As in other countries, the union movement grew in the United States in tandem with industrialization, artisans and craft laborers combining to protect their positions in the labor market from capitalists’ attempts both to de-skill certain occupations and to replace native-born workers with cheaper immigrant laborers. Despite scattered local organizations prior to the Civil War, attempts at national organization like the National Labor Union (1866–72), and even the resort to terrorist methods by the Irish Molly Maguires in the mid-1870s (inspiring the exceptional 1970 movie of that name), unionization remained stymied throughout much of the nineteenth century. Capitalists used private force (e.g. the Pinkertons) and the power of the state to crush strikes like that in 1892 at Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead Mill (near Pittsburgh, PA). In doing so, they were bolstered by Supreme Court decisions that interpreted the 14th Amendment so as to protect corporation rights rather than those of workers. Moreover, union organization and action were also complicated by the concealed issues of class and mobility in the United States that shaped the history and consciousness of the working and middle classes.

Nevertheless, Samuel Gompers managed to establish the American Federation of Labor during the 1890s by stressing “pure and simple unionism,” concentrating on organizing only skilled laborers and eschewing political action (unlike unions outside the US, thereby remaining apart from labor and socialist parties). Consequently, Gompers endeavored to isolate the more politically oriented unionists connected to organizations like the Knights of Labor and, later, the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies).

In the process, the union movement became associated with attempts to exclude Chinese in the West and generally remained antagonistic to African Americans in the Northeast. Further, made up primarily of craft organizations, the AFL remained relatively weak in the face of the consolidation of corporate capitalism. By the turn of the nineteenth century, more than 2 million workers belonged to unions.

Advances during the First World War, with Gompers and other labor leaders being brought into the War Industries Board, were followed by an assault on unionism in 1919 and attempts by businesses to establish their own labor organizations, captured nicely in John Sayles’ Matewan (1987). The 1920s, therefore, saw a union movement at a low ebb, though the immigration restrictions of 1924 can be seen as partly a concession to labor.

African Americans began to push for their own unions, A. Philip Randolph forcing both the Pullman Company to recognize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and labor leaders to accept the Brotherhood as a member organization within the AFL.

Union fortunes shifted dramatically in the 1930s, the Depression provoking growing labor unrest. President Franklin D. Roosevelt endeavored to appeal for labor support and instituted some protections for unions in the Wagner Act of 1935, which established the National Labor Relations Board. In addition, the labor movement became more inclusive, a new breakaway organization known as the Congress of Industrial Organizations forming under the leadership of John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers (UMW).

Formed around industries rather than crafts, these unions were able to take on the major automobile and steel companies and win—state and federal authorities for the first time not supporting the companies with military assistance. With union membership expanding to 14 million by 1945, organized labor was able to establish itself as an accepted part of the Democratic Party coalition, though it never achieved the position attained by unions in the British Labour Party.

The radicalism of the New Deal spread from the industrial Northeast, and, after the Second World War, attempted to organize black and white laborers in the South, as part of Operation Dixie. The success of this movement was curtailed by the period of McCarthyism, which saw the purge from the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) of labor radicals accused of being communists, and by the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which overturned many of the gains of the previous decade (including outlawing the closed shop and secondary picketing). Operation Dixie faltered and the laborers in the South divided once again along racial lines, leading African Americans to move down the path towards the more respectable Civil Rights movement as opposed to labor activism.

With the more radical unionists purged, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and CIO were in a position to combine under Geroge Meany’s leadership (1955–79). The AFL-CIO remained distinctly conservative in orientation through the early 1970s, concentrating on securing better wages and working conditions, making only half-hearted attempts to organize the so-called “unorganizable”—women, African Americans and the newest immigrants (often Latinos; see Chavez, Cesar). It remained detached from the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960s. It was also associated in many people’s minds with corruption, particularly the splinter Teamsters under Jimmy Hoffa, the Longshoremen, whose corruption was highlighted in On the Waterfront (1954), and the United Mine Workers, whose internal corruption was a background for the vivid strike documentary Harlan County, USA (1977).

The 1970s witnessed a concerted effort by the AFL-CIO both to reform and to expand the tradeunion movement. The latter impulse was nicely captured on screen in Norma Rae (1979), based on the efforts of a Southern woman textile worker and a Northeastern Jewish labor organizer to organize a mill whose owners had successfully resisted unionization for decades. Any momentum in this direction was halted by the election of Reagan to the presidency (partly due to the support of working-class Democrats) and the ensuing efforts of the Republican Party to once again weaken the labor movement. This assault on unionism was most evident in the air-traffic controllers’ strike of 1981, during which Reagan laid off 11,000 PATCO workers, replacing them with strike breakers.

During the 1980s and 1990s, particular unions remained strong, especially those serving the more skilled, professional “middle-class” workers, such as teachers and airline pilots, as well as those in public-sector organizing. Nonetheless, the overall movement as a whole has continued to decline and now fewer than 20 percent of all workers belong to unions. The Democratic Party has retained the support of the union movement, especially the leadership, although workers still have rallied to Republican issues. Yet, the decline in union membership, the movement of many industries abroad (to countries where the union movement is weaker still) and the loss of majority status for Democrats in Congress has diminished the union movement’s political influence dramatically. This was witnessed in the passage of NAFTA in spite of vociferous opposition from trade unionists, as well as the concessions on salary and other issues that have become a constant part of contract negotiations. This malaise permeates a more recent documentary on a union city, Michael Moore’s Roger and Me (1989).

The future of the union movement in the US and its ability to reverse the decline in its fortunes over the last twenty years will be determined by its ability to adjust to the rapidly changing economic environment. The continuing influx of immigrant labor, increasingly rapid changes in the workplace (with larger proportions of Americans now working outside factories and employed in the service sector), the movement of capital to offshore sites, as well as the growing influence of trade organizations like the World Trade Organization, present problems and opportunities for a trade-union movement that has seen reverses before only to re-emerge as a major force in American politics and society.