labor

labor: see birth.

labor, term used both for the effort of performing a task and for the workers engaged in the activity. In ancient times much of the work was done by slaves (see slavery). In the feudal period agricultural labor was in the main performed by the serf. In medieval towns, however, the skilled artisans of the craft guilds became influential citizens. Many manual labor jobs were eliminated with the introduction of machinery (mid-18th cent.), thus creating a labor surplus (see Industrial Revolution). With increased competition for jobs and consequent decreasing wages, a form of labor contract came into use in Great Britain and its colonies, called indenture, by which people could hire themselves out for a certain number of years either for a lump sum of money or to pay off a debt. This practice disappeared by the end of the 19th cent. From the last quarter of the 19th cent. the condition of most manual labor has improved slowly in industrial countries through organization (see union, labor), permitting collective bargaining with employers and successful pressure on governments for protective legislation. In fact, the term labor is today most frequently used to signify organized labor. For labor disputes, see strike. See also child labor; migrant labor; peonage.

labor, division of: see division of labor.

Labor, United States Department of, federal executive department established in 1913 and charged with administering and enforcing statutes that promote the welfare of U.S. wage earners, improve their working conditions, and advance their opportunities for profitable employment. Before gaining separate cabinet status in 1913, labor had been represented by various federal agencies. The first such agency was established in 1884 as the Bureau of Labor within the Dept. of the Interior. In 1888 an independent department was created, but in 1903 labor was placed in the new Dept. of Commerce and Labor, which was reorganized as two cabinet-level departments in 1913.

The Dept. of Labor has eight major specialized divisions: the Bureau of International Labor Affairs, the Employment and Training Administration, the Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration, the Employment Standards Administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Veterans' Employment and Training Service. A ninth division, the Office of the American Workplace, established in 1993, was terminated when congress failed to provide the necessary appropriations. The Bureau of International Labor Affairs deals with the interaction among U.S. foreign policy, foreign labor developments, and U.S. labor developments. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, a direct descendant of the 1884 Bureau of Labor, gathers data in the field of labor economics. The agencies of the Employment Standards Administration administer federal labor legislation and the administration conducts research to support their programs; the agencies (and the legislation they administer) include the Wage and Hour Division (minimum wage and fringe benefits) and the Office of Worker's Compensation Programs (compensation for job-related injuries). The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is responsible for ensuring the best possible U.S. working conditions in terms of safety and health. The Women's Bureau promotes the employment, efficiency, and welfare of wage-earning women.

Semiskilled or unskilled workers who move from one region to another, offering their services on a temporary, usually seasonal, basis. In North America, migrant labour is generally employed in agriculture and moves seasonally from south to north following the harvest. In Europe and the Middle East, migrant labour usually involves urban rather than agricultural employment and calls for longer periods of residence. The migrant labour market is often disorganized and exploitative. Many workers are supervised by middlemen such as labour contractors and crew leaders, who recruit and transport them and dispense their pay. Labourers commonly endure long hours, low wages, poor working conditions, and substandard housing. In some countries, child labour is widespread among migrant labourers, and even in the U.S. those children who do not work often do not go to school, since schools are usually open only to local residents. Workers willing to accept employment on these terms are usually driven by even worse conditions in their home countries. Labour organizing is made difficult by mobility and by low rates of literacy and political participation, though some migrant labourers in the U.S. have been unionized. Seealso Cesar Chavez.

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Association of workers in a particular trade, industry, or plant, formed to obtain improvements in pay, benefits, and working conditions through collective action. The first fraternal and self-help associations of labourers appeared in Britain in the 18th century, and the era of modern labour unions began in Britain, Europe, and the U.S. in the 19th century. The movement met with hostility from employers and governments, and union organizers were regularly prosecuted. British unionism received its legal foundation in the Trade-Union Act of 1871. In the U.S. the same effect was achieved more slowly through a series of court decisions that whittled away at the use of injunctions and conspiracy laws against unions. The founding of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886 marked the beginning of a successful, large-scale labour movement in the U.S. The unions brought together in the AFL were craft unions, which represented workers skilled in a particular craft or trade. Only a few early labour organizers argued in favour of industrial unions, which would represent all workers, skilled or unskilled, in a single industry. The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was founded by unions expelled from the AFL for attempting to organize unskilled workers, and by 1941 it had assured the success of industrial unionism by organizing the steel and automotive industries (see AFL-CIO). The use of collective bargaining to settle wages, working conditions, and disputes is standard in all noncommunist industrial countries, though union organization varies from country to country. In Britain, labour unions displayed a strong inclination to political activity that culminated in the formation of the Labour Party in 1906. In France, too, the major unions became highly politicized; the Confédération Générale du Travail (formed in 1895) was allied with the Communist Party for many years, while the Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail is more moderate politically. Japan developed a form of union organization known as enterprise unionism, which represents workers in a single plant or multiplant enterprise rather than within a craft or industry.

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Body of law that applies to matters such as employment, wages, conditions of work, labour unions, and labour-management relations. Laws intended to protect workers, including children, from abusive employment practices were not enacted in significant numbers until the late 19th century in Europe and slightly later in the U.S. In Asia and Africa, labour legislation did not emerge until the 1940s and '50s. Employment laws cover matters such as hiring, training, advancement, and unemployment compensation. Wage laws cover the forms and methods of payment, pay rates, social security, pensions, and other matters. Legislation on working conditions regulates hours, rest periods, vacations, child labour, equality in the workplace, and health and safety. Laws on trade unions and labour-management relations address the status of unions, the rights and obligations of workers' and employers' organizations, collective bargaining agreements, and rules for settling strikes and other disputes. Seealso arbitration; mediation.

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Study of how workers are allocated among jobs, how their rates of pay are determined, and how their efficiency is affected by various factors. The labour force of a country includes all those who work for gain in any capacity as well as those who are unemployed but seeking work. Many factors influence how workers are utilized and how much they are paid, including qualities of the labour force itself (such as health, level of education, distribution of special training and skills, and degree of mobility), structural characteristics of the economy (e.g., proportions of heavy manufacturing, technology, and service industries), and institutional factors (including the extent and power of labour unions and employers' associations and the presence of minimum-wage laws). Miscellaneous factors such as custom and variations in the business cycle are also considered. Certain general trends are widely accepted by labour economists; for instance, wage levels tend to be higher in jobs that involve high risk, in industries that require higher levels of education or training, in economies that have high proportions of such industries, and in industries that are heavily unionized.

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In economics, the general body of wage earners. In classical economics, labour is one of the three factors of production, along with capital and land. Labour can also be used to describe work performed, including any valuable service rendered by a human agent in the production of wealth, other than accumulating and providing capital. Labour is performed for the sake of its product or, in modern economic life, for the sake of a share of the aggregate product of the community's industry. The price per unit of time, or wage rate, commanded by a particular kind of labour in the market depends on a number of variables, such as the technical efficiency of the worker, the demand for that person's particular skills, and the supply of similarly skilled workers. Other variables include training, experience, intelligence, social status, prospects for advancement, and relative difficulty of the work. All these factors make it impossible for economists to assign a standard value to labour. Instead, economists often quantify labour hours according to the quantity and value of the goods or services produced.

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Specialization in the production process. Complex jobs can usually be less expensively completed by a large number of people each performing a small number of specialized tasks than by one person attempting to complete the entire job. The idea that specialization reduces costs, and thereby the price the consumer pays, is embedded in the principle of comparative advantage. Division of labour is the basic principle underlying the assembly line in mass production systems. See Émile Durkheim.

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Employment of boys and girls in occupations deemed unfit for children. Such labour is strictly controlled in many countries as a result of the effective enforcement of laws passed in the 20th century (e.g., the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959). In developing nations the use of child labour is still common. Restrictive legislation has proved ineffective in impoverished societies with few schools, although some improvements have resulted from global activism, such as boycotts of multinational firms alleged to be exploiting child labour abroad.

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U.S. government agency charged with administering the National Labor Relations Act (1935). The three-member NLRB, appointed by the president, organizes elections to determine whether employees wish to be represented by a labour union in collective bargaining and monitors labour practices by employers and unions. It does not initiate investigations; its involvement must be sought by employers, individuals, or unions. Though it lacks enforcement power for its orders, it can prosecute cases in court.

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(1959) Legislation in the U.S. designed to counter labour-union corruption. Officially called the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, it instituted federal penalties for labour officials who misused union funds or prevented union members from exercising their legal rights. The legislation was passed in response to Senate investigations that uncovered connections between labour and organized crime. Provisions included a strict ban on secondary boycotts (union efforts to stop one employer from dealing with another employer who is being struck or boycotted) and greater freedom for individual states to set the terms of labour relations within their borders.

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Annual holiday devoted to the recognition of working people's contribution to society. It is observed on the first Monday in September in the U.S. and Canada. It was first celebrated in New York City on Sept. 5, 1882, under the sponsorship of the Knights of Labor. Various U.S. states observed the holiday before 1894, when Congress passed a bill making Labor Day a national holiday. It is often celebrated with parades and speeches, as well as political rallies, and the day is sometimes the official kickoff date for national political campaigns in the U.S. In most other countries, workers are honoured on May Day.

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First important national labour organization in the U.S. Founded in 1869 by Uriah Smith Stephens as the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor, it included both skilled and unskilled workers, and it proposed a system of workers' cooperatives to replace capitalism. To protect its members from employers' reprisals, it originally maintained secrecy. Under Terence V. Powderly (1879–93) it favoured open arbitration with management and discouraged strikes. National membership reached 700,000 in 1886. Strikes by militant groups and the Haymarket Riot caused an antiunion reaction that rapidly reduced the organization's influence. A splinter group left to form the AFL (later AFL-CIO).

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John Brophy (1883 – 1963) was an important figure in the United Mine Workers of America (UWMA) in the 1920s and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s and 1940s. He was the last major challenger to John L. Lewis' power within the UMWA and, after Lewis hired him back, a key leader within the CIO.

The Mine Workers

Brophy was born in Lancashire, England to a family of miners. His family emigrated to the United States when he was nine years old and found work in the central Pennsylvania coal mines. Brophy began working in the mines at age eleven; by the age of fourteen, he had joined the UMWA. He rose within the union to become president of District 2 of the UMWA.

Brophy ran against Lewis for President of the UMWA in 1926 on a "Save the Union" slate, calling for nationalization of the coal industry. He probably would have won the election if the vote had been held democratically.

Lewis drove Brophy and his supporters from the union after his victory in 1926. More specifically Lewis accused Brophy of dual unionism, based on the support that he had received from the Trade Union Educational League, an arm of the Communist Party which had supported his candidacy. The CPUSA later burned its bridges with Brophy, denouncing him as a reformist, after it adopted a policy of opposition to mainstream unions during the "Third Period".

Brophy was a self-educated man, who spent his time after Lewis' expelled him from the UMWA studying economics and philosophy. He was also deeply religious, relying on "Rerum Novarum", the papal encyclical of Pope Leo XIII supporting the right of workers to form unions, as the bridge between his faith and his commitment to the rights of workers.

The CIO

Brophy was outside the labor movement for the next few years until 1933, when Lewis brought him back to work for the UMWA as it regained its membership in the early days of the New Deal. Lewis made him the CIO’s first National Director from 1935 to 1938, then reassigned him in favor of one of his own loyalists. Brophy remained with the CIO after Lewis left it in 1941; his open disagreement with Lewis' opposition to Roosevelt's candidacy in 1940 probably would have led to his departure from the CIO if Lewis himself had not left it.

Lewis' successor, Philip Murray, named him the Director of Industrial Union Councils. That position proved to be an important one in the expulsion of CP-led unions from the CIO following World War II. He was one of the strongest advocates for centralized control of the CIO's political action committees and the industrial councils, which were made up from delegates from the more or less autonomous unions affiliated with the CIO but which were themselves creations of the CIO, obliged to follow CIO policy imposed from above. In 1948 he led the crackdown on local labor councils and state bodies within the CIO that had endorsed Henry Wallace or opposed the Marshall Plan in contravention of national CIO policy.

Brophy also served as a CIO representative to international labor organizations such as the World Federation of Trade Unions and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and as a labor representative on a number of government agencies, such as the National War Labor Board, the Committee on Fair Employment Practice established by Executive Order 8802 and the Wage Stabilization Board. He continued serving with the AFL-CIO after the CIO reunited with the AFL in 1955.

Notes

References

• John Brophy, A Miner's Life: An Autobiography, edited by O. P. Hall (Madison:The University of Wisconsin Press, 1964).