Labor federation competition in the U.S.
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A labor federation is a group of unions or labor organizations that are in some sense coordinated. The terminology used to identify such organizations grows out of usage, and has sometimes been imprecise. Labor federation competition in the U.S. will consider U.S. labor organizations and federations that were (or are) regional, national, or international in scope, and that were (or are) in some sense intended to unite organizations of disparate groups of workers.
The issues that divided labor federations and fostered competition were many and varied. The philosophies of the craft unionists and the industrial unionists played a role, as did differing ideas about immigration, politics, legislation, and union democracy. Sometimes the role of government has been significant or decisive. Craft unions tended to organize skilled workers, to the exclusion of the unskilled, introducing the issue of class. Even personalities of union leaders have sometimes guided the fortunes of labor federations. That may seem inevitable when labor organizations are headed by men like Big Bill Haywood, John L. Lewis or Andy Stern.
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[edit] History of labor federation competition in the U.S.
The first labor federation was the National Labor Union. It dissolved in 1872, passing the federation mantle to the Knights of Labor (KOL), which had a leading role in some of the largest strikes of the period from 1869 to 1890. The Knights was conceived as a mass organization along industrial lines, uniting both skilled and unskilled workers.
In 1881 the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU) was created for skilled workers, organized on a craft basis. The FOTLU passed a resolution to exclude the unskilled. Its leader, Samuel Gompers, believed at the time that unions should avoid political entanglements. While the Knights of Labor was inclusive in its representation of workers — with the particular exception of Asian workers — FOTLU called for restrictions on any importation of labor. The Knights professed that arbitration was preferable to strikes, but FOTLU asserted the conflict of interests between labor and capital. The Knights of Labor grew explosively during the 1880s, but FOTLU stagnated as the Knights raided its locals and set up rival unions.
FOTLU called for a general strike if the eight hour day hadn't been established by May 1, 1886. The call demonstrated a rift between the Knights of Labor leadership — which advised their members not to participate, and the Knights of Labor rank and file — who embraced the call.
Then the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886 initiated by the Knights of Labor began to falter, and the Haymarket Riot took place on May 4, 1886. A political backlash occurred against U.S. labor organizations.
Some FOTLU leaders called for a meeting to be held on May 18, 1886, ostensibly to solve labor's rivalries. But Samuel Gompers proposed a new federation, the American Federation of Labor (AFL). In a complex political environment, Gompers and the craft unionists outmaneuvered the Knights of Labor leadership, gaining considerable support from within the Knights of Labor. The AFL was founded as a continuation of FOTLU, and as a rival to the faltering Knights.
While the AFL together with its offspring, the AFL-CIO has comprised the longest lasting and most influential labor federation in the United States, there have been other entities which offered competition.
After a bitter disagreement between Gompers and Edward Boyce, president of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) about electoral politics and the use of force, the WFM left the AFL in 1897, expressing dissatisfaction with the AFL's conservatism. Boyce organized a rival federation called the Western Labor Union (WLU),[1] which was intended as a class-conscious alternative.[2] The WFM, which played a leadership role in the WLU, had criticized the AFL for "dividing the skilled crafts from other workers and for proclaiming the identity of interests of capital and labor," and professed that the benefits of productivity gains belonged to labor and not to capital. The WFM's miners advocated industrial unionism instead of the craft unionism that was characteristic of many AFL unions. The Western Labor Union federation formed by the WFM included carpenters, typographers, hotel and restaurant employees, waiters, as well as the WFM's miners, and it lasted from 1898 to 1902,[3] when it changed its name to the American Labor Union (ALU) and announced its intention to challenge the AFL.
The AFL vigorously opposed dual unionism, and in Colorado, the center of gravity of both the WFM and the ALU, bitter factions developed in local Trades Assemblies. The American Labor Union ceased to exist in 1905[4] when militant labor joined together with labor anarchists and socialist political organizations to create the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
From its birth in Chicago, the IWW clearly stated its philosophy and its goals: rather than accommodating capitalism, the IWW sought to overthrow it. While the AFL vigorously supported the national war effort during World War I, the IWW opposed it. The IWW issued stickers, or "silent agitators", urging workers not to become soldiers.[5]
At the time of the U.S. entry into World War I, the IWW had organized effectively in the northwest timber industry, and was challenging the WFM (now the Mine Mill union) in organizing the miners of Bisbee, Arizona, and elsewhere. The IWW's Agricultural Workers Organization had signed up a hundred thousand farm workers by 1917.[6] Amidst national war fever, there was growing concern that the IWW could call strikes that would impede the war effort. In 1917 a general strike was called in all the mines in Butte, Montana, to protest a fire that killed 194 men. The independent union that called the strike was staffed by members of the IWW, and former members of the WFM.
Big Bill Haywood, the IWW's highest ranking organizer recorded in his autobiography that Robert Bruere, an investigative labor writer, discovered that,
Sam Gompers had gone to Newton Baker, then Secretary of War, and had presented to him a plan to annihilate the I.W.W. Baker refused to take the suggestion of Gompers seriously; the latter then went to the Department of Justice, where he met with more success.[7]
Whether this is true or not, on September 5, 1917, the Department of Justice raided IWW halls across the country, arresting thousands of members and confiscating records. Additional raids, deportations, and long jail sentences seriously disrupted activities of the radical union. Government attacks were also launched against the IWW in Australia.
Although the IWW had challenged the AFL with a different union philosophy, the organization was forced to contend with costly fines, imprisonment of its leaders, and a significant split during the 1920s. While the IWW still organizes in several countries, its worldwide membership is insignificant compared to its historical influence.
In September of 2005, five decades after the AFL merged with the CIO to form the AFL-CIO, seven unions and six million workers split off to form the Change to Win Federation.
[edit] Other pressures affecting labor organizations
Other pressures dictating the nature and power of organized labor organizations have included the evolution and power of the corporation, efforts by employers and private agencies to limit or control unions, and U.S. labor law.
[edit] Political organizations and labor
Political organizations sometimes see alliances with organized labor as a means to increase their effectiveness, and vice versa.
The Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance (STLA) was closely linked to the Socialist Labor Party. The STLA existed from 1895 until 1905, when it played a founding role in the IWW. In 1908 the IWW modified its constitution to prohibit alliances with any political parties.[8]
When the IWW underwent a split over the issue of decentralization in the mid-twenties, roughly half of the membership left to join the Communist Party (CP). The Trade Union Educational League (TUEL) was a left wing movement inside the AFL by former Left Wing Socialists and former IWW members who became active in the American Communist movement. In 1928 the TUEL became the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL), a federation of industrial unions established in opposition to the AFL craft labor unions. The CP played a significant role in the labor movement during the 1930s and '40s, particularly in the CIO. The CP was defeated during organized labor's internal battles in the aftermath of World War II.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Colorado's War On Militant Unionism, George G. Suggs, Jr., pp. 23.
- ^ All That Glitters-- Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek, pp. 7,63.
- ^ All That Glitters, pp. 63.
- ^ All That Glitters, pp. 77.
- ^ The Autobiography of Big Bill Haywood, 1929, pp. 294 ppbk.
- ^ Memoirs of a Wobbly, Henry E. McGuckin, 1987, pp. 69-74.
- ^ The Autobiography of Big Bill Haywood, 1929, pp. 299 ppbk.
- ^ The I.W.W.: Its First Seventy Years, 1976, Fred W. Thompson, pp. 40.
