Labor history of the United States
The nature and power of organized labor in the United States is the outcome of historical tensions among counter-acting forces involving workplace rights, wages, working hours, political expression, labor laws, and other working conditions. Organized unions and their umbrella labor federations such as the AFL–CIO and citywide federations have competed, evolved, merged, and split against a backdrop of changing values and priorities, and periodic federal government intervention.
In most industrial nations, the labor movement sponsored its own political parties, with the US as a conspicuous exception. Both major American parties vied for union votes, with the Democratic Party usually much more successful. Labor unions became a central element of the New Deal coalition that dominated national politics from the 1930s into the mid-1960s during the Fifth Party System.[1] Liberal Republicans who supported unions in the Northeast lost power after 1964.[2][3] In recent decades, an enduring alliance was formed between labor unions and the Democrats, whereas the Republican Party has become hostile to unions and collective bargaining rights.[4]
The history of organized labor has been a specialty of scholars since the 1890s, and has produced a large amount of scholarly literature focused on the structure of organized unions. In the 1960s, as social history gained popularity, a new emphasis emerged on the history of workers, including unorganized workers, and with special regard to gender and race. This is called "the new labor history". Much scholarship has attempted to bring the social history perspectives into the study of organized labor.[5]
By most measures, the strength of organized labor has declined in the United States over recent decades.[6]
, 208 U.S. 274 (1908), 235 U.S. 522 (1915)
Loewe v. Lawlor
Anti-union violence in the United States
Communists in the United States labor movement (1937–1950)
Gilded Age
History of labor law in the United States
History of unfree labor in the United States
Immigration policies of American labor unions
International comparisons of labor unions
Labor federation competition in the United States
Labor unions in the United States
(many in the United States)
List of strikes
List of US strikes by size
List of worker deaths in United States labor disputes
Minimum wage in the United States
New Deal coalition
Union violence in the United States
United States labor law
Arnesen, Eric, ed. Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History (2006), 2064pp; 650 articles by experts;
excerpt and text search
Beik, Millie, ed. Labor Relations: Major Issues in American History (2005) over 100 annotated primary documents;
excerpt and text search
Boone, Graham. "Labor law highlights, 1915–2015." Monthly Labor Review (2015).
online
Boris, Eileen, Nelson Lichtenstein, and Thomas Paterson, eds. Major Problems in the History of American Workers: Documents and Essays (2002); primary and secondary sources.
Brenner, Aaron Brenner et al. eds. The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History (ME Sharpe, 2009) 789 pp.
Brody, David. In Labor's Cause: Main Themes on the History of the American Worker (1993);
excerpt and text search
Commons, John R. and Associates. History of Labour In The United States. [1896–1932] (4 vol. 1921–1957), highly detailed classic to 1920.
online
Derks, Scott. Working Americans, 1880-1999: The Working Class (2000)
Dubofsky, Melvyn. Industrialism and the American worker, 1865-1920 (1975);
online
Dubofsky, Melvyn. Labor Leaders in America (1987).
Dubofsky, Melvyn, and Foster Rhea Dulles. Labor in America: A History (8th ed. 2010); wide-ranging survey
Dubofsky, Melvyn, ed. American labor since the New Deal (1971);
online
Faue, Elizabeth. Rethinking the American Labor Movement (2017);
excerpt
Fink, Gary M., ed. Labor Unions (Greenwood Press, 1977)
online
Fink, Gary M., ed. Biographical Dictionary of American Labor (Greenwood Press, 1984).
Kessler-Harris, Alice. Out to work: A history of wage-earning women in the United States (Oxford UP, 1982, 2003); .
online
Minchin, Timothy J. Labor under Fire: A History of the AFL-CIO since 1979 (UNC Press, 2017).
Lichtenstein, Nelson (2003). State of the Union: A Century of American Labor.
Perlman, Selig. A theory of the labor movement (1928);
online
Taylor, Paul F. The ABC-CLIO Companion To The American Labor Movement (ABC-CLIO, 1993); an encyclopedia
Zieger, Robert H., and Gilbert J. Gall. American Workers, American Unions: The Twentieth Century (2002).