Nevertheless, real wages earned by unskilled workers rose 44 percent from the Civil War to World War I with most of the increase coming after the Depression of 1893. Women often went to work in factories or took on piecemeal work at home to supplement family incomes, struggling to rise above the poverty line. They suffered periods of unemployment, especially during economic downturns, and did not have bargaining power to join labor unions in order to demand better pay or conditions. They were easily replaceable by other workers seeking employment and therefore they received lower wages. Millions of southeastern Europeans and migrants from rural America who settled in cities and worked in industry were unskilled or semi-skilled workers, often hindered by unfamiliarity with American language and urban culture. The experience of individual workers often varied widely and depended upon how skilled they were. If the employer and the union could not agree to the terms of a labor contract, the union might call a strike, or a work stoppage, to add pressure on the employer to cede to union demands. All unions, however, acted on behalf of their members to attempt to negotiate better pay, hours, and working conditions. Unions had different characters and took varied approaches to bargaining with employers. Some workers were forced to join a union when it created a “closed shop” (all the workers had to join the union to be employed) though some workplaces were still an “open shop” (workers had a choice whether to join). When workers joined unions, they surrendered their individual freedom of contract to negotiate with management, but gained power in numbers. In the nineteenth century, workers began to form labor unions, which were worker organizations created to bargain collectively with the management of companies rather than leave each worker to bargain on his own behalf. Later, this was formalized by the introduction of Taylorism, or time-motion studies in which workers were required to perform certain tasks within a standard period of time. Factory management, focused on the goal of increasing profit, demanded constant maximum efficiency and effort from each worker, which they were not accustomed to on the farm or in artisan shops.

They worked long, grueling hours in dangerous factories, mines, or railroads that led to thousands of accidental injuries and deaths annually. Workers did not produce an object from start to finish, but rather contributed labor to a segmented part of mass production. Industrial employees now worked according to the constraints of industrial time rather than setting their own hours as artisans. In the late nineteenth century, millions of Americans found employment in industrial jobs and discovered that the industrial revolution had fundamentally altered the nature of work. Background Essay: Workers in the Gilded Ageĭirections: Read the essay and answer the review questions at the end.

Homestead strike gilded age