ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys the ambiguous relationship of unemployed workers to labor unions through an historical overview of organized labor’s role in the unemployed movement in nineteenth and twentieth century America. While unions have identified with the predicament of unemployed workers from their origins in the early nineteenth century, they have seldom regarded the jobless as a realistic base to strengthen the organized labor movement. By 1894, American Federation of Labor (AFL) reasserted a position of craft exclusiveness and opposition to industrial unionism and by the turn of the century, craft unionism became guiding philosophy. The AFL continued to oppose any form of organization of the unemployed. New Deal and government jobs programs established under the Roosevelt administration contributed to the growth of trade union activities once unemployed groups began to bargain collectively for their former members. Until the late 1960s the AFL-Congress of Industrial Organizations and its member unions were successful in providing a modicum of job security for membership.
