laborer

Examples of laborer in the following topics:

• Empowering Labor

  • Although eventually the National Labor Board was established to handle labor-employers conflicts, NIRA failed to secure long-term workers' rights.
  • The act also created the National Labor Relations Board, which was to guarantee the rights included in NLRA (as opposed to merely negotiating labor disputes) and organized labor unions representation elections.
  • The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is another critical piece of labor legislation passed under the New Deal.
  • Also, the ban on child labor introduced in FLSA did not cover agriculture where child labor was rampant.
  • FLSA was critical to establishing labor standards that remain the foundation of labor law in the United States.

• Child Labor

  • Legislations across the world prohibit child labor.
  • The National Child Labor Committee , an organization dedicated to the abolition of all child labor, was formed in 1904.
  • It was the first federal child labor law.
  • In 1938, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which, among other things, placed limits on many forms of child labor.
  • Alongside the abolition of child labor, compulsory education laws also kept children out of abusive labor conditions.

• The Knights of Labor and the "Conditions Essential to Liberty"

  • The Knights of Labor transitioned from a fraternal organization to a labor union that promoted the uplift of the workingman.
  • The Knights of Labor was the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s.
  • They also called for legislation to end child and convict labor .
  • Efforts to run labor candidates proved a failure in numerous elections in 1886-89.
  • Two years later, members of the Socialist Labor Party left the Knights to found the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance as a Marxist rival.

• Labor and Domestic Tensions

  • During the Gilded Age, new labor unions, which used a wide variety of tactics, emerged.
  • Craft-oriented labor unions, such as carpenters, printers, shoemakers, and cigar makers, grew steadily in the industrial cities after 1870.
  • These unions used frequent short strikes as a method to attain control over the labor market, and fight off competing unions.
  • Starting in the mid 1880s as a new group, the Knights of Labor grew rapidly.
  • The new American Federation of Labor, headed by Samuel Gompers, found the solution.

• Slave Labor

  • Slave labor in the United States - especially on large plantations - consisted of hard manual labor often under brutal conditions.
  • While the majority of slaves performed hard manual labor on farms and plantations, slavery was also seen in the major cities in the forms of house servants.
  • By 1860, most slaves were held in the Deep South, where they were engaged in agricultural labor on large plantations.
  • There were two primary types of labor systems seen on plantations: the gang system and the task system.
  • For example, women laborers were the predominant work force for rice cultivation within the task system of the Southeastern United States.

• The Decline of Labor

  • The labor movement saw a period of decline during the 1920s as a result of poor leadership and anti-union sentiment.
  • The 1920s marked a period of harsh decline for the labor movement.
  • The 1920s also saw a lack of strong leadership within the labor movement.
  • Because Filipinos were rejected by traditional labor unions, they had to form their own unions.
  • Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor for 37 years, died in 1924.

• Gompers and the AFL

  • Samuel Gompers was a labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history, founding the American Federation of Labor.
  • Samuel Gompers was an English-born American cigar maker who became a labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history.
  • In 1886, it was reorganized into the American Federation of Labor, with Gompers as its president.
  • During a severe period of national economic recession in the early 1890s, labor unrest was at its height.
  • Samuel Gompers began his labor career familiar with, and sympathetic to, the precepts of socialism, but gradually adopted a more conservative approach to labor relations.

• Toward Free Labor

  • It was a system that provided jobs and—most important—transportation for poor young people from the overcrowded labor markets (such as Europe) who wanted to come to labor-short areas (such as America and other colonies), but had no money to pay for it.
  • The labor-intensive cash crop of tobacco was farmed in the American South by indentured laborers in the 17th and 18th centuries.
  • In modern terms, the shipowner was acting as an contractor, hiring out his laborers.
  • For example, the cost of indentured labor rose by nearly 60% throughout the 1680s in some colonial regions.
  • Relative labor costs changed, with an increase in real income in Europe and England.

• A New Labor Force

  • World War I saw a change in U.S. labor: women entered the workforce as never before, and labor unions gave firm support to war efforts.
  • Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), and nearly all labor unions were strong supporters of the war effort.
  • To keep factories running smoothly, Wilson established the National War Labor Board in 1918, which forced management to negotiate with existing unions.
  • Examine the new labor force of women, and the strong support of labor unions, during World War I.

• A New Direction for Unions

  • The Roosevelt administration immediately followed with the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA; known also as the Wagner Act), which offered many of the labor protection and regulation provisions that were earlier included in NIRA.
  • The act also created the National Labor Relations Board, which was to guarantee the rights included in NLRA (as opposed to merely negotiating labor disputes) and organize labor unions representation elections.
  • NLRA remains the landmark legislation of federal labor law that established the increasingly powerful position of organized labor during Roosevelt's presidency.
  • Consequently, in the context of labor legislation and labor unions discussed in this module, the term "worker" refers mostly to industrial workers.
  • In exchange for the promise that workers would not engage in labor protest during the time of massive production demands, labor leaders were promised favorable working conditions.