Work Stoppage

Episode 2 - National Labor Organizations, But For Who?

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For the second part of our series on the history of women workers in the US labor movement, we discuss the earliest attempts to form national labor organizations. Coming out of the Civil War, women were fighting against exploitation in the workplace, but were excluded from most of the trade union movement which focused exclusively on men. But with the formation of national organizations like the National Labor Union, the Knights of Labor, and finally the American Federation of Labor, these broad based organizations were forced to put forward some semblance of a united working class political platform. In each case, the leadership expressed support for equal pay for equal work, and in each case prior to the 20th century, the commitment to that claim would come up short. But in spite of the chauvinist opposition from the top, women workers organized in greater numbers than ever before.

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