Labor union: an organization of workers formed for the purpose of advancing its members’ interests in respect to wages, benefits and working conditions.
That’s it. That’s the goal, according to the definition in the Merriam-Webster dictionary—to advance the wages, benefits and working conditions for workers. And it’s a goal which provides workers the motive to join, support and strengthen unions—to be a part of the successful change.
Not all unions may last, but their efforts do.
Eight-hour work days? Resolutions from the National Labor Union—which existed from 1866to 1873—set in motion a campaign for eight-hour work days, according to the Library of Congress.
Equal pay for women? An 1883 strike by Western Union Telegraph Company workers demanded “equal pay for equal work” for all employees. Though the strike was not successful, it was among the first public demands for women to receive fair pay, according to a 2015 article in Time Magazine. It would be about 80 more years before the Equal Pay Law came into effect.
Restrictions on child labor? In the 1830s, New England unions were among the first to stand against child labor, marking the start of a decades-long, union-led fight for child labor regulations, according to a blog by the AFL-CIO. Nearly a century later, in 1938, President Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act.
In 2022, a food safety sanitation service provider was found to have employed at least 102 children in hazardous occupations and overnight shifts in meat processing facilities, according to a February 2023 news release by the U.S. Department of Labor, and, in addition to taking steps to ensure future compliance with the law, the employer was fined $15,138—the maximum allowed—per minor-aged employee that was employed in violation of this important Fair Labor Standards Act.
“Let this case be a powerful reminder that all workers in the United States are entitled to the protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act and that an employer who violates wage laws will be held accountable,” said Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda in the news release.
In the United States, the union membership rate was 10.1 percent in 2022 and is the lowest on record, according to a news release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Of the 16 million wage and salary workers represented by a union, 1.7 million of those workers reported no union affiliation but still had jobs which are covered by a union contract, according to the same BLS report.
In the past decades, union membership has steadily declined while income inequality has steadily risen, according to a 2023 article by the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Microeconomics at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Less vacation time, reduced retirement preparation and declining intergenerational mobility are other factors noted in the article that mark the deterioration of middle-class stability. A labor union report released by the Treasury indicates that unions have the potential to raise middle-class wages, improve work environments and promote demographic equality.
Though unions have come and gone, their demands and efforts in the history of the United States have ensured improved workplaces for people today.
How different would workplaces look like today without the path unions have been paving for decades?
