Trade Unions Flashcards
(42 cards)
How did AAs and New Immigrants undermine TUs?
- They are willing to accept lower pay
- They are excluded from TUs making them less powerful
Pre-WWI who mainly benefited from TUs?
- Blue collar workers
What was the Pullman’s Strike?
-1894 strike to have rights to collective bargaining recognised
What was the Homestead Strike?
- 1892 strike which nearly bankrupted the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers and leads to a fall in TU membership
What was KOL and AFL?
- Knights of American Labour develop in 1869 and later called American Federation of Labour
- Membership grew to 700, 000 in 1886 but later fell de to the violence of the Haymarket Affair
Who were the ‘Wobblies’?
- Established in 1905, they were a militant and violent group that also stood up for poor workers
- Alienated employers and decline in their membership is seen after 1923.
What was TU membership by WWI? What had TUs begun to do?
- 2 million
- To pressure Presidential candidates to promote TU rights
What were some negatives about TU progress by WWI?
- Not all industries represented
- TUs not legally recognized
- Only 20% of non-agricultural workers recognized by TUs
What effect did WWI have on TU power?
- Increased demand for products which increased bargaining power
When was the National War Labour Board set up? What did it do?
- 1918 and negotiated for workers
- Able to achieve 8 hour working day but had a no strike agreement
What were Yellow Dog contracts?
Contracts prohibiting workers from joining Unions
What were the economic effects of the 1920’s?
- Boom = decrease in unemployment which gave unions more leverage
- Welfare Capitalism banned strikes but gave perks such as holidays, insurance and pensions
What was the position of TUs in the 1920s?
- Most employers did not recognize them eg Henry Ford
Who were the Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters? What did they do?
- Protested the poor condition, violence against union leaders and use of company unions at the Pullman Company
- Still unrecognized in 1928 but over half of Pullman workers had joined them
What were the effects of the 1929 depression?
- High unemployment reduced union bargaining power
- Use of strike breakers to control union action
When was NIRA set up? What did it do?
- 1933 worked to improve working hours and union rights
- SC declares it unconstitiutional
When was the National Labour Relations Act set up? What did it do?
-1935 sets up National Labour Relations Board to look into unfair practice and represent unions
- Establishes right to join Unions, right to have own union representation and bans use of spies by employers
- Sees increase in TU membership from 3.7 in 1933 to 9 mil in 1938
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When was the Railway Labour Act passed? What did it do?
-1934 and allowed BSCP to finally be recognized
What were the effects of WWII on TUs?
- Huge demands and near labour shortage
- Wage increase by 70%
- Growth in membership from 9 mil to 15 mil by end of the war
What improvements were there for agricultural workers in the 1960s-70s?
- Chavez promoted non-violent, anti immigrant representation and won national sympathy
- Salad Bowl Strike of 1970s was biggest farmers strike and won wage increase
- 1966 Farm Workers Organizing Committee was set up
What improvements and Acts were there is the 1960s for workers?
- Johnson’s Great Society
- Civil Rights Act 1964
- Equal Pay Act of 1963
- Age Discrimination Act of 1968
- Equal Opportunity Act 1964 (offered training)
- Strikes decreased as TUs were working with employers
When and what was the Taft-Hartley Act?
-1947 and banned closed shop
When was the AFL and CIO meger and why was it important?
- 1955
- Unified 16 million workers making it very powerful
How were TUs viewed and undermined after WWII?
- Viewed as having gained too much power
- Govt workers signed no strike contracts
- Decline in membership due to good welfare packages and increase in white collar workers who were no interested in joining TUs
