Significance of Labor Unions During the Gilded Age

The Gilded Age saw a rapid increase in industrialization and the first business giants. With companies such as Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company monopolizing their industries the companies became so large that workers felt as if they no longer had a say in the company or protection of their rights. Workers began to organize within certain sectors of the labor industry to look after their rights and interests, creating unions. These unions were so important at the time because the government hadn’t yet found a way to keep these companies in check, and without them, conditions would’ve only worsened.

To begin to answer the question of why unions are so important it is vital to understand the conditions that workers were put in during this point in time. Child labor was incredibly common, working six to seven days a week, ten to twelve-hour workdays, no health insurance was provided from employment, and hazardous conditions with no compensation for accidents. The safety net that we know of today that can help those who are injured or lose their job did not exist. These terrible conditions can be attributed to the Laissez Faire nature of capitalism that was occurring at this time, meaning that no regulations were set in place by the government.

How did we arrive here? Even without regulations, how did the conditions become this poor? The answer to this question was the effects of rapid industrialization. Jobs became mechanized which created more job opportunities than before, and allowed workers to specialize in a certain portion of the production process to maximize efficiency. This process is known as the specialization of labor. Before this workers saw through every step of the production process. An early and prominent example of this was the assembly line that Henry Ford implemented. Mechanization combined with specialization of labor meant jobs were less skillful than before, because of this employers began to pay less and saw workers as disposable. If a worker began asking for higher wages, wasn’t fast enough during production, or was ill, it was in the employer’s best interest to fire them to maximize profits. They had no issue with firing workers on a whim because the pool of candidates for these positions was so vast. Workers were well aware that if their productivity slipped they would be punished, so they would rush during their tasks, leading to more workplace injuries. Unions began to form in response to these harsh conditions in an attempt to even the power dynamic between the workers and the employer.

Not all unions had the same goals. The American Federation of Labor--or the AFL--was a very prominent union at this time, and focused primarily on unionizing skilled workers. They did not attempt to organize lesser skilled workers, and were not interested in social issues. The main goals that this union sought were eight hour workdays and higher wages. A more “radical” union was the Knights of Labor. The issue of long workdays and low pay were at the forefront of their minds as well, but this union also looked to: gain equal pay for women, end child labor, grant workers partial ownership of factories, and allow African Americans to join in states outside of the south. The fact that this union’s ideology was seen as radical at the time shows how much work conditions have improved in the century since then. 

Labor unrest continued on for decades beyond the Gilded Age, with the economic prosperity of the 1920s derailing the movement. With the economy doing well at the time it was difficult to rally any motivation to organize. The Great Depression created sympathy for workers, and reignited the labor unrest movement. Shortly after in 1938 the government passed The Fair Labor Standards Act which set its first federal minimum wage, limitations on child labor, and a maximum amount of hours for workers in interstate commerce. 

Though these changes weren’t made within the Gilded Age, the unions from that era undoubtedly played a significant role in their enactment. We know this because the regulations that were put in place are the same changes that the previously mentioned unions were campaigning for. Without the unions putting pressure on the government to put regulations in place, the laissez faire nature of our economic system would have continued to exploit workers for decades. With no one to look after the rights and protections of workers, conditions would have continued to decline due to the continued mechanization and more time granted to business giants to monopolize industries.