Franz Freund of the Grand Consolidated Union.
A labor union is an organization of workers who have joined together to achieve commons goals such as improving wages, benefits, and working conditions. The labor union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labor contracts with employers. A labor union might include only one trade or craft, or might combine several or all the workers in one company or industry.
All of the labor unions that Sobel mentions by name were located in the Confederation of North America. Although he does not explicitly say so, it can be assumed that the political influence of Kramer Associates prevented the formation of labor unions in the United States of Mexico in the 19th century. By 1920 Mexicano-dominated labor unions had appeared among Mexico's industrial workers. Pressure from these unions forced many Negro former slaves to leave their jobs after passage of the Manumission Act.
Grand Consolidated Union[]
At the time of the North American Rebellion of the 1770s, labor unions were illegal in Great Britain and in all British colonies. However, growing industrialization in the Northern Confederation in the early 19th century led to the employment of large numbers of manual workers, especially in the textile factories of New England, the iron foundries of Pennsylvania, and the railroad yards found throughout the N.C. Although they were better paid than their counterparts in Great Britain, they knew that their employers received most of the wealth their labor produced.
Sobel makes no mention of labor unions being legalized in the C.N.A., but it seems likely that the Conservative government of Martin van Buren would have done so in the N.C. in the 1820s. It was in 1826, after the Conservatives gained power, that a group of textile workers in Andersontown, Massachusetts attempted to form a trade union, but management was able to quickly suppress the union. Over the next ten years, other groups of workers organized unions. Some sought to include all workers in a single factory, while a few were established by skilled workers such as cordwainers, iron workers, and copper workers. The latter tended to be more successful than the former.
In 1835, a recent Austrian immigrant named Franz Freund attempted to organize all workers in the Grand Consolidated Union. His efforts coincided with the Panic of 1836 and the subsequent recession in the N.C., with the result that by 1839 the Consolidated had branches in every major city in the N.C. Freund sought to broaden the franchise to enable workers to gain control of the N.C. legislature, thereby allowing for the passage of legislation to regulate key industries and increase taxes on businesses. Freund formed a labor-based political party called the Laborers' Alliance which campaigned for local and confederation-level offices in 1839.
Suppression of the Grand Consolidated Union, October 1840.
The Laborers' Alliance and the Conservatives failed to unseat the Liberal Party in 1839, and Liberal leader Daniel Webster remained Governor of the Northern Confederation. Many Consolidated members then turned to violence, attacking elected officials and manufacturers that cut wages and laid off workers. The summer of 1840 saw a massive general strike throughout the N.C., and many cities were dominated by demonstrating workers. However, the assassination of Webster in September 1840 brought Henry Gilpin to power, who reacted by encouraging manufactureres to form private armies to attack the workers. Over the course of the fall and winter of 1840-41, over 40,000 people were killed as Gilpin and his business allies attacked Consolidated locals throughout the confederation. By March 1841 the Grand Consolidated Union and the Laborers' Alliance had been destroyed.
Postwar Unions[]
As industrialization spread through the rest of the C.N.A. after the Rocky Mountain War, a new wave of unionization appeared. The formation of the Consolidated Engineering Fraternity among railroad engineers in 1857 was followed by unions of switchmen, yardmen, and dispatchers. The steel industry saw the unionization of foremen, pourers, keymen, and mechanics; unions also formed among dockworkers. In 1874 Michael Harter of the Yardmen organized these unions into the Mechanics National Union, which worked for higher wages, better working conditions, and a share in the profits for supervisory personnel. The M.N.U. also favored high tarriffs and laws restricting immigration.
Striking workers from the C.L.F. in Michigan City.
Alongside the organizations of skilled workers there appeared a second type of union consisting of all workers in a single factory or industry. In 1861, William Richter brought together the tobacco workers in such an industrial union, and others followed. However, an attempt to organize the dockworkers in 1869 resulted in a clash with the M.N.U. This led to the formation of the Consolidated Laborers Federation, or C.L.F., in Philadelphia in 1870. In general, the C.L.F. worked for industry-wide bargaining, recognition of themselves as sole negotiating agents, and political action, as well as higher wages. Many C.L.F. locals campaigned on behalf of Conservative candidates in the 1873 Grand Council elections, but in the Northern Confederation the C.L.F. was a major supporter of the People's Coalition, and in 1878 Richter appeared at the P.C. convention in New York City to pledge the union's support.
A third union called the United Workers of the World was formed in New York by a German immigrant named Daniel Schwartz. Schwartz was influenced by the German economist Karl Marx, and he denied that higher wages and better working conditions would solve the basic problems posed by the capitalist system. He believed that the only way to distribute the value of industrial production fairly was for the workers to rise up, overthrow the industrialists, and run the factories themselves. The U.W.W. had some impact among industries that hired immigrants, and appealed strongly to the militant Patriotes of Quebec. By 1878 the U.W.W. had effectively merged with the Patriotes, and all but disappeared from the rest of the C.N.A.
Unlike the other unions, the M.N.U. initially remained aloof from national politics. That ended in the early 1880s, when John McDowell's measures to combat unemployment during the Great Depression won him the support of M.N.U. president Carl Bok, who offered McDowell "the support of our members throughout our land, and this definitely extends to the political campaign of 1883." McDowell's re-election in 1883 brought the M.N.U. a position of power in Burgoyne. However, with the victory of the People's Coalition in 1888, they were superceded by the C.L.F. People's Coalition leader Ezra Gallivan relied on C.L.F. President Whitney Popper to help formulate his Fifth Point program.
Sobel makes no mention of later North American labor history except to mention that Fred Harcourt of the Workers' Army became a leader of the League for Brotherhood in the early 1920s.
Sobel's sources for labor unions are Freund's memoirs, The Work of Three Decades (New York, 1869); William Reuss' The Origins of Unionism in the N.C. (New York, 1950); Wayne Carton's Brothers in Oppression: The U.W.W. and the Patriotes (Mexico City, 1950); Howard Hopkins' Saints in Overalls: The Consolidated Laborers Federation in North American History (London, 1955); and Max Finnigan's Organizing the Elite: A History of the M.N.U. (New York, 1968) and While the Iron Is Hot: The Early Years of the U.W.W. (London, 1970).
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