1. Section 4 The Labor Movement
Chapter 20
Section 4
The Labor Movement

2. Workers Organize Key ? – Why did workers organize?
Poor working conditions: hour days; no sick days; unsafe and unhealthy working conditions; low pay; dull, repetitive jobs.
Business owners ran factory cheaply.
Entire families had to work to get by.
Discontented workers formed labor unions –
Groups of workers that negotiated with business owners to obtain better wages and working conditions.

3. Early Unions
Knights of Labor – formed after the Civil War; allowed women & African Americans to join.
1873 – Depression – workers took pay cuts & 1/5th lost jobs.
Railroad Strike of 1877; stopped running the trains due to a 10% pay cut.
– strike against railroad – won strike.
Hundreds of thousands of workers joined the union.

4. Racism Many unions excluded African Americans.
Strikers were replaced by minorities who would work for less money.

5. The Struggle Between Business and Labor
Key? - How did business leaders react to workers’ demands?
Business leaders blamed the labor movement on socialism –a social system in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government.
Anarchists – the abolition of government.

6. Unions
Haymarket Affair – McCormick Harvester Company locked out strikers and hired strike breakers.
Protest at Haymarket Square. – several people wounded and died.
Samuel Gompers – founded the American Federation of Labor. (AFL)used, negotiations, strikes and boycotts to achieve its aims.
Homestead Strike
Pullman Strike –Eugene V. Debs – Grover Cleveland ended the strike.