The history of Trade Unions throughout the U.S. has been a long, and sometimes grisly ordeal. So many of our founding fathers sacrificed their lives for their steadfast belief in the fact that workers deserved an equal footing in the various labor force industries. Some were ridiculed, some even paid with their lives, but the driving force of fairness and equality in the workplace kept the dream alive. It is to these few tenacious souls that we today owe our gratitude and thanks for turning the dream of worker’s rights into the reality that we all enjoy today.

Throughout the 19th century Trade Unions remained relatively insubstantial. Only 2 percent of the total labor force and less than 10 percent of all industrial workers were members of Trade Unions. The Federation of Trades and Labor Unions was formed in 1881 and in 1886 the organization changed its name to the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The first president of the AFL was a man named Samuel Gompers. His tenure ran from 1886-1894 and again from 1896-1924, the year that he died. He held conservative political views and believed that trade unionists should accept the capitalist economic system. This resulted in the formation of a rival, more radical organization in 1905. Representatives of 43 groups, who opposed the AFL’s policies, formed the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). However, membership numbers in this rival union remained small compared to the AFL.

After the First World War, leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World were harassed by the police and suffered legal prosecutions. Two important members, Frank Little and Walter Everett, were lynched. By 1925 membership had declined dramatically.

In 1921 John L. Lewis, leader of the United Mine Workers of America, failed in his attempt to challenge Samuel Gompers for the presidency of the American Federation of Labor. Gompers finally left in 1924 and was replaced by William Green.

It wasn’t until 1932 with the support of most trade unionists, that Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected. As president he appointed Frances Perkins as US Secretary of Labor and Robert Wagner as chairman of the National Recovery Administration. These two were to become a force to be reckoned with and a strong voice in government on behalf of the worker.

Both Perkins and Wagner were known for their sympathy for the trade union movement and in 1933 Wagner introduced a bill to congress to help protect trade unionists from their employers. With Perkins’ support, Wagner’s proposal became the National Labor Relations Act, which created a three-man National Labor Relations Board. This board’s charter was to administer and regulate labor relations in industries engaged in or affecting interstate commerce. This important act established worker’s rights to join trade unions and to bargain collectively with their employers, through representatives of their choosing. Workers were finally protected from their employers and as a result union membership began to grow rapidly.

In 1935 John Lewis joined with the heads of 7 other unions to form the Congress for Industrial Organization (CIO). Lewis became president of the CIO and over the next few years attempted to organize workers in the new mass production industries. His strategy was successful and by 1937 the CIO had more members than the AFL.

In June of 1938, Congress passed The Fair Labor Standards Act. The main objective of this act was to eliminate “labor conditions detrimental to the maintenance of the minimum standards of living necessary for health, efficiency and well-being of workers.” It established the maximum working hours of 44 per week for the first year, 42 for the second and 40 thereafter. The Fair Labor Standards Act also established minimum wages and prohibited child labor in all industries engaged in producing goods in inter-state commerce and placed a limitation on the labor of boys and girls between 16 and 18 years of age in hazardous occupations.

Four years later, the Fair Employment Act initiated by Frances Perkins and Vice-President Harry S. Truman was passed. This act required all federal agencies to include in their contracts with private employers a provision obligating such employers not to “discriminate against persons of any race, color, creed or nationality in matters of employment”. This act set up the Committee on Fair Employment Practice (FEPC), a group whose mandate was to investigate all complaints of discrimination, take steps to eliminate the discrimination, and then make any recommendations to Roosevelt concerning discrimination.

In 1947 Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act due to the Republican Party and right-wing elements in the Democratic Party that objected to what they believed was the pro-trade union legislation of the Roosevelt administration. The Taft-Hartley Act declared that the closed shop was illegal and permitted a union shop only after the affirnmative vote of a majority of the employees. Under this act, jurisdictional strikes and secondary boycotts were prohibited. Unions were no longer able to contribute to political campaigns and union leaders were required to claim that they were not supporters of the Communist Party. In 1950 the Supreme Court upheld this act.

The National Labor Relations Board was also established under the Taft-Hartley Act.
This body had the power to determine the issuance or prosecution of a complaint. Under the terms of the act the United States Attorney General had the power to obtain an 80-day injunction when a threatened or an actual strike “imperiled the national health or safety”.

William Greene remained president of the AFL until his death in 1952 when George Meany replaced him. In 1955, George Meany was at the helm of unifying the CIO and the AFL. Walter Reuther, the president of the CIO became vice-president of the AFL-CIO. George Meany was unanimously elected president of this new organization that now had a membership of 15,000,000.  During his 25 years leading the AFL-CIO, George Meany modernized and expanded the national AFL-CIO, making it a powerful voice in our nation’s political and legislative arena. He is considered the builder of the modern AFL-CIO. In 1979 George Meany stepped down from his presidency of the AFL-CIO and turned its presidency over to Lane Kirkland. George Meany died in 1980.
Kirkland held the AFL-CIO presidency from 1970 – 1995. With labor unions in a decline he quickly initiated significant innovations and secured the re-affiliation of the Teamsters, the United Auto Workers, the United Mine Workers, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. He also took up the cause of Solidarity and funneled more than $6 million in aid to Poland in the form of cash and communications equipment. This aid was considered instrumental in Poland’s effort to end 50 years of Communist Party rule. He nominated the first woman to the AFL-CIO’ Executive Council and increased the role of African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans in the organization. By upgrading the AFL-CIO’s media and public relations departments he was able to get the union message out to the wider public. In 1994, President Bill Clinton presented Kirkland with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Lane Kirkland retired from office in 1995 and died at the age of 77 in 1999.
The Executive Council selected Thomas Reilly Donahue to serve out the remaining months of Kirkland’s term, however a the AFL-CIO convention later that year, Donahue lost the seat to John J. Sweeney who has been re-elected three times since.
At the time of his election, he was serving his fourth four-year term as president of SEIU, which grew from 625,000 to 1.1 million members under his leadership. An AFL-CIO vice president since 1980, Sweeney was born May 5, 1934, in Bronx, N.Y.
His trade union career began as a research assistant with the Ladies Garment Workers. In 1960, he joined SEIU as a contract director for New York City Local 32B. He went on to become union president and to lead two citywide strikes of apartment maintenance workers. In 1980, he was elected president of the international. Sweeney is the author of America Needs A Raise: Fighting for Economic Security and Social Justice.
The AFL-CIO merger and its accompanying agreements brought about the elimination of jurisdictional disputes between unions that had plagued the labor movement and alienated public sympathy in earlier years. The unions placed a new priority on organizing workers in areas, industries and plants where no effective system of labor representation yet existed. In many cases, it meant crossing the barriers of old thinking and tired methods to reach the employees of companies, which for years had resisted unions. Thanks to the foresight, and commitment of our forefathers, today, millions of people enjoy the benefits of union membership.
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) is a voluntary federation of 53 national and international labor unions.

Today's unions represent nearly 9 million working women and men of every race and ethnicity and from every walk of life. We are teachers and truck drivers, musicians and miners, firefighters and farm workers, bakers and bottlers, engineers and editors, pilots and public employees, doctors and nurses, painters and laborers—and more.

Since its founding, the AFL-CIO and its affiliate unions have been the single most effective force in America for enabling working people to build better lives and futures for their families.