What are the three key limitations to labour rights?
- Skilled/Unskilled Divisions
- Racial Divisions
- FG (linked to the economy)
Why was there a division between skilled and unskilled workers?
- Pay difference
- Perceived hierarchy
- ‘Closed shop’ and exclusive
Name a Skilled Union
International Molders and Foundry workers Union of North America (1859) formed by William H. Sylvis
What did Sylvis want?
To promote working class sovereignty
Why did this never work?
The movement remained divided between skilled and unskilled workers.
In the 1890s 35% of the workforce were unskilled women, furthering the divide between skilled and unskilled as women’s wages were far lower.
What was the Knights of Labor?
A union formed in 1869 to try and unite labour, it had 700,000 members at its height but was soon replaced by the American Federation of Labor (AFL) following the Haymarket Affair of 1886.
How many immigrants entered the US between 1900 and 1930?
19 million
Why were they a hindrance?
- Threat of political subversion
- Largely unskilled
- Easily exploited as scab labour-Frick in the Homestead Strike 1892
Describe the Haymarket Affair
- 1886
- McCormick Harvester Plant Chicago
- 7 policemen killed by 6 German anarchists under Maust and Spies.
- Gave foreign labour a tarnished name
Who were the Molly Maguires?
- A secret Irish group
- Operated in the Pennsylvania Coal mines
When was Chinese and Japanese immigration stopped?
1882 and 1907
What happened to AAs in Sylvis’ NLU?
They were told to organise elsewhere, a tone set up until 1925 with Randolph’s BSCP
How was labour hindered by race after WW2?
Many groups seen as communist (particularly ones endorsed by blacks) and many new asian immigrants made unionisation a struggle.
3 hindrances from FG before the 1930s:
- Failure to accept the legal right to join a union
- Failure to allow collective bargaining rights
- Landing on the side of the employer (1890s especiall)
When were collective bargaining capabilities allowed?
-1935 Labor Relations (Wagner) Act declared consitiutional in 1937
What event occurred in 1933
Industry Recovery Act
When did Chrysler and General Motors accept the Union of Auto Workers?
1937 when it was 400,000 strong
What did Henry Ford pioneer?
Welfare capitalism.
Two leaders of giant corporations?
Carnegie and Rockefeller
How were TUs then resitricted by FG?
Taft-Hartley Labor Management Act of 1947
How did states avoid strikes?
Right to Work laws
Why was Reagan controversial?
He crushed the 1981 Air Traffic Controller’s Strike
What year did the AFL-CIO combine?
1955
When was the Women’s Trade Union League formed?
1903
