ABSTRACT
“What Labor has fought to get, Labor must fight to keep.” Those words, invoked by Minnesota Governor Floyd B. Olson in the depths of the Great Depression, are a good introduction into the history of the American labor movement. Throughout the past 150 years, labor movements at the local and national level have been organized to improve the conditions of employment, wages, and benefits. As today’s workers know, organizing labor unions has not been easy. Even successful strikes and campaigns often result in only temporary victories. Yet, the struggle to achieve what many have called “Industrial Democracy” has embraced the vision of a more equitable distribution of the nation’s wealth and prosperity, a sharing of cultural goods as well as material ones, and a bid for workers to have greater control over their own lives and those of their communities. While the labor movement has gained and lost, it retains influence and power in political and economic life. For these reasons, the legitimacy and power of organized labor continues to generate conflict in the workplace and in government. Even in the twenty-first century, despite the political clout of its conservative opponents, labor has played an important role in our national history and in the history of American democracy.
