American Federation of Labor

Introduction

In the United States, unlike in Europe, labor unions and their members have generally accepted capitalism. Members of craft unions, organized on a trade or occupational basis in the late 18th century, could be fined or imprisoned when employers, using English common law, accused them of criminal conspiracy. The Supreme Court restricted use of this doctrine in 1842, and thereafter the legality of unions depended on the means they employed to gain better worker conditions (Johnson et al, pp. 88). The National Labor Union (formed in 1866) and the Knights of Labor (1869) included trade unions, suffragettes, farmers' organizations, and other reform groups with diverse goals; each soon foundered. Samuel Gompers, learning from their mistakes, organized the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886; membership was restricted to skilled laborers only, and the AFL had the pragmatic aims of raising wages, improving work conditions, honoring contracts, and instigating collective bargaining. The struggle between management and labor often erupted into violence, as when police and labor protesters were killed in the Haymarket Square Riot (1886) in Chicago, Illinois. The federal government did not remain neutral, and troops were deployed against strikers when violence broke out in response to the government's use of the Sherman Antitrust Act against the American Railroad Union. Opposed by the federally backed employers on one side and the more radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) on the other, the AFL nonetheless grew to include four million workers by 1920. Another one million belonged to unaffiliated unions, including the railroad brotherhoods. The influence of the federal government over labor-management relationships enhanced labor's prestige during World War I, but during the prosperity of the 1920s union membership decreased (Julius, pp. 36).

Because of apathy at the local union level, power often became concentrated in the hands of a few national leaders. Amid charges of corruption, union power was curbed by the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 and the Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959. Membership in the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) declined, partly due to the expulsion of allegedly corrupt unions, such as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and partly due to the growing percentage of white collar workers (traditionally difficult to organize) in the workforce. Young workers in the 1960s saw the unions as unsympathetic to their concerns with civil rights, war, and pollution. In the 1970s labor unions began to adapt to the needs of white-collar, female, minority, and young workers. Unions have shown some success in these areas, and there has been increased unionization among teachers, government employees, and health and farm workers. Economic downturns in the late 1970s and early 1980s weakened the bargaining power of unions (Phillip Sheldon, pp. 171).

American Federation of Labor

AFL is the premier U.S. labor union during the 1920s and 1930s, which was organized by Samuel Gompers in 1886. Begun as the Knights of Labor, the group soon became one of the leading American unions, unifying U.S. labor as never before. In the 1920s ...