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Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers was an English-born American cigar maker who became a labor union leader and a important figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL). -
Eugene V. Debs
Eugene Victor Debs was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the Worldand several times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States. -
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the making of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. (Helped create Anarchist Party) -
AFL
The American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded officially on December 8th 1886 by craft unions not part of the Knights of Labor. The AFL adopted a philosophy of "business unionism" that emphasized unions' contribution to businesses' profits and national economic growth. -
Collective Bargaining
Collective bargainingis a bunch of negotiations made between employers and a group of employees aimed at reaching agreements that regulate working conditions. The agreements reached usually confirm wage scales, working hours, health and safety, overtime, and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs. -
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Labor Movement
The labor movement was the development of the class of the working people, to campaign for better working conditions and treatment from their employers and the government, and the effort to get certain laws and acts passed. -
International Ladies Garment Workers Union
The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union was once one of the largest labor unions in the United States, it was one of the first unions to have mostly female members, and it was a key component in the labor history of the 1920s and 1930s -
Mother Jones
Mary Harris "Mother" Jones was a schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a important labor and community organizer. She then helped coordinate major strikes and cofounded the Industrial Workers of the World. In 1902 she was called the most dangerous woman in America for her success in organizing mine workers and their families against the mine owners. -
International Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies) is an international union. The IWW's goal was to promote worker power in the revolutionary struggle to overthrow the employing class. -
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York. It was also the second deadliest disaster in New York City – after the burning of the General Slocum. Until the destruction of the World Trade Center 90 years later. -
Department Of Labor
The United States Department of Labor is a Cabinet department of the federal government of the United States responsible for occupational safety, wage and hour standards, unemployment insurance benefits, re-employment services, and some economic statistics. -
Ludlow Massacre
The Ludlow Massacre was an attack by the Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel & Iron Company camp guards on a tent colony of coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado. -
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WW1
World War I was a global war centred in Europe. It involved all the world's great powers, which were assembled in two opposing alliances: The Allies (The United Kingdom, France and Russia) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy). The Allies eventually ended up winning. -
Clayton Act
The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 was made in the US to add further substance to the U.S. antitrust law regime by seeking to prevent anticompetitive practices such as monopolies, cartels, and trusts to help out consumers. -
Adamson Act
The Adamson Act was a United States federal law passed in 1916 that established an eight-hour workday, with additional pay for overtime work, for interstate railroad workers.
History Matters -
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Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. It was the longest, most widespread, and deepest depression of the 20th century. -
Davis-Bacon Act
The Davis–Bacon Act of 1931 is a United States federal law that establishes the requirement for paying the local prevailing wages on public works projects. It applies to contractors and subcontractors working on funds above $2,000. -
Norris-LaGuardia Act
It was a legislative act passed, that removed certain legal and judicial barriers against the activities of organized labour in the United States. The act declared that the members of labor unions should have full freedom of association undisturbed by their employers. -
Yellow-Dog Contract
A yellow-dog contract is an agreement between an employer and an employee agree to where as a condition of employment, the employee will not become a member of a labor union -
Open Shop
An open shop is a place of employment at which one is not required to join or financially support a union as a condition of hiring or continued employment. Open shop is also known as a merit shop. -
CIO
The Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. -
Wagner Act
The Wagner Act is a 1935 United States federal law that protects the rights of employees in the private sector to discuss organizing and workplace issues with coworkers, collective bargaining, strikes and other forms of civil activity in support of their demands. -
Closed Shop
A closed shop is an agreement made by an employer to only hire members of a union and employees must remain members of the union at all times in order to remain employed. -
Fair Labor Standards Act
The FLSA introduced a maximum 44-hour seven-day workweek, established a national minimum wage, guaranteed pay that is regular pay plus half for overtime in certain jobs, and prohibited most employment of minors in oppressive child labor. -
Minimum Wage
A minimum wage is the lowest hourly, daily or monthly pay that employers may legally pay to workers. The classic exposition of the minimum wage's shortcomings in reducing poverty was provided by George Stigler in 1949. -
Contract
A contract is an agreement made by two or more parties, each of whom have agreed upon the doing or not doing of something.
