labor union

Association of workers for the purpose, in whole or in part, of bargaining, on behalf of workers, with employers about the terms and conditions of employment.

A labor union is defined as "a group of workers who have banded together to achieve common goals in the key areas of wages, hours, and working conditions" (Boone and Kurtz, 1999, p. 414). Originally, labor unions were primarily made up of male, blue-collar workers; but as the economy of the United States evolved from production industries to service industries, union membership has seen a dramatic increase in white-collar and female workers. In addition, one-fifth of all professionals in the United States are union members (Boone and Kurtz, 1999).

History and Evolution

Labor unions began to evolve in the United States in the 1700s and 1800s due to the need for safety and security for workers. Workers formed labor unions in response to intolerable working conditions, low wages, and long hours. In the wake of the Industrial Revolution, men, women, and even children worked in unsafe factories from dawn to dark every day of the week for only pennies a day. These oppressive conditions forced workers to look for ways to improve their situation. They gradually learned that by banding together and bargaining as a group, they could pressure employers to respond to their demands.

The progression of the Industrial Revolution and the formation of labor unions go hand in hand. The Industrial Revolution brought about specialization of employees in the workplace and a dramatic increase in production. This new factory system, which developed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, brought to workers both prosperity (steady employment in good economic times) and hardship (bad working conditions and unemployment during depressions). Thus, the Industrial Revolution changed the American class structure, turning skilled tradesmen into the working class, who found it very difficult to escape factory life.

As more and more workers united to improve their situation, two types of labor unions emerged. Craft unions were made up of workers who were skilled in a specific trade. Many craft unions were organized in the 1790s, such as the Philadelphia shoemakers in 1792, the Boston carpenters in 1793, and the New York printers in 1794 (Estey, 1976).

Beginning in 1827, laborers who worked in the same industry, regardless of their specific job, formed industrial unions, such as the United Steel Workers and the Teamsters. The 1837 depression nearly wiped out these unions, but they were reborn shortly before the Civil War and became strong enough to survive recessions.

Five major labor organizations emerged between 1866 and 1936. The National Labor Union was organized in 1866. Though it became a political party and collapsed within six years, it did successfully bring together into a national federation both craft unions and reform groups. The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor, founded in 1869, sought to unite all workers, both skilled and unskilled; but in 1886, when its membership had reached more than 700,000, it split into two groups. The revolutionary socialist group wanted the government to take over production; the traditional group wanted to remain focused on the economic well-being of its members. This second group merged with a group of individual craft unions in 1886 to become the American Federation of Labor (AFL). This was the beginning of today's modern union structure. The AFL's first president, Samuel Gompers, kept the improvement of wages, hours, and working conditions as the objectives of the union (Boone and Kurtz, 1999). AFL membership grew rapidly until the 1920s, when there were few skilled craft workers yet to be organized. By that time, three-fourths of the organized workers in the United States were members of the AFL (Boone and Kurtz, 1999).

In 1905, an organization called the Industrial Workers of the World was established. Though it was short-lived, this union introduced the sitdown strike and mass picketing.

In the early 1920s, workers in the steel, aluminum, auto, and rubber industries formed many individual industrial unions (groups of employees working in the same industry, yet not using the same skills). These unions did not agree with the craft union concept (grouping workers with the same specific skill), which was the organizational structure of the AFL. Therefore, in 1936, they split with the AFL and became a new group of affiliated unions called the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Organizing complete industries instead of individual crafts proved a successful way to deal with mass-production industries, and the CIO's membership soon grew to nearly that of the AFL.

Growth

Even with so much union organization activity going on, there were less than 1 million union members in the United States in 1900. Membership in labor unions grew slowly from 1920 to 1935, but the modern labor movement was born in the decade between 1933 and 1944. The combination of New Deal labor legislation, competition between the AFL and the CIO, and World War II quadrupled union membership, which by 1937 was more than 5 million. Union membership continued to increase from 1943 through 1956, reaching more than 15 million in 1950. One-fourth of the labor force were union members at that time, when the government officially sanctioned unions.

In 1955, the AFL and CIO settled their differences and merged into one extremely large labor organization. All the major national unions in the United States today except the National Education Association are affiliated with the AFL-CIO.

Union membership declined from 1956 to 1961, when white-collar workers outnumbered blue-collar workers for the first time, women were entering the work force in large numbers, and the economy was changing from a production to a service industry orientation. In 1961, growth resumed; from 1964 to 1974, especially during the time of the Vietnam War, unions gained 4 million members, largely public-sector employees and professionals.

Decline

The percentage of U.S. workers who are union members has fallen since the 1980s. This decline is largely due to the decrease in the number of blue-collar jobs, labor legislation protecting workers, better employee-management relationships, and the shift from a manufacturing to a service economy (bringing into the work force more women and young people, who are not easily organized). During the 1990s, despite the decline in the percent of workers who were unionized, nearly 17 million U.S. workers, between one-eighth and one-sixth of the labor force, belonged to labor unions. The six largest labor unions and their percentage of the total U.S. union membership are listed in Figure 1.

Organization

Labor unions are organized on several different levels. Local unions represent members in a specific geographic area, such as a city, state, or region. These local unions make up the base of a national union, which unites all its affiliated local unions under one constitution. The Teamsters and the United Steel Workers of America are two examples of large national unions, each uniting many local unions. The decision-making process of national unions is decentralized, which allows decisions to be made at the local level, by those best qualified to make them. Thus, the national union recognizes the autonomy of each local union yet unites them under one set of rules and grants each local union its charter. Some unions have an international level. These international unions have members both inside and outside the United States, such as in Canada. Their organization is similar to national unions, with local unions being the base of the union structure. The primary emphasis of national unions is economic. Their main function is collective bar gaining, though much of the negotiation process occurs at the local union level. Bargaining labor management contracts, which deal with wages, hours, and working conditions, and settling lab or-management disputes are the primary roles of the local and national union leadership (See Collective Bargaining).

The top level of labor union organization is the federation, such as the AFL-CIO. Such a federation is made up of many national and/or international unions. The purpose of the federation level is to coordinate its affiliated unions, settle disputes between them, and serve as the political representative of the union members.

Membership Policies

Various employment policies have been used in business and industry to determine union membership. The closed-shop policy, which was outlawed by the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, forced workers to join the union in order to be hired at a company and to remain a union member in order to continue employment. The union-shop policy requires all current employees of a company to join the union when it is certified as their bargaining agent (voted in by the majority of the workers). New employees must also join the union under the union-shop policy. However, the Taft-Hartley Act allows individual states to outlaw the union-shop policy. Most union contracts negotiated in the 1990s operate under the union-shop policy. The agency-shop policy allows both union and nonunion workers to be employed by an organization, but the nonunion employees must pay a union fee equal to union dues. This policy requires nonunion workers to pay their "fair share" of the expenses of the union's representing them in negotiations, but none of the cost of the union's political activities. The open-shop policy allows voluntary union membership or nonmembership for all workers. It does not require nonunion workers to pay any union dues or fees.

Labor Legislation

Both labor unions and management have been affected by federal legislation since 1932, when the Norris-LaGuardia Act was passed. This law protects union activities such as strikes and picketing by making it difficult for management to obtain injunctions against them. In 1935, the Wagner Act (also known as the National Labor Relations Act) made collective bargaining legal and forced employers to negotiate with union officials. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) was established by this act. The board oversees union elections and guards against unfair labor practices. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set a maximum of 40 hours for a basic workweek, outlawed child labor, and set a minimum wage. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1945 limited the power of unions by prohibiting unions from such activities as coercing employees to join unions, charging excessive fees, refusing to bargain collectively with an employer, and using union dues for political contributions. The Taft-Hartley Act was amended in 1959 by the Landrum-Griffin Act, which requires a union to have a constitution and bylaws, secret-ballot elections of officers, and a financial reporting procedure. Management procedures are also regulated by legislation, such as the Plant-Closing Notification Act of 1988, which requires employers to give workers a sixty-day warning of mass layoffs or plant closings.

Outlook

Labor unions were born out of necessity, to protect the health and well-being of American workers. Through the years, they have provided a unified voice for workers and obtained fair treatment of them in the workplace. During the twentieth century, however, laws have been passed that guarantee employees many of the rights that once had to be negotiated in labor management contracts. An increase in employee-management teamwork and communication has also reduced the need for workers to be represented by labor unions. Thus, labor unions no longer play the vital role they once did in American labor-management relations.

(See also: Collective Bargaining)

Bibliography

Boone, Louis E., and Kurtz, David L. (1999). Contemporary Business. Fort Worth, TX: Dryden Press.

Estey, Marten. (1976). The Unions. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Masters, Marick F. (1997). Unions at the Crossroads. West-port, CT: Quorum Books.

Wray, Ralph D., Luft, Roger L., and Highland, Patrick J. (1996). Fundamentals of Human Relations. Cincinnati, OH: South-Western Educational Publishing.

[Article by: PAULA LUFT]

Labor unions are the major organizations pursuing the collective interests of workers in the areas of health and safety, especially in the mining, manufacturing, construction, health care, and transportation sectors. Beyond assisting members with their day-to-day needs through contract negotiation and administration, unions actively work for legislative and regulatory remedies for health and safety problems. Union influence extends far beyond the workplaces of the 14 percent of workers in the United States who are unionized. Unions bargain for specific improvements in working conditions; representation and systems for improving conditions, such as health and safety committees; and procedures for members to submit specific complaints to abate hazards. They also provide technical assistance, information, and training to members facing chemical or safety dangers. Additionally, traditional bargaining for hours of work, medical benefits, disability insurance, and job security positively impact the health status of workers.

Unions work politically for the passage and implementation of laws, standards, and regulations designed to improve working conditions and worker health. Early twentieth-century legislation included wage and hour laws, limitations on child labor and industrial home work, workers' compensation, and state labor departments to inspect workplaces for hazards. The labor movement united with public health and public interest groups to pass the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 and the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, greatly expanding the federal presence in these areas. Unions have been the critical force behind most major Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards, providing evidence in the rulemaking record and initiating litigation to force rulemaking and to defend rules against industry opposition. Exposure standards spearheaded by the union movement include those for lead, formaldehyde, benzene, asbestos, blood-borne pathogens, and coke-oven emissions.

In the second half of the twentieth century, union and worker activity in occupational health greatly expanded. The environmental movement of the 1960s led workers to be concerned about the levels of chemical exposure in the workplace. The black lung movement in the coal mines and the white lung movement based in cotton mills spurred the enforcement of exposure limits to chemicals and dusts. The emerging epidemic of asbestos-caused cancer and lung disease defined an approach exposure control and compensation of victims, including those in the general community. Limited rights of workers under the 1970 OSHA law were expanded through collective bargaining, in part due to public recognition of work- ers' rights to be fully informed of hazards and to fully participate in their abatement. Unions campaigned for and then implemented information rules, such as chemical hazard communication and community right-to-know, to facilitate the control of chemicals.

Unions also defended research institutions such as the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), bargained for joint research programs with employers, and participated in studies that identified many previously unknown chemical hazards. Most recently, unions helped expose underreporting of musculoskeletal disorders, which spurred ergonomics programs and greatly extended the reach of the health and safety paradigm to light industry and the white– collar and service sectors. The expanding health care sector was itself recognized as a high-risk employer, particularly in the areas of infectious disease, chemical exposure, and ergonomic problems. The early twenty-first-century climate of corporate downsizing and off-shore production will challenge union-based and public occupational health and safety institutions.

(SEE ALSO: Asbestos; Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Cumulative Trauma; Mining; National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; Occupational Disease; Occupational Lung Disease; Occupational Safety and Health; Occupational Safety and Health Administration)

— FRANKLIN E. MIRER

An association, combination, or organization of employees who band together to secure favorable wages, improved working conditions, and better work hours, and to resolve grievances against employers.

The history of labor unions in the United States has much to do with changes in technology and the development of capitalism. Though labor unions can be compared to European merchant and craft guilds of the Middle Ages, they arose with the factory system and industrial revolution of the nineteenth century.

The first efforts to organize employees were met with fierce resistance by employers. The U.S. legal system played a part in this resistance. In Commonwealth v. Pullis (Phila. Mayor's Ct. 1806), generally known as the Philadelphia Cordwainers' case, boot makers and shoemakers of Philadelphia were indicted as a combination conspiring to raise their wages. The prosecution argued that the common-law doctrine of criminal conspiracy applied. The jury agreed that the union was illegal, and the defendants were fined. From this case came the labor conspiracy doctrine, which held that collective as opposed to individual bargaining would interfere with the natural operation of the marketplace, raise wages to artificially high levels, and destroy competition. This early resistance to unions led to an adversarial relationship between unions and employers.

Between 1806 and 1842, the labor conspiracy doctrine was applied in a handful of cases. Then, during the 1840s, U.S. courts began to question the doctrine. The most important case in this regard was Commonwealth v. Hunt, 45 Mass. (4 Met.) 11, 38 Am. Dec. 346 (Mass. 1842), in which Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw set aside an indictment of members of the boot makers union for conspiracy. Shaw agreed with employers that competition was vital to the economy, but concluded that unions were one way of stimulating competition. As long as the methods used by unions were legal, unions were free to seek concessions from employers. By the end of the nineteenth century, courts generally held thatstrikes for higher wages or shorter workdays were legal.

Despite the decline of the labor conspiracy theory, unions faced other legal challenges to their existence. The labor injunction and prosecution underantitrust laws became powerful weapons for employers involved in labor disputes. In an 1896 case, Vegelahn v. Guntner, 167 Mass. 92, 44 N.E. 1077, the highest court in Massachusetts upheld an injunction forbidding peaceful picketing outside the employer's premises.

The first national labor federation to remain active for more than a few years was the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor. It was established in 1869 and had set as goals the eight-hour workday, equal pay for equal work, and the abolition of child labor. The Knights of Labor grew to 700,000 members by 1886, but went into decline that year with a series of failed strikes. By 1900 it had disappeared.

Labor unions nevertheless gained strength in 1886 with the formation of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Composed of twenty-five national trade unions and numbering over 316,000 members, the AFL was a loose confederation of autonomous unions, each with exclusive rights to deal with the workers and employers in its own field. The AFL concentrated on pursuing achievable goals such as higher wages and shorter hours, renouncing identification with any political party or movement. Members were encouraged to support politicians who were friendly to labor, whatever their party affiliation.

Following the passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890 (15 U.S.C.A. § 1 et seq.), prohibiting combinations in restraint of interstate trade, courts used its provisions to punish and enjoin labor practices considered wrongful. In the Danbury Hatters case (Loewe v. Lawlor, 208 U.S. 274, 28 S. Ct. 301, 52 L. Ed. 488 [1908]), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the application of the act to an appeal in a labor publication for a general boycott of named nonunion employers. In 1911, in Gompers v. Buck's Stove & Range Co., 221 U.S. 418, 31 S. Ct. 492, 55 L. Ed. 797, the Supreme Court upheld an injunction against a union that had placed the name of the employer on the AFL "We Don't Patronize" list, which was a call for a boycott of the employer.

Opposition to labor unions was particularly intense during the late nineteenth century. Several unsuccessful strikes in the 1890s demonstrated the power of companies to crush unions. In 1892 steelworkers struck against the Carnegie Steel Company's Homestead, Pennsylvania, plant. The company hired private guards to protect the plant, but violence broke out. The strike failed, and most of the workers quit the union and returned to work. In 1894 members of the American Railway Union struck the Pullman Palace Car Company, which made railroad cars. The federal government sent in troops to end the strike.

Despite these setbacks unions gradually increased their political power at the federal level. In 1914 Congress enacted the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, sections 6 (15 U.S.C.A. § 7) and 20 (29 U.S.C.A. § 52), declaring that human labor was not to be considered an article of commerce and that the existence of unions was not to be considered a violation of antitrust laws. In addition, the act prohibited federal courts from issuing injunctions in labor disputes except to prevent irreparable injury to property. This prohibition was absolute when peaceful picketing and boycotts were involved.

Employers had better success fighting unions using the so-called yellow-dog contract. This agreement required a prospective employee to state that she or he was not a member of a union and would not become one. Though some states enacted laws prohibiting employers from requiring employees to sign this type of contract, the U.S. Supreme Court declared such statutes unconstitutional as an infringement of freedom of contract (Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U.S. 1, 35 S. Ct. 240, 59 L. Ed. 441 [1915]).

By 1920 trade unions had over 5 million members. During the 1920s, however, the trade union movement suffered a decline, precipitated in part by a severe economic depression in 1921-22. Unemployment rose, and competition for jobs became intense. By 1929 union membership had dropped to 3.5 million.

The Great Depression of the 1930s caused more unemployment and a further decline in union membership. Unions responded with numerous strikes, but few were successful. Despite these reverses the legal position of unions was enhanced during the 1930s. In 1932 Congress passed the Norris-LaGuardia Act (29 U.S.C.A. § 101 et seq.), which declared yellow-dog contracts contrary to public policy and stringently limited the power of federal courts to issue injunctions in labor disputes. In cases in which an injunction might still be issued, the act imposed strict procedural limitations and safeguards, to prevent past abuses by the courts. The Norris-LaGuardia Act effectively ended "government by injunction" and has remained a basic law in labor disputes.

During the 1930s the AFL itself was in turmoil over the goals and aspirations of the labor movement. The trade unions that dominated the AFL were composed of skilled workers who opposed organizing the unskilled or semiskilled workers on the manufacturing production line. Several unions rebelled at this refusal to organize and formed the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO). The CIO aggressively organized millions of workers who labored in automobile, steel, and rubber plants. In 1938, unhappy with this effort, the AFL expelled the unions that formed the CIO. The CIO then formed its own organization, changed its name to Congress of Industrial Organizations, and elected John L. Lewis, of the United Mine Workers, as its first president.

U.S. labor relations were dramatically altered in 1935 with the passage by Congress of the National Labor Relations Act, also known as the Wagner Act (29 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq.). For the first time, labor unions were given legal rights and powers under federal law. The act guaranteed the right ofcollective bargaining, free from employer domination or influence. It made it an unfair labor practice for an employer to interfere with employees in the exercise of their right to collectively bargain, to interfere with or influence unions, to discriminate in hiring or firing because of an employee's union membership, to discriminate against an employee who avails herself or himself of legal rights, or to refuse to bargain collectively.

The Wagner Act also established the National Labor Relations Board, with power to investigate employees' complaints and to issue cease and desist orders. If an employer defied such an order, the board could ask a federal court of appeals for an enforcement order, or the employer could ask the court to review the cease and desist order. The board could conduct elections to determine which union should represent the employees in a bargaining unit and certify the union as their agent, and it could designate the bargaining unit.

The heart of the Wagner Act was section 7 (29 U.S.C.A. § 157), which stated the public policy that workers have the right to engage in self-organization, in collective bargaining, and in concerted activities in support of self-organization and collective bargaining. Armed with these rights, unions grew in membership and strength during the late 1930s and through World War II.

A number of states reacted negatively to these legal changes by enacting laws that sought to restrict and lessen the power of unions. An antiunion backlash developed after World War II, when strikes against the automobile industry and other large corporations reached record numbers. This reaction culminated in the passage of the Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947, also known as the Taft-Hartley Act (29 U.S.C.A. § 141 et seq.). The Taft-Hartley Act amended section 7 of the Wagner Act, affirming the rights formulated in 1935 but providing that workers shall have the right to refrain from any of the listed activities. Whereas the Wagner Act listed only employer unfair labor practices, Taft-Hartley added union unfair labor practices. The act created the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, which provides a method for dealing with strikes that create a national emergency. It also banned the closed shop, which requires an employer to hire only union members and to discharge any employee who drops union membership. Taft-Hartley effectively replaced the Wagner Act as the basic federal statute regulating labor relations.

In 1955 the AFL and CIO merged into a single organization, the AFL-CIO. The staunchly anti-Communist AFL agreed to the merger only after the CIO had purged its organization of Communists and supporters of Communist ideals. George Meany was appointed the first president of the new organization.

In 1959 Congress enacted the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, also known as the Landrum-Griffin Act (29 U.S.C.A. § 401 et seq.). Title VII of the act contains many amendments to the Taft-Hartley Act, of which two are especially important. First, Landrum-Griffin made peaceful picketing of organizational or recognitional objectives illegal under certain circumstances. Second, it closed loopholes in the provisions of Taft-Hartley that forbadesecondary boycotts.

Other sections of Landrum-Griffin provided for a bill of rights for union members, financial disclosure requirements for unions and their officers, and safeguards in union elections. All of these matters dealt with internal union practices, strongly suggesting that union corruption had become a problem. In fact, a 1957 congressional investigation of the Teamsters Union had uncovered widespread corruption and had much to do with these statutory provisions.

Labor unions continued to thrive in the 1960s, as a robust economy relied on a large manufacturing industry to maintain growth. Although no comprehensive union legislation was enacted during the decade, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended by the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 (42 U.S.C.A. § 2000a et seq.), made an important contribution to national labor policy. The act declared it an unfair labor practice for an employer or union to discriminate against a person by reason of race, religion, color, sex, or national origin. Administration of this provision is vested in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Under the Civil Rights Act, if the EEOC is unable to achieve voluntary compliance, the person alleging discrimination is authorized to bring a civil action in federal district court. The 1972 amendment gave the EEOC the right to bring such an action. The effect of the law has been to desegregate many trade unions that maintained an all-white membership policy.

The union movement considerably improved working conditions for migrant workers in the late 1960s and the 1970s. The United Farm Workers, under the leadership of Cesar Chavez, led successful boycotts and strikes against California growers, most notably against the wine-grape growers.

Many unions suffered, however, with an economic downturn in the 1970s and 1980s, and with the decline of good-paying manufacturing jobs. Automation of industrial processes reduced the number of workers required on assembly lines. In addition, many U.S. companies moved either to states that did not have a strong union background or to developing countries where labor costs were significantly lower. Union members became more concerned about job security than about higher wages, particularly in the manufacturing industry, agreeing to salary and benefit givebacks. In return, unions sought greater labor-management cooperation and a larger voice in the allocation of jobs and in the work environment.

Union membership has also declined in response to a shift from blue-collar manufacturing jobs to white-collar service and technology jobs. By 1995 just 14.9 percent of the U.S. workforce claimed union membership, compared with a high of 34.7 percent in 1954.

See: Child Labor Laws; Clayton Act; Craft Union; Employment Law; Labor Law; Right-to-Work Laws.

An organization of workers formed to promote collective bargaining with employers over wages, hours, fringe benefits, job security, and working conditions.