The Emergence of Umbrella Unions
Unions started emerging in the mid-19th century. The 1870s and 1880s saw large-scale consolidation, with the Knights of Labor quickly becoming a major force in the late 1880s before collapsing due to poor organization. The American Federation of Labor (AFL), led by Samuel Gompers until his death in 1924, proved much more durable. It was a coalition of many national unions, and helped resolve jurisdictional disputes, created citywide coalitions that helped coordinate strikes, and after 1907 became a player in national politics, usually on the side of the Democrats.
Rapid growth came in 1900-1919, but was followed by a long decline until the Wagner Act of 1935 led to an invigoration of the labor movement, a development that finally became a permanent factor in the heavy industry. The CIO under John L. Lewis split off and competed aggressively for membership. The AFL was always larger and both federations grew enormously during World War II. After the Communists in the CIO were purged in 1946-1948, a merger into the AFL-CIO became possible in 1955.
The Strength of Labor Unions
The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 was a conservative measure that weakened the unions, and highly publicized reports of corruption in the Teamsters and other unions hurt the image of the labor movement during the 1950s. Unions formed a backbone element of the New Deal Coalition and of Modern liberalism in the United States. The percentage of workers belonging to a union (or "density") in the United States peaked in 1954 at almost 35% and the total number of union members peaked in 1979 at an estimated 21.0 million. Membership has declined since (currently 14.8 million and 12% of the labor force). Private sector union membership then began a steady decline that continues into the 2010s, but the membership of public sector unions grew steadily (now 37%).
Union membership, 1947-2010
The graph shows steadily declining union membership in the last 6 decades.
Pressures dictating the nature and power of organized labor have included the evolution and power of the corporation, efforts by employers and private agencies to limit or control unions, and U.S. labor law. As a response, organized unions and labor federations have competed, evolved, merged, and split against a backdrop of changing social philosophies and periodic federal intervention.
As commentator E. J. Dionne has noted, the union movement has traditionally espoused a set of values—solidarity being the most important, the sense that each should look out for the interests of all. From this followed commitments to mutual assistance, to a rough-and-ready sense of equality, to a disdain for elitism, and to a belief that democracy and individual rights did not stop at the plant gate or the office reception room. Dionne notes that these values are "increasingly foreign to American culture"... "Labor-based political parties have been an important electoral force in every advanced capitalist country. Every one, that is, except the United States. Elsewhere, these parties were established in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, and, ever since, there has been a great debate about why the American experience was different. "
Current Labor Union Studies
The history of organized labor has been a specialty of scholars since the 1890s, and has produced a large amount of scholarly literature. In the 1960s, as social history gained popularity, a new emphasis emerged on the history of workers, with special regard to gender and race. This is called "the new labor history". Much scholarship has attempted to bring the social history perspectives into the study of organized labor.