American Labor Movement: Development of Unions :: American America History

American Labor Movement Development of UnionsThe American Labor Movement of the nineteenth ascorbic acid developed as a result of the city-wide organizations that unhappy workers were establishing. These men and women were determined to receive the rights and privileges they deserved as citizens of a free country. They refused to be treated same(p) slaves, and work under unbearable conditions any longer. Workers joined together and realized that a group is much more powerful than an individual when protesting against intimidating companies. Unions, coalitions of workers engage a common objective, began to form demanding only ten instead of twelve hours in a work day. Workers realized the importance of economic and legal tribute against the powerful employers who took advantage of them. (AFL-CIO American Federalist, 1)The beginnings of the American Labor Movement started with the Industrial Revolution. Textile mills were the first factories built in the United States. Once millin g machinery systems began to grow, a demand for workers increased. They hired large amounts of young women and children who were expected to do the same work as men for less wages. New immigrants were also employed and called free workers because they were unskilled. These immigrants poured into cities, desperate for any kind of work.(Working People, 1)Child labor in the factories was not only common, but necessary for a familys income. Children as young as five or six manned machines or did jobs such as sweeping floors to earn money. It was dangerous, and they were often hurt by the large, heavy machinery. No laws prevented the factories from development these children, so they continued to do so. (AACTchrNET, 1)Sweatshops were created in crowded, unsanitary tenements. These were makeshift construction houses, dirty and unbearably hot. They were usually formed for the construction of garments. The wages, as in factories, were pitifully low, no benefits were made, and the worker w as paid by the number of pieces he or she completed in a day. Unrealistic demands were put on the workers who could barely succumb to support their families. (1)The United States had the highest job-related fatality rate of any other industrialized nation in the world. Everyone worked eighty hours or more a week for passing low wages. Men and women earned twenty to forty percent less than the minimum deemed necessary for a decent life. The number was even worse for children. (Department of humanities Computing, 2) Often workers would go home after a long day and have to continue work on an unfinished product, which they had to return to the factory in the morning.