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 and Slavic 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...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Selected article

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. 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...)

List of selected articles

November in Labor History

Significant dates in labour history.

November 01 - Malbone Street Wreck occurs on the first day of the BLE strike in 1918 in the U.S.; the first congress of the International Trade Union Confederation is held; the International Harvester strike of 1979–80 began
November 02 - Brian Behan died
November 03 - Nathan Feinsinger died; the U.S. Supreme Court decided Marquez v. Screen Actors Guild Inc.; Dennis McDermott was born
November 04 - Tomasz Arciszewski was born; James Green was born
November 05 - Eugene V. Debs was born; Nimrod Workman was born; Agustín Tosco died; the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike began
November 06 - Lloyd McBride died
November 08 - Ed Boyce was born; the 1892 New Orleans general strike began
November 09 - Congress of Industrial Organizations founded in the U.S.; Philip Murray died; Danny Greene was born; the Chicago Federation of Labor is founded
November 11 - Centralia massacre occurs in the U.S.
November 12 - Bituminous coal strike of 1974 begins in the U.S.; the Democratic Confederation of San Marino Workers is formed
November 13 - The UK firefighter dispute 2002–03 begins; Karen Silkwood died; the International Typographical Union begins publishing the Green Bay News-Chronicle during a strike
November 14 - The High Court of Australia issues its ruling in New South Wales v Commonwealth, upholding the validity of WorkChoices; Daniel J. Tobin died; the 2007 German national rail strike began
November 15 - Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions founded in the U.S.; Raymond McKay was born
November 16 - Jean Maitron died; the Jamaica Association of Local Government Officers is founded; Georges Marchais died
November 17 - Harold J. Gibbons died
November 18 - Chris Watson died
November 19 - William J. McCarthy died; Joe Hill is executed; the National Writers Union is formed
November 20 - Giles Hart was born; Richard Cordtz died
November 21 - William Green died; the Columbine Mine massacre occurred in 1927 in the U.S.
November 22 - David McDonald was born; Philip Murray is elected president of the CIO
November 23 - Harry Van Arsdale, Jr. died
November 24 - Charles Millard died
November 25 - George Mock died; the 2006 Progressive Enterprises dispute begins in New Zealand; Ted Saskin becomes executive director of the NHLPA in 2005
November 26 - The National Confederation of the Trade-Union Organizations of Ukraine is formed; Nimrod Workman died; Eliot V. Elliott died
November 27 - Donald Richberg died
November 28 - The U.S. Supreme Court decides Eastern Associated Coal Corp. v. United Mine Workers of America; André Morell died; William McFetridge was born
November 29 - John P. Frey died
November 30 - Mary Harris "Mother" Jones died; the General Federation of Trade Unions of Korea is formed

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

More Did you know (auto-generated)

... that Surinamese trade unionist Louis Doedel was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital by the governor-general for 43 years?
... that the day after returning to Atlanta following his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance in 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. joined picketers who were on strike against Scripto?
... that M. Farooqui, who had been expelled from his studies for having organized a strike in 1940, received his Delhi University degree in a special convocation in 1989?
... that Italian anarchists founded the first trade union for bakers in Argentina?
... that when journalist and trade unionist Nisn Pups was released from jail, the Communist Party of Lithuania instructed him to change his name?
... that up to 129,000 Canadian federal workers went on strike?

Related Portals

Selected image

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

Selected Quote

The workers have nothing to lose in this but their chains. They have the world to gain. Workers of the world unite!"

— Karl Marx.

Did you know

...that Norwegian-born merchant seaman Harry Lundeberg became a labor leader in the United States?
...that South African trade union legislation uses the term "conscientious objector" to refer to workers who do not want to join unions on the basis of personal beliefs?
... that Barack Obama nominated former United Mine Workers official Joe Main to serve as the head of Mine Safety and Health Administration?

More Did You Know?

Topics

Get involved

For editor resources and to collaborate with other editors on improving Wikipedia's Organized Labour-related articles, see Organized Labour WikiProject.