The First Unions in America: How the U.S. Labor Movement Took Shape
If Part 1 is the story of why unions began, Part 2 is the story of how they took root in the United States.
America’s first unions did not appear fully formed. They started locally, trade by trade, city by city. One of the earliest documented examples was the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers in Philadelphia, which workers said they organized in 1794 in response to employers’ efforts to drive wages down. The U.S. Department of Labor describes that society as a defensive response to masters who had already organized their own association. In other words, workers learned early that if employers coordinated, labor had to coordinate too.
These early unions were often built by skilled workers, sometimes called journeymen, who had enough trade identity and shared interest to organize around wages, training and job control. But as the United States industrialized in the 19th century, the labor question got bigger. It was no longer just about skilled artisans. It was about railroads, mines, mills, factories and mass production. As the Labor Department’s history of the American worker makes clear, the scale of American industry created a new scale of worker vulnerability, and that helped create a broader labor movement.
One of the major early national labor organizations was the Knights of Labor, founded in 1869. The Library of Congress notes that the Knights sought to unite a broad range of workers and pushed for reforms including the eight-hour day and opposition to child labor. Later, in 1886, the American Federation of Labor was founded, replacing the older Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions and giving the labor movement a more durable national structure. The AFL initially focused on craft unionism, organizing skilled workers by trade.
That same era also included conflict and sacrifice. The labor battles of the late 19th century were not polite disagreements. They involved strikes, lockouts, blacklisting, court injunctions and sometimes deadly violence. The Haymarket affair in 1886 became one of the defining flashpoints in labor history, taking place during a larger movement for the eight-hour day, according to the Library of Congress. These struggles revealed both how much workers wanted change and how fiercely powerful interests resisted it.
By the 1930s, the U.S. labor movement entered a new phase. The Great Depression exposed the brutal insecurity of American work, and New Deal reforms changed the legal environment. The National Labor Relations Board says the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 made it the policy of the United States to encourage collective bargaining and protect workers’ freedom of association. The NLRB also notes that the Wagner Act gave employees the right to form and join unions and required employers to bargain collectively with unions chosen by a majority of employees in an appropriate bargaining unit.
Around the same time, the Congress of Industrial Organizations emerged out of a split with the AFL and began organizing industrial workers on a large scale, especially in mass-production industries that had long been underorganized. The AFL-CIO’s labor history timeline traces that shift and later records the merger of the AFL and CIO in 1955, a defining milestone in labor history.
This mattered enormously. It meant that unionism was no longer limited mainly to skilled trades. Industrial unionism brought in autoworkers, steelworkers, electrical workers and others whose labor powered the modern economy. The rise of the CIO broadened the movement and helped make collective bargaining a central part of 20th-century American life. And when the AFL and CIO merged in 1955, they joined the country’s two leading labor federations into one organization built to consolidate the goals and activism of working people, as the AFL-CIO recounts in its anniversary history.
From there through the late 20th century, unions continued shaping the nation. Organized labor played major roles in advancing workplace protections, collective bargaining rights and the broader expectation that working people should have a voice in the systems that shape their livelihoods. The National Labor Relations Board’s historical materials show that even later reforms such as the Taft-Hartley Act preserved the Wagner Act’s core national policy language encouraging collective bargaining, even as they imposed new restrictions.
By about 2000, the labor movement had already left a permanent mark on American life, even as membership had declined from its mid-century peak. The key point is this: the first unions in America were started because workers needed protection and voice, but they endured because they kept proving their value. They helped turn job-by-job complaints into a national movement for fairness, bargaining power and dignity at work.
That is why their legacy still matters.
At LaborForce, we believe this history deserves to be told with respect. America’s unions were not side characters in the national story. They were central actors in building a country where working people could demand more than survival. They fought for the right to be heard, and in doing so, helped define what fairness at work could mean.
Union Supporters Spotlight: PhysicianGPS
Strong unions have always fought to help members do more than earn a paycheck. They have worked to help members access stability, security and better support for their families. In today’s healthcare environment, that support increasingly includes helping people navigate a system that can feel complicated, expensive and hard to trust.
That is where solutions like PhysicianGPS, powered by Avalon.AI, fit into the modern labor story. PhysicianGPS helps people identify and schedule appointments with the top 25% of in-network physicians nationally. The company serves employers, advisors and TPAs, with a focus on helping people get to the right healthcare destination the first time.
That kind of support matters because access to care is only part of the challenge. Members also need help finding high-quality, in-network care without unnecessary confusion, delay or added cost. For unions and labor-related benefit strategies, tools that improve healthcare navigation can help strengthen trust in the benefit experience and make it easier for members to use the coverage they have more effectively. That is one more example of how the labor movement continues to evolve: not only protecting workers on the job, but helping families make smarter use of the systems meant to support them.
Key Takeaways
- The earliest U.S. unions formed as workers organized to defend wages and conditions.
- Major early labor organizations included the Knights of Labor and the AFL.
- The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 transformed labor law by protecting organizing and collective bargaining.
- The rise of the CIO and the 1955 AFL-CIO merger expanded and unified the labor movement.
- Unions helped turn scattered workplace grievances into a lasting national movement for dignity, fairness and worker voice.
Sources
- U.S. Department of Labor, Chapter 2: Builders of the Young Republic
- Library of Congress, Knights of Labor & the AFL-CIO
- Library of Congress, Formation of the American Federation of Labor
- National Labor Relations Board, National Labor Relations Act
- National Labor Relations Board, 1935 Passage of the Wagner Act
- AFL-CIO, Our Labor History Timeline
- AFL-CIO, Anniversary of the AFL-CIO Merger
- National Labor Relations Board, 1947 Taft-Hartley Passage and NLRB Structural Changes
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