Labor Union History in California
The various labor movements in California have been among the most important in our nation. As a state with a tremendously diversified economy, California's workers are employed in every industry imaginable; from our huge agriculture base, to our docks, to aerospace, to construction, to the entertainment industry-the list is endless. And in each industry, workers struggled to organize themselves into collectives to shape the labor landscape of California. Some of California's labor movements have represented significant political events on a national if not a global scale-as in the historic struggle of labor activists Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. The gains made be the United Farm Workers inspired workers every where to fight for living wages and reasonable working conditions, and it proved that poor people can claim their rights when they organize and speak in one voice. In a word, labor unions equal POWER. But it didn't start with Chavez. In 1894, California held its first strike organized by San Francisco and Sacramento Carpenters who pushed for a whole sixteen dollars a day. Well, they settled for fourteen. However, a year later the first official union was organized in California, the San Francisco Typography Socie
But millions of unskilled workers were in giant industries like steel, autos, rubber and textiles. Unfortunately, resent times have seen a powerful backlash against unions. In 1932 a man by the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected President. Despite all this success, in October 1929, the New York stock market crashed, and the value of stocks declined. Unemployment meant a sharp drop in workers' dues, then unions became almost powerless to prevent decreases in wages or long working hours. By 1932, 13 million men and women were unemployed. As a result, the law created a powerful National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Labor movements have become the window for achieving reasonable wages and working conditions and even remedies posed by revolutionary changes in the nature of work and the composition of the workforce. People lost their jobs, their farms and their businesses. In the past, depressions had usually hurt unions. Although it had no real enforcement capabilities, the Wagner Act was seen by millions of workers as a green light-if not a government invitation-to join unions. Lewis and other union leaders broke away from the AFL and formed a new labor organization that became know as the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) which soon merged with the AFL making the AFL-CIO. Life in America as we knew it over took a change of titanic proportions, for the better, of course. With a new millennium just around the corner, unions and their objectives can lead society into the right path of progress.
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