Samuel Gompers

Company Unions Peak as Welfare Capitalism Undermines Independent Labor

| Importance: 7/10

Major American corporations deployed company-sponsored unions, benefits programs, and internal grievance systems as sophisticated anti-union strategies during the peak of 1920s welfare capitalism. Rather than negotiating with outside union representatives, companies like Goodyear Tire and U.S. Steel …

Goodyear Tire U.S. Steel National Association of Manufacturers Samuel Gompers labor-suppression corporate-capture anti-union institutional-capture
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Clayton Antitrust Act Signed: Labor Unions Exempted from Antitrust Laws, Gompers Calls It Labor's Magna Carta

| Importance: 9/10

President Woodrow Wilson signed the Clayton Antitrust Act, enhancing previous antitrust legislation and explicitly exempting labor unions from antitrust laws. Alabama Democrat Henry De Lamar Clayton Jr. introduced the legislation in anticipation of the Commission on Industrial Relations report. The …

President Woodrow Wilson Henry De Lamar Clayton Jr. Samuel Gompers American Federation of Labor E. Y. Webb progressive-era antitrust labor-organizing regulatory-reform
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Buck's Stove Case: Gompers, Mitchell, Morrison Sentenced for Contempt, Boycotts Criminalized

| Importance: 7/10

A federal court sentenced AFL President Samuel Gompers to one year in prison, Vice President John Mitchell to nine months, and Secretary Frank Morrison to six months for contempt of court in the Buck’s Stove and Range Company boycott case. The case exemplified how federal courts had become …

Samuel Gompers John Mitchell Frank Morrison American Federation of Labor Buck's Stove and Range Company +1 more labor-suppression judicial-capture progressive-era antitrust injunctions
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American Federation of Labor Founded on Craft Union Model Excluding Unskilled Workers

| Importance: 8/10

Forty-two delegates representing 13 national unions and various local labor organizations convene in Columbus, Ohio, to establish the American Federation of Labor (AFL) as the successor to the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (founded 1881). The convention elects Samuel Gompers, an …

Samuel Gompers Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions Knights of Labor Craft unions labor-organizing gilded-age afl craft-unions labor-rights +1 more
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