Portal:Organized Labour

Introduction

Image created by Walter Crane to celebrate International Workers' Day (May Day, 1 May), 1889. The image depicts workers from the five populated continents (Africa, Asia, Americas, Australia and Europe) in unity underneath an angel representing freedom, fraternity and equality.

The labour movement is the collective organisation of working people to further their shared political and economic interests. It consists of the trade union or labour union movement, as well as political parties of labour. It can be considered an instance of class conflict.

In trade unions, workers campaign for higher wages, better working conditions and fair treatment from their employers, and through the implementation of labour laws, from their governments. They do this through collective bargaining, sectoral bargaining, and when needed, strike action. In some countries, co-determination gives representatives of workers seats on the board of directors of their employers.

Political parties representing the interests of workers campaign for labour rights, social security and the welfare state. They are usually called a labour party (in English-speaking countries), a social democratic party (in Germanic countries), a socialist party (in Romance countries), or sometimes a workers' party.
Though historically less prominent, the cooperative movement campaigns to replace capitalist ownership of the economy with worker cooperatives, consumer cooperatives, and other types of cooperative ownership. This is related to the concept of economic democracy.

The labour movement developed as a response to capitalism and the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, at about the same time as socialism. The early goals of the movement were the right to unionise, the right to vote, democracy and the 40-hour week. As these were achieved in many of the advanced economies of western Europe and north America in the early decades of the 20th century, the labour movement expanded to issues of welfare and social insurance, wealth distribution and income distribution, public services like health care and education, social housing and common ownership. (Full article...)

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Massachusetts militiamen with fixed bayonets surround a group of strikers

The Lawrence Textile Strike, also known as the Bread and Roses Strike, was a strike of immigrant workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912 led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Prompted by a two-hour pay cut corresponding to a new law shortening the workweek for women, the strike spread rapidly through the town, growing to more than twenty thousand workers and involving nearly every mill in Lawrence. On January 1, 1912, the Massachusetts government enforced a law that cut mill workers' hours in a single work week from 56 hours, to 54 hours. Ten days later, they found out that pay had been reduced along with the cut in hours.

The strike united workers from more than 51 different nationalities many of whom knew little to no English. A large portion of the striking workers, including many of the leaders of the strike, were Italian immigrants. Carried on throughout a brutally cold winter, the strike lasted more than two months, from January to March, defying the assumptions of conservative trade unions within the American Federation of Labor (AFL) that immigrant, largely female and ethnically divided workers could not be organized. In late January, when a striker, Anna LoPizzo, was killed by police during a protest, IWW organizers Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti were framed and arrested on charges of being accessories to the murder. IWW leaders Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn came to Lawrence to run the strike. Together they masterminded its signature move, sending hundreds of the strikers' hungry children to sympathetic families in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont. The move drew widespread sympathy, especially after police stopped a further exodus, leading to violence at the Lawrence train station. Congressional hearings followed, resulting in exposure of shocking conditions in the Lawrence mills and calls for investigation of the "wool trust." Mill owners soon decided to settle the strike, giving workers in Lawrence and throughout New England raises of up to 20 percent. Within a year, however, the IWW had largely collapsed in Lawrence.

The Lawrence strike is often referred to as the "Bread and Roses" strike. It has also been called the "strike for three loaves". The phrase "bread and roses" actually preceded the strike, appearing in a poem by James Oppenheim published in The American Magazine in December 1911. A 1915 labor anthology, The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest by Upton Sinclair, attributed the phrase to the Lawrence strike, and the association stuck. A popular rallying cry from the poem was interwoven with the memory of the strike: "Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!" (Full article...)

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April in Labor History

Significant dates in labour history.

April 01 - Burston Strike School began in 1914 the U.K.; the 1972 Major League Baseball strike began in the U.S. and Canada; the 1980 New York City transit strike began; the U.S. Supreme Court decided NLRB v. Truck Drivers Local 449; the Federation of Unions of South Africa was founded; the Allied Pilots Association was founded; the Loray Mill strike began in the U.S. in 1929; Sol Chick Chaikin died
April 02 - Weldon Mathis was born; Eugene Hanley was born; the 1994–95 Major League Baseball strike ended in 1995
April 03 - Percy Wells died
April 04 - The On-to-Ottawa Trek began in Canada in 1935; William Quesse was born; the 2006 Minor League Baseball umpire strike began in the U.S.
April 06 - Rose Schneiderman was born; the 1905 Chicago Teamsters' strike began as the Teamsters engaged in a sympathy strike; B. T. Ranadive died
April 07 - The U.S. Supreme Court decided Lochner v. New York; Basawon Singh (Sinha) died
April 08 - The 1998 Australian waterfront dispute began
April 09 - John H. Dent died; the U.S. Supreme Court decided Adkins v. Children's Hospital and Bunting v. Oregon; Chris Watson was born; President Harry S. Truman nationalizes all steel mills in anticipation of the 1952 steel strike; Natascha Engel was born; Thomas Jackson was born
April 10 - Harold J. Gibbons was born; Dolores Huerta was born; Joseph Diescho was born; George Lippard was born; Edward J. Carlough was born; Lee Batchelor was born; Anna Walentynowicz died
April 11 - The 1980 New York City transit strike ended
April 12 - Tom Addison was born; the U.S. Supreme Court decided NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp.; the Auto-Lite strike began in 1934 in the U.S.; the Union Label Department, AFL–CIO was founded; the Memphis sanitation strike ended; the Queensland Council of Unions was founded; the Sons of Vulcan was founded
April 13 - Henk Sneevliet died; the Laborers' International Union of North America was founded
April 14 - Dorothy Jacobs Bellanca was born; Marvin Miller was born; Ernest Bevin died
April 15 - A. Philip Randolph was born; Pablo Manlapit died; the American Federation of Teachers was founded; "Black Friday" occurred in 1921 in the U.K.; Aleksei Gastev died; the Trade Unions Forum was founded; Margaretta Scott was born
April 16 - Joseph Havelock Wilson died
April 17 - Manwel Dimech died
April 18 - Joseph Labadie was born; R. J. Thomas died
April 20 - Gro Harlem Brundtland was born; The Ludlow Massacre occurred in 1914 in the U.S.; the International Harvester strike of 1979–80 ended
April 21 - The Bituminous coal miners' strike of 1894 began in the U.S.; the First Employment Contract is repealed in France in 2006
April 22 - Frederick Nicholas Zihlman died
April 23 - Russell Crowell was born; the Canadian Labour Congress was formed; Cesar Chavez died; the Hock Lee bus riots occurred in 1955 in Singapore; Edward Lamb was born
April 25 - Arnold Miller was born
April 26 - United Trade Union Centre (Lanin Sarani) was founded
April 28 - Workers' Memorial Day; Roy Lee Williams died; Bob White was born; Greg Combet was born; Jerry Horan died; Joseph Glimco died
April 29 - The Coeur d'Alene miners' dispute of 1899 occurred in the U.S.

Jan•Feb•Mar•Apr•May•Jun•Jul•Aug•Sep•Oct•Nov•Dec

More Did you know (auto-generated)

... that Marco van Basten's strike in the UEFA Euro 1988 Final was described as "perhaps the most iconic goal in UEFA European Championship history"?
... that Sting wrote "We Work the Black Seam" because he felt that "the case for coal was never put to the nation" during the 1984–85 British miners' strike, which began 40 years ago today?
... that during the 1913 El Paso smelters' strike the Industrial Workers of the World and the Western Federation of Miners competed to organize the strikers with their respective labor unions?
... that a number of bus drivers who participated in a strike were unaware that it was illegally held?
... that during the Venezuelan general strike of 2002–2003, all but one of Venezuelan chocolatier María Fernanda Di Giacobbe's ten businesses went bankrupt?
... that "The Strike" (1954), about an American officer's turmoil in ordering an air strike on his own men, was rated as Rod Serling's best script he had written to date?

Related Portals

Selected image

Image 1Memorial marker for the Bay View Tragedy.
Image 2Members of the United Steelworkers in Ohio phone bank other union members to educate them about critical issues in the 2008 election in the U.S.
Image 3Lewis Hine's 1920 image "Power house mechanic working on steam pump," which shows a working class young American man with wrench in hand, hunched over, surrounded by the machinery that defines his work.
Image 4A. Philip Randolph.
Image 5The front page of the Union Record on the Seattle General Strike of 1919.
Image 6May Day Rally in Mumbai, India, 2004.
Image 7William Green, president of the AFL–CIO from 1924 to 1952.
Image 8The Ludlow massacre monument located in Ludlow, Colorado, United States.
Image 9Striking I.W.W. members confront Massachusetts National Guard troops in Boston, during the Lawrence textile strike in 1912.
Image 10Union members picketing recent NLRB rulings outside the agency's Washington, D.C., headquarters in November 2007.
Image 11National Federation of Federal Employees officials sign a collective bargaining agreement with the U.S. 8th Army in October 2002.
Image 12The Western Federation of Miners' famous flyer entitled "Is Colorado in America?".
Image 13Mary Harris "Mother" Jones.
Image 14Registered nurses on strike in 2006 outside Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.
Image 15Public and Commercial Services Union members on strike in Manchester 2006.
Image 16Rally in Dhaka, organized by Jatiyo Nari Shramik Trade Union Kendra (National Women Workers Trade Union Centre), an organization affiliated with the Bangladesh Trade Union Kendra.
Image 17Striking teamsters armed with pipes battle police in the streets during the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934.
Image 18John L. Lewis (right, President of the United Mine Workers, confers with Thomas Kennedy (left), UMW Secretary-Treasurer of the UMW, and a UMW official at the War Labor Board in 1943 about a coal miners' strike.
Image 19Picket signs at the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike.
Image 20United Mine Workers of America poster circa 1902.
Image 21Striking American Railway Union members confront Illinois National Guard troops in Chicago, Illinois, during the Pullman Strike in 1894.
Image 22Strike leaders at the Paterson silk strike of 1913. From left, Patrick Quinlan, Carlo Tresca, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Adolph Lessig, and Bill Haywood.
Image 23Illustration from the Brisbane Worker newspaper condemning the brutality of the Queensland Police on Black Friday during the 1912 Brisbane General Strike.
Image 24Samuel Gompers.
Image 25Striking workers march moments before the Swedish military opened fire, killing five workers during the Ådalen shootings.
Image 26Armed vigilantes deport striking copper miners during the Bisbee Deportation in Bisbee, Arizona, July 12, 1917.
Image 27George Meany, former leader of the AFL–CIO.
Image 28Crowd gathered outside old City Hall during the Winnipeg general strike, June 21, 1919.
Image 29Political cartoon about the Coal Strike of 1902 from the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Image 30Richard Trumka.
Image 31American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Albert Shanker.
Image 32Breaker boys, child laborers, working in a U.S. coal mine in 1911.
Image 33Former headquarters of the United Mine Workers of America and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 900 15th Street NW, Washington, D.C., in 200.
Image 34Shields used by striking workers at the Carnegie Steel Works during the Homestead Strike in 1892.
Image 35Mounted police chase demonstrators through Vancouver's East End during the Battle of Ballantyne Pier in 1935.
Image 36An AFL–CIO protest of Rite Aid, with Rev. Mark Reisinger (Pastor of Grace United Methodist Church in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania), Bill George, and Richard Bloomingdale.
Image 37Detail of monument to the Reesor Siding Strike of 1963.
Image 38Australian industrial relations legislation national day of protest, 2005.
Image 39Barges set ablaze by steelworkers during the Homestead strike in 1892.
Image 40Camp put up by striking Pepsi-Cola workers, in Guatemala City, Guatemala, 2008.
Image 41Knights of Labor Grand Master Workman Terence V. Powderly.
Image 42The Place de la Sorbonne in Paris is closed by police during the 2006 labour protests in France.
Image 43Big Bill Haywood, a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World.
Image 44Union members march in Argentina on Human Rights Day in December 2005. The signs read "Worker rights are human rights..
Image 45J. Warren Madden, the first Chair of the National Labor Relations Board.
Image 46Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, and his wife, circa 1908.
Image 47Cripple Creek, Colo., under martial law, during the 1894 strike.
Image 48Joe Hill.
Image 49Union elections with an illegal firing, 1951 to 2007.
Image 50During World War II, a female aircraft worker checks electrical assemblies at the Vega Aircraft Corporation in Burbank, California.
Image 51Metropolitan Transportation Authority (New York) notice of subway closure during the 2005 New York City transit strike.
Image 52Strike sign used by the German Train Drivers' Union in the German national rail strike of 2007.
Image 53Protesters barricade the street on June 22 during the 2006 Oaxaca protests.
Image 54Exaggerated 19th century engraving showing flames and smoke following the Haymarket riot.
Image 55AFL–CIO unions protest outside Verizon headquarters in Philadelphia using a giant inflatable rat.
Image 56Great Railroad Strike of 1877.
Image 57Empty Gare du Nord train station during the November 2007 strikes in France.
Image 58Wilma B. Liebman, chair, NLRB.

Selected Quote

The hospital strikers have demonstrated that you don't get a job done unless you show the Man you're not afraid...If you're not willing to pay that price, then you don't deserve the rewards or benefits that go along with it."

— Malcolm X.

Did you know

...that even though the 1952 steel strike lasted 53 days and cost the U.S. $4 billion in lost economic output, it was settled on nearly the same terms offered by the union at the strike's beginning?
...that the short-lived Industrial Syndicalist Education League was both the first and the largest syndicalist organisation ever in the United Kingdom?
...that Canada's syndicalist One Big Union kept itself alive for some time by running an illegal lottery in its weekly bulletin?

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