- Person
- Samuel Gompers
- Lived
- 1850–1924
- Field
- Labour movement
- From
- British-born American
The story
When Samuel Gompers began his working life at a cigar-maker's bench in the 1860s, workers in many trades laboured long days in dusty, badly lit shops for wages that could be cut almost at will. Gompers came to believe that the most direct way to improve their lives was through strong economic organisation rather than political parties.
As a young man he studied socialist ideas, but his mentor, the cigar maker Ferdinand Laurrell, urged him to put his faith in trade unionism. Gompers developed what became known as a "pure and simple" approach: unions should first build economic strength and use it to win practical gains. He promoted thorough organisation and collective bargaining to secure shorter hours and higher wages, which he considered the essential first steps to emancipating labour.
His aim was for workers to enjoy what he called an "American" standard of living: safe working conditions, a decent home, decent food and clothing, and enough money to educate their children. In 1911 he summed up the movement's mission as protecting the wage-worker now, raising his pay, cutting hours off the long workday and improving the safety and sanitation of the workshop.
While he kept the AFL out of party politics, he encouraged union members to vote with their economic interests in mind. He wrote widely on the cause, including pamphlets on the eight-hour workday and on organised labour's attitude toward child labour, and a 1920 pamphlet explaining collective bargaining as labour's proposal for greater industrial peace. He also campaigned against the use of court injunctions to stop strikes, and he hailed the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 as "Labor's Magna Carta".
His approach shaped American industrial relations. His belief in negotiating directly with employers led to the development of procedures for collective bargaining and contracts between labour and management that remain in use today. The eight-hour day and the union contract, once radical demands, became ordinary features of working life.
Why it matters
The collective bargaining model Gompers championed has helped generations of workers negotiate fair pay, reasonable hours and safer conditions directly with their employers.
About Samuel Gompers
London-born Jewish cigar maker who founded and led the American Federation of Labor for nearly four decades, making collective bargaining a fixture of American working life.
More about Samuel Gompers
- Samuel Gompers backed amnesty for political prisonersAlthough he strongly supported the First World War, Samuel Gompers later backed amnesty for people imprisoned under wartime emergency laws for their opinions.
- Samuel Gompers spoke for 25,000 jobless workers in 1893During the 1893 depression, Samuel Gompers addressed 25,000 unemployed workers in Chicago and argued that cutting wages hurt not only workers but the whole economy.
- Samuel Gompers founded the American Federation of LaborSamuel Gompers helped found the American Federation of Labor in 1886 and led it as president, except for one year, until his death in 1924.
- Samuel Gompers helped build Canada's union movementIn the 1890s and 1900s Samuel Gompers helped Canada's Trades and Labour Congress with money and organisers as part of his vision for an international federation of labour.
- Samuel Gompers chaired the 1919 labour commissionAt the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, Samuel Gompers chaired the Commission on International Labour Legislation, whose workers' rights charter was written into the Treaty of Versailles.
- Samuel Gompers gave union members sick and jobless benefitsAfter the cigar makers' union nearly collapsed in the 1870s, Samuel Gompers rebuilt it with sickness, accident, unemployment and death benefits that other unions copied.
Sources
- Samuel Gompers Wikipedia
- Samuel Gompers: Biography The Samuel Gompers Papers, University of Maryland
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