The Pros And Cons Of Craft Unionism

In 1955, the AFL and the CIO merged to form the American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). The combination of these two previously rival unions made for the longest lasting and most significant labour federation in America. The AFL-CIO still strives to have workers receive fair rewards for their work including but not limited to; fair wages, reduced hours, benefits, improved conditions, and improved safety. The most significant change since the AFL’s founding in 1886 is that membership is not restricted to race, creed, sex or colour which although has changed alongside to modern day social views, this shows that a union, or a labour federation, can succeed without extreme restriction of membership – alternatively

to Gompers’ beliefs. Having said this, there must still be some restriction within each union that the AFL-CIO represents as this restriction helps workers to achieve occupation specific gains and reform.

Unions and labour federations that organize their workers according to specific crafts like the AFL-CIO follow a structure of craft unionism, and this in combination with the AFL-CIO’s large population helps the organisation to work on a grander legal and political scale in comparison to previous labour federations in history as having significant union support can greatly increase the chances of winning in a case or argument. Craft unionism can however be criticized for this same reason as goals that the union attempts to achieve are often on a similarly grand scale and therefore does not represent some workers against individual or single employers. Craft unions also frequently represent critical skills that would be able to shut down an entire industry if workers were to strike. If this were to occur, it could lead to workers from the same industry, but represented under a different or no union, to be temporarily forced out of work and yet by the end of the ordeal, this group of unrepresented workers would receive none of the benefits that the craft union workers were originally striking to

achieve. Similarly, if a number of industrial union workers were to strike, the craft union workers within the same industry may want to conduct a sympathy strike in order for the strike to be more effective, however craft unionism obligates workers to continue even in conjunction with scabs, or by having to cross their union’s picket line as according to a no-strike clause that these union members signed.

Union strikebreaking, although more common to craft unions, is not exclusive to this group and in some cases, industrial union workers will have signed a no-strike clause as well. It is very dependent on the issue and occupation at hand to say whether craft unionism or industrial unionism would be preferred, but either way being a part of a large union comes with many long term benefits as we can see through the history of the AFL¬ and its continued success and growth since 1886 and how conditions in American labour have changed since the Gilded Age due to Gompers’ effective foundations for labour federations and unions alike. Gompers’ original vision of fairly rewarded labour can be said to have been met and if anything exceeded of any initial expectations due to its current involvement in politics which during the AFL’s founding was mostly

ignored.