IRL 201 - History of American Labor and Management

 

Definitions: Through the Progressive Era

 

Anarchists - followers of the doctrine that human nature is essentially good and that evil flows from government coercion

 

Antebellum Period - prior to the Civil War

 

Anti-trust Policy - laws designed to prevent companies from monopolizing markets and thus exploiting consumers

 

Arbitration - settling industrial disputes by bringing in an impartial third-party to hear both sides and to decide the outcome

 

Artisan - skilled craft worker

 

Black Codes - laws  in the Postbellum period that prevented African-Americans from voting, holding office, or receiving public services.  Designed to keep them at work by requiring them to have work contracts

 

Blacklist - employers would circulate the names of unionists or other troublemakers on these lists to prevent the employees from finding work again in the area or the industry

 

Chattel - movable articles of personal property.  Slaves

 

Collective Bargaining - the joint determination of work rules by representatives of labor and management

 

Common Law - law made by judges.  The United States adopted the British system of Common Law

 

Communists - followers of the Marxian doctrine that capitalism inherently exploits workers and that the solution is revolution and the establishment of a workers' state

 

Cooperation - the ownership and operation of a business either by its workers or its customers

 

Cordwainers - craft workers who make shoes from cordovan leather

 

Craft Union - a labor union consisting of employees from a single skilled occupation

 

Criminal Conspiracy - two or more persons banding together to prejudice the rights of others.  Courts initially held unions to be such conspiracies

 

Direct Action - the IWW approach of economic and industrial activities designed to overthrow capitalism

 

Division of Labor - Specialization of work so that all workers do not create everything they consume

 

Dual Unionism - a situation in which more than one union competes for various groups of employees

 

Economic Action - a union strategy relying on pressuring employers and negotiating with them

 

Ex Parte - a court proceeding in which one of the parties is not present

 

Indentured Servants - workers who are compelled to work for the holder of their contract (indenture) for a fixed period of time, often in order to pay a debt

 

Industrial Union - a labor union consisting of employees who make a single product or service

 

Injunction - a court order forbidding some particular action

 

Jim Crow - the Postbellum system in the south of treating African-Americans as second-class citizens in terms of public facilities, public services and the law

 

Jurisdictional Disputes - disagreement among unions over which union should have the right to organize a particular type of employees

 

Labor Union - a continuous association of wage earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their working lives

 

Laborers - unskilled workers doing physical labor

 

Level of Living - the average level of consumption of goods and services of a particular society or subgroups of that society

 

Mechanics' Lien Laws - laws requiring that the assets of employers who go bankrupt first be used to pay the wages owed to their workers

 

Moonlighting - working a second job

 

Mutual Benefits - a union strategy relying on the members insuring each other against certain hazards

 

Picketing - marching or parading at a particular location, usually a work place, as a form of protest

 

Property Doctrine - the idea that any interference with employers' use of their property was unlawful but that workers had no property rights in their jobs

 

Pure and Simple Unionism - labor unions that focus completely on the maintenance and improvement of wages, hours and working conditions.  They do not attempt to change the organization of society

 

Secondary Strikes and Boycotts - actions directed not at the employer with whom a union has a dispute but directed at those who do business with that employer

 

Semi-skilled Workers - Factory operatives whose skills can be learned in a matter of weeks

 

Sharecropping - a system developed in the Reconstruction period to force freedmen to work on white farms in return for a share of what they produced

 

Socialists - those who believe that the principal means of production and distribution should be operated by the state for the good of all

 

Strike - a work stoppage as a form of protest.  The term originates with seafarers striking their sails

 

Strikebreakers - workers who work in defiance of a union call for a strike.  Unionists refer to them as "scabs"

 

Syndicalists - believers in the idea that worker exploitation should be ended by the workplaces being turned over to the workers to run

 

Transportation - punishment of convicted criminals in Britain by sending them to the colonies and obliging them to work as prisoners for a fixed period

 

Turnout - an early term for a strike

 

Voluntarism - the doctrine that workers should rely on their own organizations and direct dealing with employers rather than on government to improve their lot

 

Yellow Dog Contract - a contract of employment in which the employee agrees that s/he is not a union member and will not become one