EQ: How were workers treated unfairly by employers during late 1800s and the early 1900s?

Business Problems

With the development of new inventions and the rise of corporations, life for the average

American worker began to change.

While small businesses continued to exist, more and more people were being employed in industrial jobs like by factories and mines.

Business Problems

Problem: Immigrant LaborMany new industrial jobs were

filled by immigrants.

Immigrants were often not only accustomed to a lower standard of living, but also desperate for work.

The immigrants would often be willing to take jobs that paid low wages and required long hours that native-born Americans would not.

Some people, desperate for employment, worked in sweatshops.

Sweatshops are small factories often found in buildings that have dangerous or unhealthy

(unsanitary) working conditions.

Employees usually work excessively long hours for low wages.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuuUms7ckH8&feature=player_detailpage&list=PLC1CD6FD037741AB6

One such sweatshop was the Triangle Shirtwaist Company located in New York City. On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the factory and took

the lives of 146 immigrant women, some as young as 15 years old.

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The owners had often locked the exits claiming that employees stole from the factory.

The 9th Floor

Immigrant Women Shirtwaist Employees

Problem:Children Working1870

750,000 children under the age of 15 working in mines and factories.

This did not include children who worked for their families in businesses or on farms.

1911 More than two million

American children under the age of 16 were working

Many worked 12 hours or more a day, six days a week, without going to school.

Children Working

Cannery: "...children as young as six employed as headers and cleaners (of shrimp and fish)... stand for shifts of 12 hours and longer in open sheds... hands

immersed in cold water..."

Problem:Women Workingo Women worked long

hours.

o Women made low wages

o Women worked in unsafe unsanitary conditions

Problem:Women Workingo Women usually

earned about half as much money as men.

o One woman wrote:

“It took me months and months to save up money to buy a dress or a pair of

shoes.”

Business Problems

IMMIGRANT LABOR CHILDREN WORKING

Worked long hours

Made low wages

Worked in unsafe and/or unsanitary conditions

Worked long hours

Made low wages

Worked in unsafe and/or unsanitary conditions

Could not attend school

Women Workingo Worked long hourso Made low wageso Worked in unsafe and/or unsanitary conditionso Usually earned about half as much as men

Let’s Review

Business Problem SolutionsEQ: What is a labor union and how did they attempt to fix the problems caused by the rise of big businesses?

Employees organized labor unions in an effort to:

1. get safer working conditions2. have shorter work weeks with

fewer hours3. get higher wages (money)

Most business fought these unions and would fire employees who joined one.

Labor Unions Continued:

Mary Harris Jones, called “Mother” Jones by many, was one of the most famous labor union workers.

In 1900 when coal miners in Pennsylvania called a strike, “Mother” Jones gathered together a group of women to turn away strikebreakers.

In a strike, workers refuse to work to try to force business owners to meet their demands.

In 1903 “Mother” Jones led a group of children to protest child labor in mines. As a result, Pennsylvania passed a law in 1905 forbidding children under the

age of 14 from working.

In 1886 Samuel Gompers formed the American Federation of Labor, or AFL.

The AFL is an organization that helped get laws passed to:

1. end child labor,2. shortened working hours3. and required employers to pay workers for

injuries they sustained while working