wage labor

Examples of wage labor in the following topics:

• Factories, Working Women, and Wage Labor

  • Lowell popularized the use of the wage labor, a system in which a worker sells his or her labor to an employer under contract.
  • Wage labor displaced reliance on apprenticeship and family labor.
  • Jefferson reasoned that the growth of a class of wage laborers would decrease self-sufficiency in America.
  • Wages were cut in many factories, and employees who had once labored for an hourly wage now found themselves reduced to piecework, paid for the amount they produced and not for the hours they toiled.
  • Even though strikes were rarely successful and workers usually were forced to accept reduced wages and increased hours, work stoppages as a form of labor protest represented the beginnings of the labor movement in the United States.

• A Market Society

  • Drastic changes in the manual labor system altered the schedules, wages, and working conditions for laborers.
  • Artisanal trades began to give way to more efficient systems of production that did not require skilled labor.
  • Wage labor became an increasingly common experience.

• The Decline of Labor

  • Unemployment rarely dipped below 5% in the 1920s, and few workers feared real wage losses.
  • Despite the decline of unions in the 1920s, among the Filipino farm worker population in California there was a noticeable increase in organized labor prompted by a decline in wages, and in the face of increasing hostility against immigrant workers organizing for improved living conditions.
  • This heavily influenced the American Federation of Labor, which expounded upon anti-Filipino sentiment in equating Filipinos with the increase of "ethnic" labor, associated with declining field wages and increasing strikes.
  • In this way, the traditional labor unions framed Filipino organizing attempts as detrimental to white workers' wages.
  • They formed seven different unions, a number of which were formed in response to "agricultural violence. " One of the earliest Filipino labor strikes by Sons of the Farm occurred in 1928 and forced wage increases and better living conditions.

• Industrial Recovery

  • Third, Title I provided standards of maximum work hours, minimum wages, and labor conditions that the codes would cover.
  • Minimum wages, maximum working hours, prices, and production quotas were all to be covered under the codes.
  • Johnson called on every business establishment in the nation to accept a stopgap "blanket code": a minimum wage of between 20 and 45 cents per hour, a maximum workweek of 35–45 hours, and the abolition of child labor.
  • Higher prices, although welcomed in light of the severe deflation, did not boost economy as wages remained low and the consumers' purchasing power did not alter.
  • Many of NIRA labor provisions reappeared in the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act), passed later the same year.

• Empowering Labor

  • Title I of NIRA outlined guidelines for the creation of the so-called "codes of fair competition" (rules according to which industries were supposed to operate), guaranteed trade union rights, and permitted the regulation of working standards (e.g., minimum wages, maximum working hours, etc.).
  • These rights include freedom of association, mutual aid or protection, self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively for wages and working conditions through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other protected concerted activities with or without a union.
  • It established a national minimum wage (25 cents per hour in the first year after the Act was passed), overtime standards, and prohibited most employment of minors (individuals under the age 16 or 18, depending on the nature of work) in "oppressive child labor."
  • Although the initial draft was more ambitious than the document finally passed by Congress after a long legal battle, federal law that established minimum wages, maximum working hours, and ban on child labor set a standard for how U.S. labor would negotiate future working conditions.
  • Over the decades since FLSA was originally signed into law, numerous amendments have been introduced, many of which increased the originally proposed minimum wage.

• 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.
  • He promoted "thorough" organization and collective bargaining to secure shorter hours and higher wages, the first essential steps, he believed, to emancipating labor.
  • As was the case with other unions of the day, the Cigarmaker's Union nearly collapsed in the financial crisis of 1877, in which unemployment skyrocketed and ready availability of desperate workers willing to labor for subsistence wages put pressure upon the gains in wages and shortening of hours achieved in union shops.
  • Gompers' philosophy of labor unions centered on economic ends for workers, such as higher wages, shorter hours, and safe working conditions so that they could enjoy an "American" standard of living—a decent home, decent food and clothing, and money enough to educate their children.

• 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.
  • It took the Great Depression to end child labor nationwide; adults had become so desperate for jobs that they would work for the same wage as children.
  • Alongside the abolition of child labor, compulsory education laws also kept children out of abusive labor conditions.

• Labor and Domestic Tensions

  • During the Gilded Age, new labor unions, which used a wide variety of tactics, emerged.
  • 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.
  • The AFL worked to control the local labor market, thereby empowering its locals to obtain higher wages and more control over hiring.

• The Beginnings of the Labor Movement

  • In the 1830s, female mill operatives in Lowell formed the Lowell Factory Girls Association to organize strike activities in the face of wage cuts, and later established the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association to protest the 12-hour workday.
  • Even though strikes were rarely successful and workers usually were forced to accept reduced wages and increased hours, work stoppages as a form of labor protest represented the beginnings of the labor movement in the United States.
  • American men and women with families to support grudgingly accepted low wages in order to keep their jobs.
  • Women in the garment industry were among the earliest labor activists in the United States.
  • Identify key moments and groups in the early history of the labor movement

• Labor in Wartime

  • During World War II the United States home front and its labor market changed radically.
  • The labor market changed radically and peacetime conflicts, with respect to race and labor, took on a special dimension because of the intense pressure for national unity.
  • The demand for labor was so great that millions of retired people, housewives, and students entered the labor force, lured by patriotism and wages.
  • "Rosie the Riveter" became the symbol of women laboring in manufacturing .
  • The wage differential between higher skilled and less skilled workers narrowed, and with the enormous increase in overtime for blue collar wage workers (at time-and-a-half pay), incomes in working-class households shot up, while the salaried middle class lost ground.