History Of Labor Movements Research Paper

Being a world-wide movement today, the labor movement has its roots in the first industrial revolution in Great Britain in the eighteenth century, when workers protested against developing industrial capitalism by destroying capitalists’ property (Luddism). In 1812, the death penalty was introduced in Great Britain for machine breaking, and some Luddites were executed. Despite this, Luddites were active in Great Britain in the 1830s. On the European continent, machine breaking continued until the early twentieth century, even among agricultural workers. Its value as a weapon for workers in the class struggle was limited, but it was an important part of the formation of workers as a class in opposition to capitalists and the bourgeoisie.

Skilled industrial workers in Great Britain, the foremost being spinners and weavers, developed a more successful strategy in the late 1700s by starting trade unions. Unions seemed to the establishment to be a great menace, especially when they were considered to be ‘contaminated’ by the ideas of the French revolution. In 1815, British workers were denied the right to organize trade unions, and the class struggles of this period culminated with the Peterloo massacre in 1819. But radical political ideas were defeated all over the world, and trade unions were once again tolerated in 1824. On the European continent French and Silesian weavers also went on strike for better conditions. All over Europe and the US, workers went on strike, sometimes spontaneously, sometimes well organized; sometimes workers could achieve a wage rise or avoid a wage decrease; sometimes they could achieve or defend their right to unionize, sometimes they failed. Sometimes, striking workers not only had to fight capitalists and the police but also strike breakers, so-called ‘black legs.’ On some occasions skilled male workers tried to prevent capitalists from hiring female workers.

The political dimension of workers’ early struggles was most obviously indicated in the French revolution in 1789, in which working-class women took part as well, but also in the European revolutions of 1830 and 1848. At the same time, socialist utopians like Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Robert Owen and Joseph Proudhon tried to formulate ideas of alternative societies. Even if the ideas of the Utopians were not transformed into political programs, their importance for future socialist—and feminist—thoughts should not be underestimated. The Working Men’s Association in England (1835) established a comprehensive political program as a reaction to the disappointments with the reform movement of 1830– 1832. In the People’s Charter (1838) secret elections, equal suffrage for men, and social reforms were demanded. A new Factory Act was introduced in 1850, which limited the industrial work time to ten hours a day and to six days a week, and the Corn Laws (grain duty) were repealed (1846). As a political program the People’s Charter was succeeded in 1848 by the Communist Manifesto, which had much more far-reaching demands and had a more international perspective than the People’s Charter. It argued for a take-over of the means of production by workers, and the slogan ‘Proletarians of all countries, unite!’ was to become a symbol for socialists for many years to come. Also, the consumers’ co-operative movement, founded in Rochdale in 1844, was of more lasting importance for the working class than the chartist movement.

Being disarmed and defeated in the European revolutions of 1848, the position of the working class and the labour movements was weakened. Political activists on the continent, of which many were intellectuals, had to flee to Great Britain and the US. London became a center for European radicalism. Not much was achieved until 1863, when workers and intellectuals from some Western European countries met in London to organize a trade union and a political co-operation between workers of ‘civilized’ countries and to prevent the recruitment of strike breakers from the continent to England. The International Working Men’s Association—the First International (FI)—was established in 1864; its most prominent members were Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Michael Bakunin. At its peak the FI had 25,000 members, but differences in opinions between trade unionists and politicians about the task of the organization weakened it, as did disputes between socialists and anarchists about ideology and strategies. After the crushing of the Paris Commune in 1871 the FI faded and was finally dissolved in 1876.

Before its dissolution, the FI encouraged workers of industrialized countries to intensify trade union activities and to start national socialist parties. Skilled male workers thus organized trade unions in most European countries and in the US in the 1870s and 1880s, keeping unskilled workers as well as women out of the unions. In Great Britain these unions cooperated within the Trades Unions Congress (TUC) (1868) in the US within the American Federation of Labor, AFL (1886) and in Germany in the ‘General- Kommission’ (1830) (after several forerunners). Semi- skilled and unskilled male and female workers were organized or organized themselves later and usually to a lesser degree, and in some countries female workers organized women’s trade unions; in Denmark the Women’s Trade Union remains in 2000 as one of the biggest trade unions in the country. In several cases traveling funds (which supported individual workers in finding work elsewhere) were the origins of trade unions for skilled workers, and many workers unionized in connection with a strike. In the beginning strikes were often started spontaneously but gradually were more carefully planned.

In Great Britain the ‘new unionism’ challenged the older unions of skilled workers and developed a more socialistic ideology, based on class identity rather than craft, that changed the British labour movement in the 1890s. In the US unskilled workers, in 1905, organized ‘One Big Union’, Industrial Workers of the World. Like the Confederation Generale du Travail in France (1902), it was based on syndicalistic ideas. In Germany and the Scandinavian countries, national trade unions began to co-operate within national federations in the 1890s. At the turn of the century, 20–22 percent of all workers in Denmark and the Netherlands were organized in local and national trade unions, 10–12 percent in Great Britain, Germany, and Sweden, 6–7 percent in France, Norway, and the US, 2 percent in Australia and Italy. Not all trade unions were inspired by socialist ideas of class struggle and anti-capitalism. Several were inspired by liberalism, especially in Great Britain where trade unions had an affiliation with the Whigs. Other unions had a religious, usually catholic, affiliation, especially in Germany, the Netherlands and the Latin countries of Europe. In the US there were ethnic unions among Europeans in the early days, and among Black and Mexicans in more recent times. All unions demanded the workers’ right to unionize, collective bargaining, minimum wages, limitations of the workday, and prohibition of child labour. They differed in their attitudes to strategies and political affiliations.

As was realized by the British trade unionists of the FI, trade unions should act internationally to be successful. In the late 1860s, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers had sections in the US, France and some of the British colonies. Glovers in Austria, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries had an agreement of solidarity in the early 1870s. Between 1889 and 1911, 28 International Trade Secretariats were started for international co-operation on the basis of crafts (typographers, printers, hatters, cigar makers, tobacco workers, shoe makers, glass workers, and so on). Most of the secretariats were based in Germany, a new center of industrial capitalism with many foreign labor migrants. They transferred a lot of money from the national unions to striking and/or locked-out col- leagues, and tried to stop the use of blacklegs. They also tried to handle the questions of international labor migration and of Franco-German antagonism.

The international Federation of Transport Workers (1896) is the oldest international trade union remaining in existence in 2000. It started on the basis of international co-operation before national unions existed. Beginning in Copenhagen in 1901, trade union leaders from different European countries met at conferences to discuss labor issues like work time, piece work, women’s work, and international labor migration. In 1902, the International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centers was founded, having its headquarter in Berlin. From 1909, the AFL also took part in that international co-operation, and in 1912 the organization was reorganized as the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU).

Workers and socialist intellectuals also organized for a political struggle. While the FI had its headquarters in London, socialist parties were started in Germany in the 1860s by Ferdinand Lassalle, August Bebel, and Wilhelm Liebknecht. At a conference in Gotha in 1875, the two parties joined and formed the Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (SAPD). Thereby the first nation-wide socialist political party of the world was founded, accepting a class-oriented program. The SAPD challenged the establishment in elections for Parliament, getting 9 percent of the votes in 1877. The establishment was frightened, and it tried to stop socialism by anti-socialist laws. Meanwhile, between 1874 and 1903, socialist parties were founded in all European countries; socialist parties were also founded in the US, Australia, and New Zealand. In Germany, after the abolition of the anti-socialist laws and the re-establishment of the party as Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) (1890), the socialist labor movement became a political force of increasing importance. Every large German town had important trade unions, a socialist newspaper, consumers’ co-operatives, proletarian cultural associations, but Hamburg was ‘No City of Socialism.’ In 1914, the SPD was the largest political group in the German Parliament and the establishment was depending on it for its war policy. Trade unionists and socialists in other countries were inspired by the German development, and other socialist parties grew in importance, so much so that the parliamentarian way to socialism seemed realistic to many socialists in Western and Central Europe. This choice of strategy has been one of the most debated issues of labor history in Europe.

Britain was somewhat of an exception, but after the breakthrough of the new unionism the trade unions’ connection to the Whigs was questioned. The Independent Labour Party was founded in 1893, but the Committee for National Trade Unions (1895) and the Labour Representation Committee (1900) paved the way for the Labour Party (1906). In the US, the IWW supported the Socialist Party (1901), but both organizations were pressed back by the sharp antisocialist campaigns during World War I.

Ideologically, there were differing views regarding organizational forms among fractions and individuals within the socialist labor movements before World War I. The trade unionist strategy said that trade unions should organize political parties and control them; the British Labour Party was subsequently built based on that strategy. Many social democrats (socialists) held the opinion that trade unions should act to defend workers’ rights on workplaces, while socialist parties should take part in political elections, and control the state with the help of a majority of parliamentarians. Trade unions should have great influence on the party, but not control it. Inspired by Karl Kautsky, several social democrats held a deterministic view of the development of socialism. The German and the Scandinavian labor movements were most outspoken on that idea. Leninist strategy said that the party was the avant-grade of the working class, that should bring workers’ consciousness beyond trade union consciousness into class-consciousness. The idea that the party was superior to the unions in the class struggle was formulated among the Bolsheviks within the Russian social democratic party. It became the lodestar among Communists, while anarcho-syndicalists denied the value of parliamentarian activities. They argued for spontaneous and direct action, like the occupation of mills and land, and it had its stronghold in France, Spain, and Italy.

Since the dissolution of the FI in 1876, socialists from several countries had met for conferences on international labor issues. In 1889, on the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, they met in Paris and decided to reorganize an international socialist labor movement. Even if Latin American and Asian delegates took part in the Paris conference, the Second International (SI) became a white, male, Western European dominated organization. Its main demands were the introduction of equal and universal suffrage, workers’ right to unionize, and an eight hour working day, but its ultimate objective was the overthrow of capitalism. At the Paris conference, it was decided to organize May Day rallies all over the world in the memory of the Haymarket victims (Chicago 1886) and in support of the demand for an eight hour working day. Every year since 1890, the international labor movement, where and when possible, has made political demands on employers and on the state throughout the world. The hymn ‘The International’ has been sung by millions of demonstrating workers at the May Day rallies and at other kinds of meeting. Before World War I the manifestations were impressive, but since then they have been of fluctuating importance in the Western European democracies, while they turned into state managed events in Communist countries. In Nazi Germany, the May Day manifestations were not prohibited, but taken over by the Nazis, and in Japan the company-based trade unions have held rallies in support of ‘their’ company.

Saying that workers had nothing to gain from patriotism, the SI argued for proletarian internationalism and anti-militarism, and criticized imperialism. Those ideas were more or less dashed in 1914, when most German socialists supported the emperor’s plea for war credits. Colleagues in the other belligerent countries took the same position, supporting the war policy. The SI also was split by different opinions on international labor migration, which complicates the idea of proletarian internationalism. The Second International was, indeed, mostly a debating rather than a decision-making organization. World War I put an end even to that. With the outbreak of the war, also the Golden Age of Reformism ended. In the belligerent countries trade unions partly acquired a new role by mobilizing for war efforts. In the international organizations the TUC and AFL took over the dominating role that German trade unions had before the war.

World War I had vital importance for the socialist labor movement. The left wing opposed ministerial socialism, i.e., socialist members of a government dominated by liberals, as well as the party truce that most socialists accepted during the war. In 1915, representatives for the socialist opposition, mostly young people, met in Zimmerwald to protest against the war. In 1917, facing tremendous class cleavages, strikes and hunger riots, the socialist labor movement split in most countries into two parties. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the failed attempts to raise revolutions in Germany, Finland, and Hungary confirmed the split, and it was made permanent in 1919, when the left-wing parties joined under Russian Bolshevik rule in the Communist International (Comintern), or the Third International. Several groups left the Comintern in 1921, after the introduction of Lenin’s 21 theses and the transformation of the leftwing socialist parties into sections of the Comintern. In 1919, the social democrats (socialists) tried to reorganize the Second International, while some noncommunist left-wing parties (led by the Austrian and the French socialist parties) joined in the International Working Union of Socialist Parties (the Vienna International). In 1923 the Second International and the Vienna International merged into the Labour and Socialist International, including most of the socialist and social democratic parties in the world.

After World War I, the international trade union movement also revitalized; by 1920 about 50 percent of all workers were unionized in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Italy. Women workers and white-collar workers also organized gradually. The IFTU was reorganized in 1919. In 1924, it started a sub-committee on women’s issues, the International Committee of Trade Union Women, but in reality women workers’ rights received little attention. White-collar workers unionized, some of them by themselves in national and international trade unions, while others unionized with blue-collar workers of the same industry.

After the war, the trade union movement radicalized, for instance by claiming industrial democracy and socialization of the means of production. This radicalization made the AFL leave the IFTU. On the other hand, communist-dominated trade unions assembled into the Red International of Trade Unions in 1921, an organization that inspired strikes in noncommunist countries, and prevented strikes in the Soviet Union, where they instead became a part of the state. Syndicalistic workers in 1922 joined in the International Working Men’s Association. Religious trade unions organized internationally after the war in the International Federation of Christian Trade Unions, later the World Confederation of Labor. Thus, the international labor movement was politically very split, a situation that was even more distinct after the new policy in the Soviet Union in 1928, when the communists proclaimed social democrats being ‘social fascists’ and their main enemies. This split was of great importance for the coming to power of fascists in Germany in 1933 and in Austria, where the Austromarxists’ social experiment ‘The Red Vienna’ was put to an end in 1934. The whole spectrum of a split labor movement was demonstrated in the Spanish Civil War. In the US, on the other hand, semi-skilled and unskilled workers started to unionize in the Congress of Industrial Organisation (1935). US trade unions also raised some successful strikes, and in the Upper Midwest the Farmer Labor Party had some, temporary, successes in the 1930s.

The coming to power of fascism in central Europe caused two different strategies within the European labor movement. For a short time, Popular Front government in France and Spain effected important social reforms for workers, but were defeated by conservatives and fascists. In Scandinavia, the social democratic parties chose class co-operation as a new strategy, politically with farmers’ parties, and with respect to industrial relations with employers (the Scandinavian model). Important social reforms were achieved in the late 1930s and after World War II. The Scandinavian countries also developed into the most unionized countries of the world, where women and white-collar workers also are highly unionized (80–85 percent at the turn of the millenium).

On the European continent, with the rise of fascism and the outbreak of World War II, the labor movements collapsed. The relations between socialists and communists sharpened even more after the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact, but towards the end of the war socialist–communist relations improved and it looked as though a united labor movement could come out of the anti fascist struggle. The postwar program of the British Labour Party attracted socialists in most industrialized, noncommunist countries. These programs were supported in elections in several countries. Important reform programs were introduced and some socialization of the means of production was done. A unified international trade union movement was reorganized in 1945, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU); of important trade unions only the AFL did not join it. Capitalist and bourgeois societies seemed to be threatened in Europe, and extensive strikes challenged the social order of the US, but the Cold War put an end to that. The Red Army forced social democrats and communists in East Germany to merge into the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED). In northern, western, and southern Europe there was once again a total split between social democrats/socialists and communists. The Soviet Union and the communist parties in the Soviet Union controlled parts of Europe, and in France and Italy founded the Cominform in 1947. In the US the Taft–Hartley law (1947) weakened the trade unions. The socialist trade unions left the WFTU in 1949 and started the anti-communist International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. The ICFTU also included the AFL, which was weakened by the Taft–Hartley law. In 1951, socialist social-democratic parties founded the Socialist International, based on the principles of ‘democratic socialism.’ In the 1970s the SI added to its Euro-centrist policy more worldwide activities to counteract communist influence in the Third World, where the labor movements were mostly based amongst landless peasants.

In the Third World, the labor movement has faced enormous difficulties. Probably, activists were treated more brutally there in the twentieth century than their colleagues in Western Europe in the nineteenth century. Also, the seasonal and migratory nature of labor, and company-controlled housing counteracted unionization and political mobilization. In British colonies, however, trade unions were of some importance, even in colonial times; trade unions were organized in mining regions, in ports and at railways, and in major urban concentrations, and they took part in the liberation movement even before the 1920s. In India it was of great importance for the liberation in 1947, but since then the trade union movement has been split along both political and religious lines. After the fall of the Soviet Union, trade unions in India and in some Arab counties dominate the WFTU.

After the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, some communists in Western Europe criticized Soviet communism, a criticism that accelerated after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Inspired by the Czech communists, Euro-communism developed in the 1970s as an ideology for an independent, democratic road to socialism. In Western Europe strike activities increased in the 1960s, accelerating for a few years after 1968. In several countries, social democratic governments were the targets for this radicalization of workers and students. The social democratic labor movement was influenced and radicalized, and the social democratic and the reformed communist wings of the labor movement converged. Once again industrial democracy was demanded, but the demands gradually faded away. In some Western European countries there was political co-operation in the final 20 years of the twentieth century between social democrats (socialists) and reformed communist parties, which have cooperated in the defence of the welfare state.

The radicalization in the 1970s also meant the breakthrough of women’s questions in the labor movements, partly based on a feminization of the workforce. Many women workers were employed in the public sphere with, in some respects, contradicting interests with industrial workers. Demands for equal pay for equal work were raised, women workers opposed sexual discrimination, and they politically mobilized. Most socialist parties have a minimum quota of women in party organizations and/or female candidates for parliamentary elections. Labor historians have started to focus on gender in the study of labor movements. Another consequence of postwar capitalism has been an ongoing increase of white-collar trade unions, and blue-and white-collar workers have often cooperated in trade union matters. Politically, many white-collar workers have voted for socialist/social democratic parties in Western Europe.

The labor movement, however, still has its most significant influence in Western Europe, where it focuses on questions related to the European Union. European labour movements have, however, given economic and political support to trade unions and political parties in the Third World. These relations have, however, been a little hesitating, as the labor movements in many Third-World countries have been part of the national liberation struggle. Socialist ideas, including Marxist–Leninist ideas, have been guidelines for many liberation movements, but normally they have survived only the first decade of independence. After liberation, many new rulers have tried, as was done in the Soviet Union and Communist-ruled Eastern European states, to subordinate trade unions to state policies. In Africa, however, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) was of great and lasting importance for the overthrow of political dictatorship, as was, for instance, Solidarnosc in Poland. Today, the COSATU organize about 40 percent of all workers in South Africa, far beyond what, for instance, the AFL-CIO is capable of (15 percent).

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the communist parties of the former Soviet-controlled regions have been reformed, and have gained quite significant support in democratic elections. Trade unions have also been reformed, or new unions have started. Western colleagues have supported them a little, most of them belonging to the ICFTU.

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