Labor union

British workers organized collectively for decades before the law stopped calling it a crime.

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Workers in England had been forming combinations to negotiate wages and conditions since at least the eighteenth century. The practice was illegal. The Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800 made it a criminal offense for workers to organize collectively for the purpose of improving wages or reducing hours.¹

In 1824, Parliament repealed the Combination Acts, largely through the efforts of radical tailor Francis Place and Member of Parliament Joseph Hume.² Workers were now legally permitted to form associations, though restrictions on their activities remained. An 1825 amendment limited the scope of legal union activity, but the principle of lawful combination had been established.

The movement grew rapidly. In 1868, the Trades Union Congress was founded in Manchester, creating a national coordinating body.³ By the early twentieth century, unions had become a major political force in Britain, forming the backbone of the Labour Party.

In the United States, the American Federation of Labor was founded in 1886 under Samuel Gompers, organizing skilled workers by craft.⁴ The Congress of Industrial Organizations, formed in 1935, organized workers by industry rather than skill, reaching into steel mills, automobile plants, and meatpacking houses. The two merged in 1955.

Union membership in the United States peaked at roughly 35 percent of the non-agricultural workforce in the mid-1950s. By 2023, the figure had fallen to approximately 10 percent, with private-sector union density at 6 percent.⁵

Timeline

1799, The Combination Acts made it a criminal offense for British workers to organize collectively.
1824, Parliament repealed the Combination Acts, legalizing worker associations.
1868, The Trades Union Congress was founded in Manchester.
1886, Samuel Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor.

Endnotes

Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb, The History of Trade Unionism (London: Longmans, Green, 1894).
E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London: Victor Gollancz, 1963).
Trades Union Congress, official history.
Philip Taft, The A.F. of L. in the Time of Gompers (New York: Harper, 1957).
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Union Members Summary," January 2024.