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Video History of Labor Unions and Collective Bargaining
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yZFcskizd4

Citation: http://bostonreview.net/forum/sarita-gupta-stephen-lerner-joseph-mccartin-why-labor-movement-has-failed%E2%80%94and-how-fix-it

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Video: Man of Steel Andrew Carnegie

https://youtu.be/vmbRtjN0gAk
Citation: https://sarahwebbindustrialrevolution.weebly.com/monopolies.html

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Video Lewis Hines photos on child labor
https://youtu.be/pOIvdhmMaOE

Citation: https://www.britannica.com/story/the-rise-of-the-machines-pros-and-cons-of-the-industrial-revolution

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Industrialization has helped America grow to the country it is today "Industrial growth transformed American society. It produced a new class of wealthy industrialists and a prosperous middle class. It also produced a vastly expanded blue collar working class. The labor force that made industrialization possible was made up of millions of newly arrived immigrants and even larger numbers of migrants from rural areas. American society became more diverse than ever before"
according to (U.S Primary Source Timeline, para 2, N.D).

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International Stock Food Factory, between 1900 and 1910
Detroit Publishing Company

In the decades following the Civil War, the United States emerged as an industrial giant. Old industries expanded and many new ones, including petroleum refining, steel manufacturing, and electrical power, emerged. Railroads expanded significantly, bringing even remote parts of the country into a national market economy.

Industrial growth transformed American society. It produced a new class of wealthy industrialists and a prosperous middle class. It also produced a vastly expanded blue collar working class. The labor force that made industrialization possible was made up of millions of newly arrived immigrants and even larger numbers of migrants from rural areas. American society became more diverse than ever before.

Not everyone shared in the economic prosperity of this period. Many workers were typically unemployed at least part of the year, and their wages were relatively low when they did work. This situation led many workers to support and join labor unions. Meanwhile, farmers also faced hard times as technology and increasing production led to more competition and falling prices for farm products. Hard times on farms led many young people to move to the city in search of better job opportunities.

Americans who were born in the 1840s and 1850s would experience enormous changes in their lifetimes. Some of these changes resulted from a sweeping technological revolution. Their major source of light, for example, would change from candles, to kerosene lamps, and then to electric light bulbs. They would see their transportation evolve from walking and horse power to steam-powered locomotives, to electric trolley cars, to gasoline-powered automobiles. Born into a society in which the vast majority of people were involved in agriculture, they experienced an industrial revolution that radically changed the ways millions of people worked and where they lived. They would experience the migration of millions of people from rural America to the nation's rapidly growing cities.

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Overview | Rise of Industrial America, 1876-1900 | U.S. History Primary Source Timeline | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

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In the decades following the Civil War, the United States emerged as an industrial giant. Old industries expanded and many new ones, including petroleum refining, steel manufacturing, and electrical power, emerged. Railroads expanded significantly, bringing even remote parts of the country into a national market economy. Industrial growth transformed American society.

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A labor union is an organization formed by workers in a specific industry or work area. These unions are formed to improve the workers pay and working conditions, as well as various other attributes in the working area. -paraphrased
(investopedia,p para 1, N.D)
An example of a labor union is the National Education Association (NEA) which represents teachers and other education professors.

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What Is a Labor Union?

A labor union, officially known as a "labor organization," is an entity formed by workers in a particular trade, industry, or company for the purpose of improving pay, benefits, and working conditions. Also called a "trade union" or a "worker's union," a labor union selects representatives to negotiate with employers in a process known as collective bargaining. When successful, the bargaining results in an agreement that stipulates working conditions for a period of time. Labor unions may also advocate for legal, social, and political measures for the country as a whole.﻿﻿

Labor unions are often industry-specific and tend to be most common today among public sector (government) employees and those in manufacturing, mining, construction, and transportation. In 2019, 14.6 million U.S. wage and salary workers were members of unions. Union membership was five times more common among public than private sector workers.﻿﻿

Rises and falls in union membership have been linked to economic conditions. When there is full employment and rising wages, unions usually experience decline, particularly among younger workers. In times of recession, union membership becomes more attractive.﻿﻿

How a Labor Union Works

Unions have a democratic structure, holding elections to choose officers who are charged with making decisions beneficial to the members. Employees pay dues to the union and, in return, the labor union acts as an advocate on the employees' behalf.

To form a union, a locally based group of employees obtains a charter from a national-level labor organization. Two large organizations oversee most of the labor unions in the U.S.: the Change to Win Federation (CtW) and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). The AFL-CIO formed in 1955 after the two groups merged. The CtW spun off from the AFL-CIO in 2005.﻿﻿ ﻿﻿

Nearly all unions are structured and work in similar ways. U.S. law requires the employer to actively bargain with the union in good faith. However, the employer is not required to agree to any specific terms. Multiple negotiation rounds are conducted between the union's bargaining unit-a group of members whose duty is to assure that its members are properly compensated and represented-and the employer. A collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is eventually agreed upon and signed. The CBA outlines pay scales and includes other terms of employment, such as vacation and sick days, benefits, working hours, and working conditions.

After signing the CBA, an employer cannot change the agreement without a union representative's approval. However, CBAs eventually expire, at which time the labor union and management must negotiate and sign a new agreement.﻿﻿

Example of a Labor Union

The National Education Association (NEA) represents teachers and other education professionals and is the largest labor union in the United States, with nearly three million members. The union's aim is to advocate for education professionals and unite its members to fulfill the promise of public education. The NEA works with local and state educational systems to set adequate wages and working conditions for its members, among other things. ﻿﻿

History of Labor Unions

Refusal to admit Black people, women, and immigrant groups was common in labor unions in the 19th and early 20th century, and excluded groups formed their own unions. Today, labor union membership is very diverse, including more women and Black and Latinx people than ever before, though Asian workers are underrepresented.﻿﻿

The right to form unions was established in 1935 by the National Labor Relations Act, also known as the "Wagner Act." It gave unionized employees the right to strike and bargain jointly for working conditions. The act encouraged collective bargaining, stopped unfair tactics by employers, and set up enforcement in a new dependent agency, the National Labor Relations Board.﻿﻿

In recent years legislation and court decisions have weakened the ability of unions to organize. Today right-to-work laws in 27 states prohibit contracts that require workers to join a labor union to get or keep a job.﻿﻿ Public employees cannot be required to pay dues to a union to support its collective-bargaining activities on their behalf, according to a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.﻿﻿

Criticisms of Labor Unions

Some business owners, industry associations, and think tanks support right-to-work laws on the grounds that requiring union membership to obtain a job reduces competition in the free-market economy. Some labor union contracts, such as those of the teacher and police unions, have been criticized for making it too difficult to fire incompetent, abusive, and violent employees. For example, according to a 2019 study of 656 police union contracts across the country, 73% included an appeals process in which final decisions on firing and disciplining officers were in the hands of arbitrators selected in part by the local police union.﻿﻿ The result, as reported in the New Yorker, is that many disciplinary actions and firings of abusive police officers have been overturned.

Some in the labor movement have called for the expulsion of police unions on the grounds that they protect violent officers. However, the AFL-CIO's recently published recommendations on police reform said the best way to address police brutality was to engage police affiliates, not isolate them.﻿﻿

At times labor unions have been found complicit in organized criminal activity. Defrauding of union pension funds, for example, has resulted in recent arrests of New York subcontractors associated with the Teamsters union.﻿﻿

Political Role of Labor Unions

Labor unions have also played a significant political role endorsing candidates in local and national elections and representing their members' interests in the safety issues of the day. For example, in the COVID-19 era, teachers unions have been taking vocal stands and threatening strikes on the issue of schools reopening. The unions have voiced reluctance to return to the classrooms, but they also have resisted full-day remote learning tools such as live video, presumably as a way to protect teacher jobs, according to the New York Times.

The Democratic Party expresses support for the labor movement in its platform and generally wins labor union endorsements.﻿﻿ Some unions, such as law enforcement groups, support Republican candidates. In its 2016 platform, which has been readopted for 2020 intact, the Republican Party sees unions as a threat to freedom in the workplace and opposes legislation that makes it easier for unions to organize.﻿﻿

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A labor union, officially known as a "labor organization," is an entity formed by workers in a particular trade, industry, or company for the purpose of improving pay, benefits, and working conditions. Also called a "trade union" or a "worker's union," a labor union selects representatives to negotiate with employers in a process known as collective bargaining.

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One of the most powerful monopolies in the 1900s was "That of the Standard Oil Company founded by John D Rockefeller and based in Cleveland Ohio" according to (ohiohistorycentral.org, para 3, N.D). The government used it's power to break up this monopoly as well as a many other monopolies,  the law they passed was called the "Sherman Antitrust Act" stated in the article called (investopedia, para 3, N.D). This act was placed in 1890 to abolish monopolies and trusts.

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Monopolies came to colonial America well before the United States was born. The large-scale public works needed to make the New World hospitable to Old World immigrants required large companies to carry them out.

These companies were granted exclusive contracts by the colonial governors. Even after the American Revolution, many colonial holdovers continued to function due to the contracts and land that they held.

A monopoly is characterized by a lack of competition, which tends to lead to higher prices and inferior products. However, the great economic power that monopolies hold has also had positive consequences for the U.S.

Sherman's Hammer

The Sherman Antitrust Act was passed in 1890 in response to a public outcry over price-fixing abuses by monopolies.

This act banned trusts and monopolistic combinations that placed "unreasonable" restrictions on interstate and international trade. The act was a hammer that gave the federal government the power to shatter big companies into smaller pieces.

Despite this act's passage, the next 50 years saw the formation of many domestic monopolies. At the same time, it was used to attack several monopolies, with varying levels of success. The general trend seemed to have been to make a distinction between good monopolies and bad monopolies.

One example is International Harvester, which produced cheap agricultural equipment for a largely agrarian nation and was thus considered untouchable, lest the farmers rebel. American Tobacco, on the other hand, was suspected of charging more than a fair price for cigarettes, which were at the time touted as a cure for everything from asthma to menstrual cramps. American Tobacco consequently became a victim of the government's wrath and was broken up in 1911.

The Natural Monopoly

The oil industry was prone to what is called a natural monopoly because of the rarity of the products that it produced. John D. Rockefeller, the founder and chair of Standard Oil, and his partners took advantage of both the rarity of oil and the revenue produced from it to set up a monopoly.

The business practices and questionable tactics that Rockefeller used to create Standard Oil would make the Enron crowd blush. But the finished product was not nearly as damaging to the economy or the environment as the industry was before Rockefeller monopolized it.

In the early days of the oil industry, many competing oil companies were eager to find a source and drilled indiscriminately, pumping waste products into rivers or straight out on the ground rather than troubling with proper disposal. They cut costs by using shoddy pipelines that were prone to leakage.

By the time Standard Oil had cornered 90% of oil production and distribution in the U.S., it had learned how to make money off of even its industrial waste, with Vaseline being one of the new products that were developed.

The benefits of having a monopoly like Standard Oil in the country were only evident after it had built a nationwide infrastructure for oil distribution in order to avoid dependence on trains and their notoriously fluctuating costs.

Despite the eventual breakup of Standard Oil in 1911, the government realized that a monopoly could build up a reliable infrastructure and deliver low-cost service to a broader base of consumers than competing firms. That lesson influenced its decision to allow the AT&T monopoly to continue until 1982.

It is clear that when a monopoly can deliver a quality product consistently at a reasonable price-particularly when startup costs for competitors are astronomical-the government may allow it to exist as long as it can regulate it to protect consumers.

The Limitations of a Monopoly

Andrew Carnegie had gone a long way towards creating a monopoly in the steel industry when J.P. Morgan bought his steel company and merged it into U.S. Steel to create a monstrous corporation approaching the size of Standard Oil.

U.S. Steel actually did very little with the resources in its grasp, which can illustrate the limitations of a company that has one owner with a single vision.

The corporation survived its court battle with the Sherman Act and went on to lobby the government for protective tariffs to help it compete internationally.

U.S. Steel controlled about 60% of steel production at the time, but competing firms were hungrier, more innovative, and more efficient. Eventually, U.S. Steel stagnated as smaller companies ate more and more of its market share.

Clayton Improves Sherman's Aim

Following the breakup of sugar, tobacco, oil, and meatpacking monopolies, big business didn't know where to turn. There were no clear guidelines about what constituted monopolistic business practices.

The founders and management of so-called "bad monopolies" were enraged by the hands-off approach taken with International Harvester. They argued that the Sherman Act didn't make any allowances for a specific business or product and that its execution should be universal rather than operate like a lightning bolt that struck select businesses.

In response, the Clayton Act was introduced in 1914. It set some specific examples of practices that would attract Sherman's hammer. Among these were interlocking directorships, tie-in sales, and certain mergers and acquisitions if they substantially lessened competition in a market.

The Clayton Act was followed by a succession of other acts demanding government review before any large mergers or acquisitions were finalized.

These innovations gave businesses a slightly clearer picture of what not to do but did little to curb the randomness of antitrust action. Major League Baseball even found itself under investigation in the 1920s, but escaped by claiming to be a sport rather than a business and thus not classified as interstate commerce.

End of a Monopoly Era?

The last great American monopolies were created a century apart, and one lasted over a century. Others were very short-lived and some continue operating today.

AT&T Inc. ( T), a government-supported monopoly, was also an essential public utility. Like Standard Oil, the AT&T monopoly made the industry more efficient. It wasn't guilty of fixing prices, but rather of the potential to fix prices.

The breakup of AT&T in the 1980s gave birth to the regional Baby Bells. Over time, many of the Baby Bells began to merge and increase in size to serve a wider area.

The breakup of AT&T may have caused a sharp reduction in service quality and even higher prices for many customers. But that is now long past, and the descendants of the Baby Bells are finding a natural balance in the market without calling down Sherman's hammer again.

Microsoft Corp. ( MSFT) was never actually broken up even though it lost its antitrust case.

The case against it was centered on whether Microsoft was abusing its position as essentially a so-called non-coercive monopoly. A non-coercive monopoly exists because brand loyalty and consumer apathy keep people from searching for an alternative.

U.S. Steel couldn't dominate the market indefinitely because of innovative domestic and international competition. The same turned out to be true for Microsoft, at least in some market segments.

The Microsoft monopoly got a little chipped at the edges as rival operating systems gained ground and rival software, particularly open-source software, threatened the bundle business model upon which Microsoft was built. It also failed over time to dominate the internet browser wars. Because of this, the antitrust decision now seems irrelevant.

Meta (Formerly Facebook)

In today's world, technology companies are the new powerful companies, none so much as Meta Platforms, formerly Facebook ( META), which many see as a modern-day monopoly. In December 2020, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued the company, claiming that it is maintaining its social networking monopoly via anticompetitive conduct.

The FTC claimed that Meta has done this through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, two of the largest social media networks, as well as through imposing anticompetitive conditions on software developers.

The five most used social media platforms worldwide as of January 2021 are Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram. Meta owns four out of five of these platforms, or 80%. (Google owns YouTube.)

That is a significant amount of control over how personal data is shared and how advertising is allocated. Meta really doesn't have that much competition.

The FTC has called for a breakup of Meta through the divestiture of WhatsApp and Instagram, but whether it can succeed remains to be seen.

A monopoly in business is a company that dominates its sector or industry, meaning that it controls the majority of the market share of its goods or services, has little to no competitors, and its consumers have no real substitutes for the good or service provided by the business.

What Is a Monopoly in American History?

Why Are Monopolies Bad?

Is Amazon a Monopoly?

The Bottom Line

Globalization and the maturity of the world economy have prompted calls for the retirement of antitrust laws. In the early 1900s, anyone suggesting that the government didn't need to have a hammer to smash big business would have been eyed suspiciously.

Over the years, these calls have been coming from people like economist Milton Friedman, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, and everyday consumers.

But if the history of government and business is any indication, the government is more likely to increase the range and power of antitrust laws rather than relinquish such a useful weapon.

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Monopolies came to colonial America well before the United States was born. The large-scale public works needed to make the New World hospitable to Old World immigrants required large companies to carry them out. These companies were granted exclusive contracts by the colonial governors.