Union history
United States
The first trader’s union in the United States was the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers of Philadelphia, founded in 1794. The union originated from the contention between the journeymen shoemakers and their masters in the last decade of the 18th century. The competition between the master craftsman led to the underselling of shoes, which affected the wages of journeyman shoemakers. While the masters only cared about their profits, not the journeymen’s wages, the journeymen society grew to protect their own benefits as the divergence between masters and journeymen exaggerated by 1792.
In 1794 these societies united into a large union, the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers of Philadelphia, which organized to protect wages, but more significantly to protect journeymen workers from “scab labor”, workers who agreed to work for lower wages. These societies proved to be effective, as workers received a wage increase in 1798, before a failed 1799 strike led to a general reduction. Soon, masters began to take orders for boots and shoes for the South. However, once orders flowed in, journeymen laid down their tools, demanding a wage increase for “export” products. This strike not only halted production, but ultimately forced masters to default on a number of orders. However, the journeymen finally agreed to a reduction in piece work of the export orders, because they believed that their compromise could win for more work and their wage could recover when their masters won the new market. Unfortunately, their concessions did not pay off.
In 1805, when the journeymen demanded higher rates for exported work and customized boots as the export work became regular, the masters immediately declined. This disagreement resulted in a long strike of the journeymen that lasted nearly seven weeks. Master shoemakers took the matter to court, and on November 1, 1805, a Philadelphia grand jury indicted eight journeymen on charges of combination and criminal conspiracy to increase wages, bringing the strike to an abrupt end.
The final trial to the union began on March 2, 1806. The judge extolled the ideal of laissez-faire market and its ability to determine both price and wage. The journeymen societies were denounced illegal, and the leaders were found guilty by the jury on the next day.
This trial in 1806, later known as The Philadelphia Cordwainers Trial, or Conspiracy Trial, was the first of many court rulings against labor in Philadelphia in the first two decades of the nineteenth-century. This decision held until the 1842 Massachusetts Supreme Court trial of Commonwealth vs. Hunt permitted labor unions to operate lawfully.
Great Britain
The first legal trade union in the world was the society of engineers founded in 1826. Exploited in the country which led the Industrial Revolution, labors in the Britain had formed many mutual aid societies and even collective bargaining called “combination” to fight for better wages, shorter working hours, and better working conditions. However, in 1799 and 1800 the Great Britain passed a set of acts called the Combination Acts forbidding the formation of workers' collective organizations amid fears of political unrest following the French Revolution. Under these acts, the organization of a strike that left contracted work unfinished could be prosecuted for breach of contract, or even conspiracy. Even attending the meetings of workers that discuss any combination in the purpose of collective bargaining could result in imprisonment!
The resistance against the Combination Acts became more and more ferocious in the early 19th century. Workers managed to find alternating ways of fighting against the capital, including forming secret unions and destroying new machines. Another effective way to fight against the act was to publicize the dangerous working conditions of workers, which attracted the attention and aroused the sympathy of the mass. Some successful lobby even convinced part of the parliament (mostly the Liberals) that the Combination Acts were counterproductive. These conditions for actions of the Combination Acts resulted in the repeal of the Acts in 1824.
The 1824 law did more than repeal the statutes prohibiting collective bargaining: It also abolished the common law rule against conspiracies as applied to unions—perhaps its most important feature. It freed unions as well from prosecution if they called a strike that prevented the completion of work under contract. The law of 1824 legalizing union activity unleashed a wave of union actions in Great Britain. Notably in Scotland, coal miners created a union embracing workers at many mines. This union was able to negotiate substantial wage increases, through strikes or the threat of strikes, in some cases boosting wages by as much as 80 percent. The owners responded by hiring “blacklegs”, or nonunion workers, but they aroused public opinion sufficiently that Parliament was inspired to revise the legislation of 1824. The revised law of 1825, also known as the Combination of Workmen Act, restored the application of the common law against conspiracies to unions and employers in some circumstances, but it left in place the right of the unions to negotiate with respect to wages and hours. In another word, this new Act severely restricted the actions of unions, including strikes, picketing, and other pressure tactics, only leaving them the right to discuss wages and working conditions, which became ineffective with the restriction of pressuring actions.
It was not until the London Builders’ Strike of 1859 when the situation changed. At the time, building trade workers were forced to work ten-hour a day, six days a week. Their pursuit of nine-hour working day or working half day on Saturday was generally not successful, with few exceptions like the strong Operative Society of Masons, whose members were generally able to finish work at 4 on Saturdays. In 1856, building workers in Manchester secured the right to finish work at 1 on Saturdays, and this inspired those in London to start a new campaign for shorter hours. The strike in London started on July 21, 1859, when the association of employers united to lock out all big firms in response to the workers’ strike at Trollope. Although more than 24000 workers were affected by the lock out, very few workers, including non-unionists, agreed to sign a document declaring their non-membership to any trade unions, even orally. They also sent representatives to the rest of the country in an attempt to stop the deliveries of building supplies to London. Many newspapers backed their strike, and other unions donated money to London builders to continue their strike pay. On February 7, 1860, the master builders finally withdrew their document of declaration of non-membership. Although the workers did not win a nine-hour working day immediately, this strike made workers aware of the effectiveness of (peaceful) strikes, and new, strong national union emerged from the organization of the strike.
With increased support of workers among the country, in 1871 the Trade Union Act gave legal status to the trade unions. In 1875 Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act further decriminalized peaceful picketing and striking by stating that a trade union could not be prosecuted for act which would be legal if conducted by an individual. This key moment in the Great Britain history marks that peaceful strikes become effectively legal in the UK ever since.
First International
Karl Marx did not “invent” class struggle, he observed it and theorized it. With his early articles which finalized into Das Capital later, Marx proposed the theory of surplus value, which successfully explained the struggle between workers and their employers and relevant phenomena, surpassing many other political economy theories at the time. For example, Marx explained why British workers opposed the introduction of new machinery into the textile industry during the Combination Acts era. Although new machinery reduces the workload for workers to produce each product, the piece work price will also drop because the work becomes less skillful with the machinery, causing the workers to either accept lower wage or longer working hours. In addition, the reduction of labor needed for producing the same quantity of products will cause either an expansion in the production scale which will ultimately lead to an economic crisis, or a nation-wide unemployment. The unemployed workers can also compete with the employed workers, which will eventually lower the wage of the whole working class.
Another observation by Karl Marx is that the capitalists rely on the workers, not in the other way. Machinery needs workers to operate; capital needs to be spent as wages of workers to reproduce. Thus, if the whole working class unites as a whole, even the union of employers cannot contend its strength. The theory justifies that collective actions, like strikes, picketing, and collective bargaining are the only ways that can help workers win over their employers. This ideal led to the formation of the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA, or the First International), which aimed at uniting all the groups based on working class and class struggle. It was founded in 1864 in a workmen's meeting held in St. Martin's Hall, London, and its first congress was held in 1866 in Geneva. At its peak, the IWA reported having 8 million members. Unfortunate, because of the disagreement in the ideology between different parts of the IWA, in 1872 it split in two parts, separately consisting statist and anarchist factions, and effectively dissolved in 1876. Although this attempt of forming an international working-class union failed eventually, the IWA spread Marxism throughout the Europe and laid the foundation for the Second International founded in 1899, which more directly carried the theory of socialism forward. Some section of the IWA even evolved into parties, for example the Portuguese section evolved into a socialism party in 1875.
