American Labour Movement Essays - Labor Relations, Business

American Labour Movement Essays - Labor Relations, Business American Labour Movement Tapas K Chakraborty ACWA Role Impact of Organised Labour in American Politics Introduction Th is write-up is an attempt to briefly explain the role impact of American labour movement in the American politics. Efforts are made to throw light on such aspects as emergence of trade union movement, its place in the socio-political structure of America, the hard days, good days as well as bad days of American trade union movement. Issues of labour immigration, globalisation, and inequality have been put in places as required. History Development of American Labour Movement During later part of the 17 th century, America witnessed the beginning of guild led trade union movements by workers from carpentry, printing , cobbling, and other professions. Workers also played a significant role in the independence struggle. England - born industrial revolution had started to spread in America, and with this came in the news of miserable working conditions of British factory workers. During the American civil war, factory system of economy flourished but gruelling income-inequality and grinding poverty emerged as well. Workers became aware of exploitative tendency of employers and felt the need to form trade union-federations. Number of trade unions rapidly increased. Some of the front ranking federations, to name, are National Labour Union; 1866, Knights of Labour; 1869, The American Federation of Labour; 1886, and others. It won't be out of context to mention that a parallel trade union movement not by main stream federations, but by radical industrial workers became suc cessful in scrapping a wage-cut and number of weeks reduction decision by the employers. Their movement and achievement are also viewed as positive contribution to the American trade union movement. In 1935 Committee of Industrial Organisation (CIO) was established as a conglomerate of a number of American Federation of Labour Unions. The CIO under the able leadership made a big stride in American labour unionism and workers of large sector of American basic industries united under this umbrella organisation. Though AFL and CIO had their respective reservation s as regards direction of movement, there were common interest areas for them to work on, and ultimately in 1955 AFL and CIO merged into a bigger inclusive trade union federation. Since 1970s the number of American T rade U nions and their influences , have been steadily plummeting. The new anti-unionism regime came to power in 1980s and exacerbated the down swing. During the period 1975 to 1985 trade union membership dropped by 5 million. Manufacturing sector witnessed a sharp decline of 75% in the number of member-workers during the same period. From 1980s to 2009 organised American labour force in relation to total labour force declined from 17% to 12%. A number of factors are responsible for such decline , like employers' consistent effort to keep industries trade-union free, more and more workers losing faith in organised trade unions, and accepting low paid jobs, and most importantly, income disparity among trade union members and non-members leading to rise in production cost of goods manufactured by industries with trade union presence, and thereby losing out to competitors , and resulting in lay-off of workers in s uch industries. Significance as a Political Actor The American labour movement and workers in general witnessed both political unrest and economic uncertainty, during 1894 to 1915. Industrial revolution that started in Europe entered America, and industrialisation spread unchecked. Newer jobs were created along with newer problems. Three depressions within a span of 20years forced many plants to shut down resulting in unemployment. Industrial dispute was a common-place incident in management-worker relationship. But American labour movement had some significant impact on some major social issues of the 20 th century ; important among them are reasonable working hours and working conditions for the industrial workers, participation of women in the work-force, vacation of workers, and abolition of child-labour. Industrialisation initiated a shift in the social life of America from being agrarian to industrial. The industrial colonies got congested due to large-scale immigration in search of jobs . Living conditions of workers got worsened, and so their wor king conditions, marred by long and strictly monitored monotonous work. The American Federation of Labour (AFL) founded by Samuel