Why Workers Joined Unions

One of the reasons workers joined unions was the effort to reduce the workday from 12 to 10 hours. People were interested in joining together in pursuit of common objectives for workers. Workers were tired of working long hours and being paid very little, so they banded together to achieve common goals, such as better pay, benefits, promotion rules. Workers believed unions would help feel their economic needs, which were not being met. Fairness in the workplace is another reason people joined unions. Early in the industrial era, workers were lucky if they made enough money to eat. There was no minimum wage laws and many employers choose to pay their workers in company script, redeemable only at the company store. It was common for employees
Workers could not afford and did not have access to health care. If they got sick or injured, they were on their own. If individuals were too sick to work, they lost their job and had no money to survive. It was not until workers formed unions, and fought together that things began to improve (SBCTC, 2014). It can be said that workers back then had to join unions to survive. In the early days of the labor movement, before the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935 (also called the Wagener Act), there were few laws that addressed the upraise of unions. Employers considered union activity as illegal conspiracies, and at first judges agreed with them (Shmoop Editorial Team, 2008). In 1806, a Massachusetts court ruled that it was illegal for employees to band together to try to get wage increases. The courts based their ruling on the concept that the purpose of a union was coercion. Individual liberty had been the ideal of the American Revolution, and the courts help tightly to that concept (Shmoop Editorial Team, 2008). They were protecting the property rights of the business owners, but also the freedom of the