Rise of Labor Unions in the 19th Century Gilded Age

How to share the wealth?

Negotiation Tools

Labor Unions• Collective Bargaining• 3rd Party Arbitration• Pickett• Boycott• Slowdown• Strike

• Safety in Numbers

Management• Collective Bargaining• 3rd Party Arbitration• Yellow Dog Contact• Court Injunction• Blacklist (Now illegal)• Hire Replacement Workers

(Scabs)• Lock- Out

What does this mean?

Knights of Labor (1869- 1886)The aims of the Knights of Labor included the following: • An eight-hour work day • Termination of child labor • Termination of the convict contract labor system (the concern was not for the prisoners; the Knights opposed competition from this cheap source of labor) • Establishment of cooperatives to replace the traditional wage system and help tame capitalism's excesses • Equal pay for equal work • Government ownership of telegraph facilities and the railroads • A public land policy designed to aid settlers and not speculators • A graduated income tax.

Haymarket Square Riot (1886)

• Knights won two strikes against railroads• A Bomb went off and killed 7 police officers

Homestead Strike (1892)

• Carnegie Steel Factory• Western Pennsylvannia• 3,800 workers get pay cuts• Carnegie hires strike breakers• 300 Pinkerton detectives• Violence• Gov. sends in 8,000 militia• To protect “scabs”

Pullman RR Strike (1894)

What happened that summer in Chicago?

• Causes• Pullman Palace Car Company cut

wages as demands for their train cars decreased and the company's revenue dropped. Workers begin to strike (already members of ARU led by Eugene Debs) they gain sympathy of 125,000 workers on twenty-nine railroads, all who had quit work rather than handle Pullman cars.

• Results• The strike was broken up by United

States Marshals and 12,000 United States Army troops, sent by President Grover Cleveland on the premise that the strike interfered with the delivery of U.S. Mail, and represented a threat to public safety. The arrival of the military led to further outbreaks of violence. During the course of the strike, 13 strikers were killed and 57 were wounded. An estimated 6,000 rail workers did $340,000 worth of property damage.

Reputations of Unions Suffered• VIOLENT• Communists• Socialists• Anarchists

American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L)

• Samuel Gompers Strike as a last resort

• Skilled Workers Only “Bread and Butter”