Law: help with
murder, then you are a murderer: 4 anarchists hanged
for murder (one blew himself up in prison). Never
determined who threw the bomb.
• Homestead Strike (1892)—Carnegie Steelworkers
called a strike (factory cut their wages) & were fired;
management sent in “private” police force (fight with
deaths); strike called off
• Pullman Strike (1894): Company town; wages cut
25% (Panic of 1893); food prices in town NOT cut;
Pullman fired three negotiators; strike; al RR traffic
halted; strike ordered illegal because mail couldn’t
get through

17. Employers’ Reaction
• Banned Union Meetings
• Union organizers fired
• Blacklisting
• Yellow Dog contracts (contract that
workers must sign promising not to
participate in a union)
• Would not bargain collectively (did not
want to negotiate with workers)
• Strikes were met with violence from
bosses who would hire police to stop
protests.

18. Wagner Act (National Labor Relations
Act) (1935)
–Designed to protect employee rights to
form and join unions
–Created the National Labor Relations
Board (NLRB):
• Administer certification elections
• Prevent and remedy unlawful acts (unfair labor
practices)
• Identified 5 illegal labor practices

19. Effects of the Labor
Movement
• Unions were not always granted as
legally protected organizations and
gains were limited for more than 30
years.
• Debs became socialist and formed the
American Socialist Party and the
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) a
radical union group.

20. Workers Benefits Today

21. Labor Unions & Strikes
How did Labor Unions attempt to
improve working conditions?