American Federation of Labor

The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio in 1886 by Samuel Gompers as a reorganization of its predecessor, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions. Gompers was the president of the AFL until his death in 1924.

Expansion and retreat

The AFL was left as the only major national union body with the demise of the Knights of Labor in the 1890s. It subsequently brought in a number of unions formed on industrial union lines, including the United Mine Workers, International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and the United Brewery Workers. Even so, the craft unions within the AFL maintained power within the Federation.

Related Topics:
1890s - United Mine Workers - International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union - United Brewery Workers

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The AFL made efforts in its early years to assist its affiliates in organizing: it advanced funds or provided organizers or, in some cases, such as the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the American Federation of Musicians, helped form the union. The AFL also used its influence, including refusal of charters or expulsion, to heal splits within affiliated unions, to force separate unions seeking to represent the same or closely related jurisdictions to merge, or to mediate disputes between rival factions that both claimed to represent the leadership of an affiliated union or one seeking affiliation. The AFL also chartered "federal unions", local unions not affiliated with any international union, in those fields in which no affiliate claimed jurisdiction.

Related Topics:
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers - International Brotherhood of Teamsters - American Federation of Musicians

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The AFL faced its first major reversal in the first decade of the twentieth century, when employers launched an open shop movement designed to drive unions out of construction and other organized industries, such as mining and longshore. At the same time, employers discovered the efficacy of labor injunctions, first used with great effect by the Cleveland administration during the Pullman strike in 1894. While the AFL sought to outlaw "yellow dog" contracts, to limit the courts' power to impose "government by injunction" and to obtain exemption from the anti-trust laws that were being used to criminalize labor organizing, the courts reversed what few legislative successes the labor movement won.

Related Topics:
Open shop - Labor injunctions - Cleveland - Pullman strike - 1894

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The Industrial Workers of the World was created in 1905 as an alternative to the AFL: it would organize all workers on industrial union principles into a single union. Rather than accommodating capitalism, it sought to overthrow it. While the IWW had some successes in organizing the largely foreign-born women workers of the woolen industry in Lawrence, Massachusetts and longshore, lumber and agricultural workers elsewhere, it was largely destroyed by government prosecution and vigilantism after the end of World War I.

Related Topics:
Industrial Workers of the World - 1905 - Lawrence, Massachusetts - World War I

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