Development Of American Labor Essay Research Paper

Development Of American Labor Essay, Research Paper

Beginning in 1866 until the present time many labor leaders have initiated many effective and important labor laws. Throughout the past one hundred plus years there have been many steps forward in the labor movement along with a few major steps back. The actions of these labor leaders and the accomplishments of the acts that they have helped to pass have paved the way for the American worker in today’s society.

One of the labor laws that had an impact was the Taft-Hartley Act. The Taft-Hartley act formerly called the Labor-management Relations Act was passed in 1947. Its founders were Senator Robert A. Taft and Representative Fred A. Hartley. This act helped in collective bargaining along with allowing workers the right to defer from joining a union. This act required unions to give notification of a strike sixty days before it was to occur. It also outlawed specific union practices that were unfair and required that union officers must deny any Communist affiliations while under oath.

Another of the labor acts that contributed to the labor movement was the National Labor Relations Act. It was passed by Congress in 1935. It has been called the Magna Carta of American labor. The National Labor Relations Act guaranteed workers the right to join unions without fear of being punished by management. In order to enforce this law the National Labor Relations Board was formed. This act prevented employers from committing unfair labor practices that would make the worker be afraid to organize a union or sign a union contract.

Yet another labor law was the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931. Created by Congressman Robert Bacon and Senator James Davis, this act was mainly established to grant stability to the construction industry. The bid requirements on public projects were low and this allowed outside contractors to obtain work on substandard wages. This also caused contractors to look past the high paid local workers to the lower paid workers from around the country. Davis and Bacon felt it was wrong for workers from other areas to be herded together to work for lower wages than the standard in that state.

An important labor leader in the early labor movement was Francis Perkins. Francis Perkins devoted much of her life to the improvement of the American Worker. While going to school at Mt. Holyoke College, Perkins gained an interest in social reform. This interest grew when she joined the National Consumer League, which had a goal to improve labor conditions through consumer pressure. In 1928, New York governor Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Perkins as the head of the state labor department. Four years later, when Roosevelt was elected to the presidency, Perkins was asked to be his secretary of labor. Perkins played a major role in Roosevelt’s response to the Great Depression. She also was an advocate of social security, wage and hour regulation, and the abolition of child labor.

Eugene V. Debs was another famous labor leader. Debs made the first major attempt to form a labor union for both skilled and unskilled workers of a specific industry. This attempt was the American Railway Union. Debs also played a major role in the Pullman Strike in 1894. He asked for arbitration and when Pullman refused to negotiate Debs and the American Railway Union began boycotting Pullman train. Later in the Pullman strike Deb was arrested. While in prison Debs realized his true calling. He became a spokesperson for the Socialists Party of America and ran for president five times. Surprisingly, in 1912, he won 900,000 votes. A famous quote of Deb’s was, “I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

A significant strike of the past was the aforementioned Pullman Strike. The Pullman strike began during the Panic of 1893. The Pullman Company laid off three thousand of its fifty-eight hundred employees. The Pullman workers all lived in houses owned by the Pullman Company and had to pay rent. The remaining employees had their wages cut twenty-five to thirty percent and the housing prices remained the same. After paying the rent on their homes, their paychecks dwindled down to almost nothing. Later, after the depression, two thousand Pullman workers were hired. Again, the Pullman Company did not restore wages of compensate with lower housing rates. In the spring of 1894, the outraged workers called for a strike. The strike was one of peace, that is until Pullman hired strikebreakers. This brought on a violent end to the strike. In conclusion, Pullman fired most of the strikers and named more to a blacklist.

The Homestead strike occurred in 1892. It began when workers from the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers struck the Carnegie Steel Company’s Homestead plant in order to protest a cut in wages. The company’s general manager, Henry C. Frick, was determined to break the union. He hired strikebreakers and then hired three hundred detectives to protect the plant and the strikebreakers. After an armed battle between the detectives and workers, three detectives and six workers were dead. The strike ended on November 20th after the plant reopened and nonunion workers remained on the job. This strike caused a weakening effect on the unions of the steel industry that would take forty years t