25.6.5: Organized Labor

Industrialization and Labor Organization

The rapid expansion of industrial society during the Industrial Revolution drew women, children, rural workers, and immigrants into the industrial work force in large numbers and in new roles. This pool of unskilled and semi-skilled labor spontaneously organized in fits and starts throughout the early phases of industrialization and would later be an important arena for the development of trade unions. Trade unions have sometimes been seen as successors to the guilds of medieval Europe, although the relationship between the two is disputed as the masters of the guilds employed workers (apprentices and journeymen) who were not allowed to organize. The concentration of labor in mills, factories, and mines facilitated the organization of workers to help advance the interests of working people. A union could demand better terms by withdrawing all labor and causing a consequent cessation of production. Employers had to decide between giving in to the union demands at a cost to themselves or suffering the cost of the lost production. Skilled workers were hard to replace and these were the first groups to successfully advance their conditions through this kind of bargaining.

Trade unions and collective bargaining were outlawed from no later than the middle of the 14th century when the Ordinance of Laborers was enacted in the Kingdom of England. As collective bargaining and early worker unions grew with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the government began to clamp down on what it saw as the danger of popular unrest at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1799, the Combination Act was passed, which banned trade unions and collective bargaining by British workers. Although the unions were subject to often severe repression until 1824, they were already widespread in some cities.

Workplace militancy manifested itself in many different ways. For example, Luddites were a group of English textile workers and self-employed weavers who in the 19th century destroyed weaving machinery as a form of protest. The group was protesting the use of machinery to get around standard labor practices, fearing that the years they had spent learning the craft would go to waste and unskilled machine operators would rob them of their livelihoods. One of the first mass work strikes emerged in 1820 in Scotland, an event known today as the Radical War. 60,000 workers went on a general strike. Their demands went far beyond labor regulations and included a general call for reforms. The strike was quickly crushed.

Early Trade Unions

By the 1810s, the first labor organizations to bring together workers of divergent occupations were formed. Possibly the first such union was the General Union of Trades, also known as the Philanthropic Society, founded in 1818 in Manchester. The latter name was to hide the organization’s real purpose in a time when trade unions were still illegal.

Under the pressure of both workers and the middle and upper class activists sympathetic of the workers’ repeal, the law banning unions was repealed in 1824. However, the Combinations of Workmen Act 1825 severely restricted their activity. It prohibited trade unions from attempting to collectively bargain for better terms and conditions at work and suppressed the right to strike. That did not stop the fledgling labor movements and unions began forming rapidly.

The first attempts at setting up a national general union were made in the 1820s and 1830s. The National Association for the Protection of Labor was established in 1830 by John Doherty, after an apparently unsuccessful attempt to create a similar national presence with the National Union of Cotton Spinners. The Association quickly enrolled approximately 150 unions, consisting mostly of textile workers, but also including mechanics, blacksmiths, and various others. Membership rose to between 10,000 and 20,000 individuals spread across the five counties of Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and Leicestershire within a year. To establish awareness and legitimacy, the union started the weekly Voice of the People publication, with the declared intention “to unite the productive classes of the community in one common bond of union.”

In England, the members of the Friendly Society of Agricultural laborers became popular heroes and 800,000 signatures were collected for their release. Their supporters organized a political march, one of the first successful marches in the UK, and all were pardoned on condition of good conduct in 1836.

In 1834, Welsh socialist Robert Owen established the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union. The organization attracted a range of socialists from Owenites to revolutionaries and played a part in the protests after the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ case. In 1833, six men from Tolpuddle in Dorset founded the Friendly Society of Agricultural Laborers to protest against the gradual lowering of agricultural wages. The Tolpuddle laborers refused to work for less than 10 shillings a week, although by this time wages had been reduced to seven shillings and would be further reduced to six. In 1834, James Frampton, a local landowner and magistrate, wrote to Home Secretary Lord Melbourne to complain about the union. As a result of obscure law that prohibited the swearing of secret oaths, six men were arrested, tried, found guilty, and transported to Australia. Owen’s union collapsed shortly afterwards.

Chartism

In the later 1830s and 1840s, trade unionism was overshadowed by political activity. Of particular importance was Chartism, a working-class movement for political reform in Britain that existed from 1838 to 1858. It took its name from the People’s Charter of 1838 and was a national protest movement, with particular strongholds of support in Northern England, the East Midlands, the Staffordshire Potteries, the Black Country, and the South Wales Valleys. Support for the movement was at its highest in 1839, 1842, and 1848, when petitions signed by millions of working people were presented to Parliament. The strategy used the scale of support demonstrated these petitions and the accompanying mass meetings to put pressure on politicians to concede manhood suffrage. Chartism thus relied on constitutional methods to secure its aims, although there were some who became involved in radical activities, notably in south Wales and Yorkshire. The government did not yield to any of the demands and suffrage had to wait another two decades. Chartism was popular among some trade unions, especially London’s tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, and masons. One reason was the fear of the influx of unskilled labor, especially in tailoring and shoe making. In Manchester and Glasgow, engineers were deeply involved in Chartist activities. Many trade unions were active in the general strike of 1842, which spread to 15 counties in England and Wales and eight in Scotland. Chartism taught techniques and political skills that inspired trade union leadership.

Chartists saw themselves fighting against political corruption and for democracy in an industrial society, but attracted support beyond the radical political groups for economic reasons, such as opposing wage cuts and unemployment.

Full Legalization

After the Chartist movement of 1848 fragmented, efforts were made to form a labor coalition. The Miners’ and Seamen’s United Association in the North-East operated 1851–1854 before it too collapsed because of outside hostility and internal disputes over goals. The leaders sought working-class solidarity as a long-term aim. More permanent trade unions followed from the 1850s. They were usually better resourced but often less radical. The London Trades Council was founded in 1860 and the Sheffield Outrages spurred the establishment of the Trades Union Congress in 1868. By this time, the existence and the demands of the trade unions were becoming accepted by liberal middle-class opinion. Further, in some trades, unions were led and controlled by skilled workers, which essentially excluded the interests of the unskilled labor. For example, in textiles and engineering, union activity from the 1850s to as late as the mid-20th century was largely in the hands of the skilled workers. They supported differentials in pay and status as opposed to the unskilled. They focused on control over machine production and were aided by competition among firms in the local labor market.

The legal status of trade unions in the United Kingdom was eventually established by a Royal Commission on Trade Unions in 1867, which agreed that the establishment of the organizations was to the advantage of both employers and employees. Unions were legalized with the adoption of the Trade Union Act 1871.

 

Exclusion of Women

Women were largely excluded from trade union formation, membership, and hierarchies until the late 20th century. When women did succeed in challenging male hegemony and made inroads into the representation of labor and combination, it was originally not working-class women but middle-class reformers such as the Women’s Protective and Provident League (WPPL), which sought to amiably discuss conditions with employers in the 1870s. It became the Women’s Trade Union League, members of which were largely upper-middle-class men and women interested in social reform, who wanted to educate women in trade unionism and fund the establishment of trade unions.  Militant socialists broke away from the WPPL and formed the Women’s Trade Union Association, but they had little impact. However, there were a few cases in the 19th century where women trade union members took initiative. For example, women played a central role in the 1875 West Yorkshire weavers’ strike.

Attributions

• Organized Labor
  • “Trade union.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_union. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Chartism.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartism. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Emma Paterson.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Paterson. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “History of trade unions in the United Kingdom.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_trade_unions_in_the_United_Kingdom. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Combination Act 1799.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combination_Act_1799. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Luddite.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Radical War.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_War. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Tolpuddle Martyrs.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolpuddle_Martyrs. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Combinations of Workmen Act 1825.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinations_of_Workmen_Act_1825. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Trade Union Act 1871.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_Union_Act_1871. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Industrial Revolution.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Meeting_of_the_trade_unionists_in_Copenhagen_Fields_April_21_1834_for_the_purpose_of_carrying_a_petition_to_the_King_for_a_remission_of_the_sentence_passed_on_the_Dorchester_labourers_1293402.jpg.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Meeting_of_the_trade_unionists_in_Copenhagen_Fields,_April_21,_1834,_for_the_purpose_of_carrying_a_petition_to_the_King_for_a_remission_of_the_sentence_passed_on_the_Dorchester_labourers_(1293402).jpg. Wikimedia Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
  • “1024px-William_Edward_Kilburn_-_View_of_the_Great_Chartist_Meeting_on_Kennington_Common_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Edward_Kilburn_-_View_of_the_Great_Chartist_Meeting_on_Kennington_Common_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg. Wikimedia Commons Public domain.