An update to the classic history of labor and unions for a post-9/11 world. Highly acclaimed and widely read since its first publication in 1986, American Workers, American Unions provides a concise and compelling history of American workers and their unions in the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first. Taking into account recent important work on the 1970s and the Reagan revolution, the fourth edition newly considers the stagflation issue, the rise of globalization and big box retailing, the failure of Congress to pass legislation supporting the right of public employees to collective bargaining, the defeat in Congress of legislation to revise the National Labor Relations Act, the emasculation of the Humphrey-Hawkins Act, and the changing dynamics of blue-collar politics. In addition to important new information on the 1970s and 1980s, the fourth edition contains a completely new final chapter. Largely written by Timothy J. Minchin, this chapter provides a rare survey of American workers and their unions between 9/11 and the 2012 presidential election. Gilbert J. Gall presents new information on government workers and their recent battles to defend workplace rights. - Description from the publisher

This provides short biographic pieces on figures in organized labor.

Moreno applies insights of the law-and-economics movement to formulate a powerfully compelling labor-race theorem of elegant simplicity: White unionists found that race was a convenient basis on which to do what unions do -- control the labor supply. Not racism pure and simple but "the economics of discrimination" explains historic black absence and under-representation in unions. Moreno's sweeping reexamination stretches from the antebellum period to the present, integrating principal figures such as Frederick Douglass and Samuel Gompers, Isaac Myers and Booker T. Washington, and W. E. B. Du Bois and A. Philip Randolph. He traces changing attitudes and practices during the simultaneous black migration to the North and consolidation of organized labor's power, through the confusing and conflicted post-World War II period, during the course of the civil rights movement, and into the era of affirmative action. Maneuvering across a wide span of time and a broad array of issues, Moreno brings remarkable clarity to the question of the importance of race in unions. He impressively weaves together labor, policy, and African American history into a cogent, persuasive revisionist study that cannot be ignored. - Description from the publisher

Preface Introduction by Herbert G. Gutman 1 CALL YOUR OLD MASTER--"MASTER": SOUTHERN POLITICAL LEADERS AND NEGRO LABOR DURING PRESIDENTIAL RECONSTRUCTION Thomas Wagstaff 2 NEGRO LABOR IN THE WESTERN CATTLE INDUSTRY, 1866-1900 Kenneth W. Porter 3 BLACK WORKERS AND LABOR UNIONS IN BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA, 1897-1904 Paul B. Worthman 4 LABOR CONFLICT AND RACIAL VIOLENCE: THE BLACK WORKER IN CHICAGO, 1894-1919 William M. Tuttle, Jr. 5 THE WILSON ADMINISTRATION AND THE WARTIME MOBILIZATION OF BLACK AMERICANS, 1917-1918 Jane Lang Scheiber and Harry N. Scheiber 6 CLOSED SHOP AND WHITE SHOP: THE NEGRO RESPONSE TO COLLECTIVE BARGAINING, 1933-1935 Raymond Wolters 7 RACE, CLASS, AND PROGRESS: BLACK LEADERSHIP AND INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM, 1936-1945 James S. Olson. - Description from the publisher

The only book of its kind in the field of Afro-American labor studies, this introductory reference surveys the diverse field of Afro-American labor literature from the end of the Civil War to the present. Over ninety percent of the 583 entries have been annotated. Much of the material has been cross-indexed and categorized according to its central focus and approach to the study of Black labor. The bibliography derives its material primarily from books, pamphlets, government documents, dissertations, and privately funded or sponsored studies. Because of the diverse methodological and philosophical approaches to the topic of Black labor, this volume encompasses a variety of related topics, such as employment, legal studies, trade unions, and women. - Description from the publisher

From the time the first tracks were laid in the early 19th century, the railroad has occupied a crucial place in America's historical imagination. Now, for the first time, Eric Arnesen gives us an untold piece of that vital American institution - the story of African Americans on the railroad. - Description from the publisher

This contributor volume brings the best work of such established historians as Morris Schappes, Nathan Godfried, and Eric Foner together with the newer voices of Elizabeth Sharpe and Jennifer Bosch. Its eleven essays challenge the boundary between the older, institutional labor history and the more recent social histories of working people. By combining a focus on culture, women's history, and race relations that is characteristic of the best of the latest working class history with an emphasis on formal protests, leadership, and power, the volume suggests that a truly new labor history will reflect a variety of concerns and draw on diverse inspirations. In three chapters elucidating new features of labor biography and working-class politics, the volume's opening section considers George Edwin McNeill, the Socialist Party's efforts to free Eugene Debs, and the Socialist Party's left wing. Turning to women in labor history, the next section includes two chapters on Union W.A.G.E., an organization of mainly white, working class women, and Ellen Gates Starr, co-founder of Hull House. In a third section on African-American history, two scholars consider Black labor and African-American laborers in the Reconstruction era. The final section considers culture, education, and the working class. These chapters analyze the role of broadcasting and the Socialists' effort to establish an alternative radio station; labor education in the 1920s; the literary portrayal of sailors in Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, and the victims of the Rapp-Coudert Committee. By placing workers and their organizations convincingly within the context of their culture, this volume helps to demonstrate the ways the labor movement has remade this nation and how the nation has shaped the labor movement. - Description from the publisher

Available online from the Hathi Trust External
Continued by Directory of National Unions and Employee Associations. There is a "Union Search" which is a modernized version online from the Department of Labor's Office of Labor-Management Standard.

Available online from the Hathi Trust External
Continued by Directory of U.S. Labor Organizations

Holdings: 1984-2017
This title was previously known as Directory of National Unions and Employee Associations and before that Directory of National and International Labor Unions in the United States. This title began in the early 1982 and ceased publication with the 2018 edition.

Available online from the Hathi Trust External
Available online from the Online Books Page External
This title traces industrial society so it is more general or broad and is included to provide a history of how people worked in U.S. history though volumes covering later time periods do look at organized labor and unions. It is actually reproduction of original materials.
Vol 1 - Plantation and Frontier
Vol 2 - Plantation and Frontier
Vol 3 - Labor Conspiracy Cases 1806-1842
Vol 4 - Labor Conspiracy Cases 1806-1842
Vol 5 - Labor Movement 1820-1840
Vol 6 - Labor Movement 1820-1840
Vol 7 - Labor Movement 1840-1860
Vol 8 - Labor Movement 1840-1860
Vol 9 - Labor Movement 1860-1880
Vol 10-Labor Movement 1860-1880  

Containing over 650 entries, the Encyclopedia encompasses labor history from the colonial era to the present. Articles focus on states, regions, periods, economic sectors and occupations, race-relations, ethnicity, and religion, concepts and developments in labor economics, environmentalism, globalization, legal history, trade unions, strikes, organizations, individuals, management relations, and government agencies and commissions. Articles cover such issues as immigration and migratory labor, women and labor, labor in every war effort, slavery and the slave-trade, union-resistance by corporations such as Wal-Mart, and the history of cronyism and corruption, and the mafia within elements of labor history. Labor history is also considered in its representation in film, music, literature, and education. Important articles cover the perception of working-class culture, such as the surge in sympathy for the working class following September 11, 2001. Written as an objective social history, the Encyclopedia encapsulates the rise and decline, and continuous change of US labor history into the twenty-first century. - Description from the publisher

Eugene Debs (1855-1926) is regarded by many as American history's premier labor advocate. He was the leader of the Socialist party, five-time Socialist candidate for president, outspoken on the rights of all workers, and a persistent defender of America's democratic traditions.  Nick Salvatore's acclaimed biography offers a major reevaluation of Debs, the movements he launched, and his belief in American Socialism as an extension of the nation's democratic traditions. He also shows the relationship between Debs's public image and his private life as child, sibling, husband, and lover. Salvatore's Debs--weaknesses intact--emerges as a complex man, frustrated and angered by the glaring inequities of a new economic order, and willing to risk his freedom to preserve the essence of democratic society. - Description from the publisher

Biographies of some of Kentucky's unsung heroines -- Jenny Wiley, Lucy Audubon, Malinda Gatewood Bibb, Laura Clay, Enid Yandell, Cora Wilson Stewart, Mary Breckinridge, Alice Allison Dunnigan, and Loretta Lynn.

This looks at the history of labor from colonial days.

In this volume, leading union, management, and academic experts with diverse views examine the future of unions. The consensus of the contributors is that labor organizations are as important in modern economies as they were in mass production systems, but their viability depends on developing the appropriate structures and policies to represent workers’ interests under modern conditions. There is also agreement that democratic institutions and shared prosperity require the United States and other countries to reform their policies to better enable workers to organize to protect and promote their workplace as well as political and societal interests. - Description from the publisher

Available online from Census Bureau External
Available online from Hathi Trust External
There is a wealth of statistics covering all time periods of the United States - see Chapter D for labor statistics regarding the labor force including gender/race, general numbers, earnings, hours, working conditions, union membership, etc.
Census does have previous editions of a similar nature - one that covers 1789–1945 and the other that covers Colonial Times to 1957 that are digitized and available on their web site. This publication has been updated by the database Historical Statistics of the United States Millennial Edition which is also available in print. See TABLE Ba4783–4791 Union membership: 1880–1999 Contributed by Joshua L. Rosenbloom. Access to the database is limited to onsite researchers, check your local or university library for availability. The sources used to compile the tables included in this publication and the written discussion about topics can be very helpful for researchers in locating more detailed information.

A few volumes from an older edition are available online from the Hathi Trust External
Chapters are written by different authors but are chronological.
v. 1. Introduction; Colonial and Federal beginnings (to 1827); Citizenship (1827-1833); Trade unionism (1833-1839); Humanitarianism (1840-1860)
v. 2. Nationalisation (1860-1877); Upheaval and reorganisation
v. 3. Working conditions; Labor legislation
v. 4. Labor movements

Topics covered include: '80s Socialist movement and Labor; the Knights of Labor; Haymarket and May Day; Labor political action; The rise of the AFL; The Homestead strike; Coal creek and Cour d'Alene; American Railway Union; Pullman strike; Labor populism; Labor and the Spanish-American War; Labor and imperialism, etc. This is a multi volume set.
v1 From Colonial Times to the Founding of the American Federation of Labor
v2 From the Founding of the A. F. of L. to the Emergence of American Imperialism
v3 Policies and Practices of the A. F. of L., 1900-1909
v4 Industrial Workers of the World 1905-1915
v5 The AFL in the Progressive Era, 1910-1915
v6 On the Eve of America's Entrance into World War 1, 1915-1916
v7 Labor and World War I, 1914-1918
v8 Postwar Struggles 1918 -1920
v9 The T. U. E. L. to the End of the Gompers Era
v10 The TUEL, 1925-1929
v11 The Great Depression 1929-1932

This is a reprint of the 1911 ed. published as v. 10 of U.S. Bureau of Labor. Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-earners in the United States, issued as Senate document no. 645 of the 61st Congress, 2d session. It also includes bibliographical references.

Original publication available online from Project Gutenberg External
This is a work of fiction describing the meat industry and its working conditions, but the passages exposing health violations and unsanitary practices led to a public outcry that led to reforms including the Meat Inspection Act. - Description from the publisher

This book is in its 9th edition, and was designed to give a survey history of American labor from the founding of the country.

Biographical sketches of: William H. Sylvis, Terence V. Powderly, Samuel Gompers, Eugene V. Debs, William D. "Big Bill" Haywood, William Green, Rose Schneiderman, John L. Lewis, Sidney Hillman, Philip Murray, A. Philip Randolph, Walter Reuther, Jimmy Hoffa, George Meany, and Cesar Chavez.

Workers' rights and labor relations have been shaped by wars, depressions, government policies, and global competition. One hundred annotated primary documents spanning from 1827 to the present offer immediate access to the key contentious issues in American labor history. Over one-hundred annotated primary documents present compelling and informative snapshots of the shifting and often contentious role played by workers and organized labor in American politics, economics, and history. Shaped by wars, depressions, government policies, judicial rulings, and global competition, the history of worker's rights and labor relations often offers a grim picture of the pursuit of the American Dream. A narrative overview of each event, expert analysis, the text of primary sources contemporary to the time of the event, and ready reference materials will help students understand the conflicting issues behind these events and apply critical thinking skills to their evaluations of those issues. The documents provide insight into the views of people involved in the decisions, actions, and criticisms of each event covered. The work offers an overview of the history of American labor relations, then presents compelling and informative primary documents illustrating eleven key events in labor history: The Emergence of a Labor Movement, 1827-1837; The New England Shoemakers' Strike of 1860; The Railroad Strikes of 1877; The Pullman Strike and Boycott of 1894; The Lawrence Strike of 1912; The Miners' Program, 1919-1923; The Textile Strike of 1934; The General Motors Strike of 1936-37; The Taft-Hartley Act; The Memphis Sanitation Strike of 1968; and The Air Traffic Controllers Strike of 1981. Each section concludes with suggested readings, Web sites, and videos. - Description from the publisher

"Pre-eminent among historians of labor history." --Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. The textbook history of the 1920s is a story of Prohibition, flappers, and unbounded prosperity. For millions of industrial workers, however, the "roaring twenties" looked very different. Working-class communities were already in crisis in the years before the stock market crash of 1929. Strikes in the 1920s and attempts to organize the unemployed and fight evictions in the early 1930s often fell victim to police violence and repression. Here, Irving Bernstein recaptures the social history of the decade leading up to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's inauguration, uncovers its widespread inequality, and sheds light on the long-forgotten struggles that form the prelude to the great labor victories of the 1930s. "In other words, viewed from afar, most of the people who were suffering the hardships of the Depression were depressed and even ashamed, ready to blame themselves for their plight. But the train of developments that connects changes in social conditions to a changed consciousness is not simple. People, including ordinary people, harbor somewhere in their memories the building blocks of different and contradictory interpretations of what it is that is happening to them, of who should be blamed, and what can be done about it. Even the hangdog and ashamed unemployed worker who swings his lunch box and strides down the street so the neighbors will think he is going to a job can also have other ideas that only have to be evoked, and when they are make it possible for him on another day to rally with others and rise up in anger at his condition. --From the new introduction by Frances Fox Piven - Description from the publisher

There are references to important hearings, bills, reports, floor debates and discussions, etc.

Available online from the Internet Archive External
Available online from the Hathi Trust External
Parsons was American socialist, anarchist newspaper editor, orator, and labor activist and spoke a rally at Haymarket Square on May 4 that was the first day of the Haymarket Riot.

This text, designed for courses in US labor history or the history of American workers, presents a carefully selected group of readings that allow students to evaluate primary sources, test the interpretations of distinguished historians, and draw their own conclusions. Major Problems in the History of American Workers follows the proven Major Problems format, with 14-15 chapters per volume, a combination of documents and essays, chapter introductions, headnotes, and suggested readings. - Description from the publisher

This is a series of interviews on microfiche for "The Twentieth century trade union woman." Many of the interviews are with Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, Cap and Millinery Workers International Union, Communications Workers of America, United Farm Workers, teachers unions, the UAW, the WTU, SEIU, etc.

This is a reprint of the 1945 edition by Harry A Millis (appointed to the National Labor Relations Board in 1933) and Royal E. Montgomery. It looks at the history of organized labor from the 19th century though one chapter does have a small bit related to the last decade of the 18th century. It is presented in a roughly chronological fashion however, beginning with chapter 6 chapters are subject or issue focused. The table of contents is very detailed; beyond chapter titles there are titles of specific sections within a chapter. There is an extensive list of table with fairly deep data though none after the publication of the book.

In this classic account, historian Philip Foner traces the radical history of Black workers' contribution to the American labor movement. - Description from the publisher

Welcoming women, Blacks, and immigrants long before most other unions, the Wobblies from the start were labor's outstanding pioneers and innovators, unionizing hundreds of thousands of workers previously regarded as "unorganizable." Wobblies organized the first sit-down strike (at General Electric, Schenectady, 1906), the first major auto strike (6,000 Studebaker workers, Detroit, 1911), the first strike to shut down all three coalfields in Colorado (1927), and the first "no-fare" transit-workers' job-action (Cleveland, 1944). With their imaginative, colorful, and world-famous strikes and free-speech fights, the IWW wrote many of the brightest pages in the annals of working class emancipation. Wobblies also made immense and invaluable contributions to workers' culture. All but a few of America's most popular labor songs are Wobbly songs. IWW cartoons have long been recognized as labor's finest and funniest. The impact of the IWW has reverberated far beyond the ranks of organized labor. An important influence on the 1960s New Left, the Wobbly theory and practice of direct action, solidarity, and "class-war" humor have inspired several generations of civil rights and antiwar activists, and are a major source of ideas and inspiration for today's radicals. Indeed, virtually every movement seeking to "make this planet a good place to live" (to quote an old Wobbly slogan), has drawn on the IWW's incomparable experience. Originally published in 1964 and long out of print, Rebel Voices remains by far the biggest and best source on IWW history, fiction, songs, art, and lore. This new edition includes 40 pages of additional material from the 1998 Charles H. Kerr edition from Fred Thompson and Franklin Rosemont, and a new preface by Wobbly organizer Daniel Gross. - Description from the publisher

This is a biography of Robins and the WTUL.

This is an accessible and comprehensive YA history of the way the labor movement has shaped America and how it intersects with many of the major issues facing modern teens. This history begins with the earliest discoveries of America, thorough the colonial period, Gilded Age, and into the 21st century.

In a fresh and timely reinterpretation, Nelson Lichtenstein examines how trade unionism has waxed and waned in the nation's political and moral imagination, among both devoted partisans and intransigent foes. From the steel foundry to the burger-grill, from Woodrow Wilson to John Sweeney, from Homestead to Pittston, Lichtenstein weaves together a compelling matrix of ideas, stories, strikes, laws, and people in a streamlined narrative of work and labor in the twentieth century. The "labor question" became a burning issue during the Progressive Era because its solution seemed essential to the survival of American democracy itself. Beginning there, Lichtenstein takes us all the way to the organizing fever of contemporary Los Angeles, where the labor movement stands at the center of the effort to transform millions of new immigrants into alert citizen unionists. He offers an expansive survey of labor's upsurge during the 1930s, when the New Deal put a white, male version of industrial democracy at the heart of U.S. political culture. He debunks the myth of a postwar "management-labor accord" by showing that there was (at most) a limited, unstable truce. Lichtenstein argues that the ideas that had once sustained solidarity and citizenship in the world of work underwent a radical transformation when the rights-centered social movements of the 1960s and 1970s captured the nation's moral imagination. The labor movement was therefore tragically unprepared for the years of Reagan and Clinton: although technological change and a new era of global economics battered the unions, their real failure was one of ideas and political will. Throughout, Lichtenstein argues that labor's most important function, in theory if not always in practice, has been the vitalization of a democratic ethos, at work and in the larger society. To the extent that the unions fuse their purpose with that impulse, they can once again become central to the fate of the republic. State of the Union is an incisive history that tells the story of one of America's defining aspirations. This edition includes a new preface in which Lichtenstein engages with many of those who have offered commentary on State of the Union and evaluates the historical literature that has emerged in the decade since the book's initial publication. He also brings his narrative into the current moment with a final chapter, "Obama's America: Liberalism without Unions? - Description from the publisher

Powderly was a onetime mayor of Scranton, PA and Commissioner General of Immigration. He was an important figure in early Labor history and led the Knights of Labor of America. This book looks at early efforts to organize labor as well as the history of the Knights of Labor of America.

Available online from the National Bureau of Economic Research External
Provides good statistics on trade union membership for the period and looks at trends in membership generally and specifically at ten of the largest unions.

Available online from the Hathi Trust External
There is some very general trade union membership information and data as well as more specific on some of the unions.

This book covers the years 1933-1940 an important period for organized labor before the outbreak of war.

Holdings:1994-2014
This is publication filled with detailed data from the Union Members Survey.

This is the classic history of the Industrial Workers of the World, the influential band of labor militants whose activism mobilized America's poorest and most marginalized workers in the years before World War I. Originally published in 1969, Melvyn Dubofsky's We Shall Be All has remained the definitive archive-based history of the IWW. While much has been written on aspects of the IWW's history in the past three decades, nothing has duplicated or surpassed this authoritative work. The present volume, an abridged version of this labor history classic, makes the compelling story of the IWW accessible to a new generation of readers. In its heyday, between 1905 and 1919, the IWW nourished a dream of a better America where poverty--material and spiritual--would be erased and where all people, regardless of nationality or color, would walk free and equal. More than half a century ago the Wobblies tried in their own ways to grapple with issues that still plague the nation in a more sophisticated and prosperous era. - Description from the publisher

This is a look at the events between members of the American Legion and some members of the IWW in Centralia, WA on November 11, 1919.

PDF files are available online from the ruthmilkman.info External.
Specific chapters by individual authors cover specialized topics like coverage of the Chicago Women’s Trade Union League, International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, Women and the United Automobile Workers’ Union, etc.

This is a major work that looks at women’s struggle for equality in the labor movement and traces that history back to colonial America.

Chicago's packinghouse workers were not the hopeless creatures depicted by Upton Sinclair in The Jungle, but active agents in the early twentieth century transformation that swept urban industrial America.   In his case study of Chicago's Union Stockyards, Barrett focuses on the workers - older skilled immigrants, new immigrant common laborers, migrant blacks, and young women workers - and the surrounding neighborhoods. The lives and communities of these workers accurately convey the experience of mass-production work, the quality of working-class life, the process of class formation and fragmentation, and the changing character of class relations. Because Packingtown's struggle for existence was linked directly to the character of work and employment in the industry, unionization played an important role in the lives of these workers. Although unionization was associated with both improving the quality of life and creating a viable community, workers were divided by race, ethnic identity, and skill. Work and Community in the Jungle discusses a wide range of social, economic, and cultural factors that resulted in class cohesion and fragmentation. Addressing the broader problem of relations between capital and labor, Barrett demonstrates the effects of government intervention on labor organization, negotiation, and conflict. Shop-floor workers banded together to develop new strategies and forms of organization in their struggle with management for control. Barrett employs contemporary social surveys and a computer-assisted analysis of census data to illustrate the physical and social characteristics of the workers' environment. He analyzes this data in the context of the relationships between community, ethnicity, family, work experience, and industrial characteristics. - Description from the publisher

Vol. 1: Working Americans, 1880-2012 The Working Class
Vol. 2: Working Americans, 1880-1999 The Middle Class
Vol. 3: Working Americans, 1880-1999 The Upper Class
Vol. 4: Working Americans, 1880-1999 Their Children
Vol. 5: Working Americans, 1880-2003 Americans at War
Vol. 6: Working Americans, 1880-2005 Women at Work
Vol. 7: Working Americans, 1880-2006 Social Movements
Vol. 8: Working Americans, 1880-2007 Immigrants
Vol. 9: Working Americans, 1770-1869 From the Revolutionary War to the Civil War
Vol. 10: Working Americans, 1880-2009 Sports & Recreation
Vol. 11: Working Americans, 1880-2010 Inventors & Entrepreneurs
Vol. 12: Working Americans, 1880-2011 Our History Through Music
Vol. 13: Working Americans, 1880-2012 Educators & Education
Vol. 15: Working Americans, 1880-2018 Politics & Politicians
Vol. 16: Working Americans, 1798-2020 Farming & Ranching