| National Labor Union |
| In 1866, the National Labor Union (NLU) made the first attempt in US history to bring together several workers' organizations from several different sectors. Under the leadership of Ira Steward, one of the NLU's main goals was to reduce the workday to eight hours in certain industries. The NLU was plagued by various internal conflicts, however, setting a trend for disunity in American labor movements. Labor held little sway through much of the 1870s, particularly after the Panic of 1873 and the resulting depression. During this time, big business successfully used blacklisting to break strikes and discourage unionization. |
| Grange |
| In the 1870s, workers allied with debtors and farmers in the politically potent Grange to push for better wages and hours. Together, this coalition managed to elect 14 congressmen running on the Greenback Party ticket (a third party) in 1878. |  |
| Knights of Labor |
 | In 1869, the Knights of Labor was founded, led by Terence Powderly, the Grand Master Workman. The Knights soon became the most popular Labor Union, uniting various trade unions into a pseudo-secret brotherhood concerned with broad social issues. The Knights often went on strike and were very visible. In 1886 Haymarket Riot in Chicago sealed the doom of the Knights of Labor, when Albert Parsons, a Knight, killed a police officer. In 1887 Parsons was executed, and the US entered a period of anti-union hysteria, the country's first "Red Scare." In the aftermath, the Knights' image was forever tarnished, and the AFL, with its practical approach known as "Business Unionism", became the leading labor union. |
| American Federation of Labor (AFL) |
| Samuel Gompers developed a second major labor union, which often competed for members with the Knights: the American Federation of Labor (AFL) led by. The AFL struck less often, fought only for specific labor concessions, and excluded unskilled laborers from their ranks. As such an entity, the AFL had greater staying power, seemed more reasonable to business interests, and was therefore much more successful in attaining its goals. Although the AFL preferred negotiation to strikes, strikes continued into the 1890s. These strikes, however, were largely ineffective. In 1892, steel workers in Homestead, Pennsylvania went on strike against Andrew Carnegie's Amalgamated Iron and Steel. Carnegie called in the Pinkerton detectives to put down the Homestead Strike, as the strike came to be called. The strikers resisted, and a brutal battle erupted. The Pennsylvania governor eventually called in the state militia to put down the fighting. In the 1894 Pullman Strike, the socialist Eugene Debs led the American Railway Union on strike. The US government announced that the strike was interfering with the mail, and served an injunction against the Railway Union. |  |
| Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) |
 | In 1905 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), was organized in Chicago to represent unskilled workers. The IWW never had more than about 100,000 members, who were called Wobblies, but it conducted numerous strikes, many marked by bloodshed, and exerted a major influence on the American labor movement until the early 1920's. |
| Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) |
| In 1933 a faction of the AFL led by John L. Lewis calling itself the Committee for Industrial Organizations staged a battle within the AFL for the representation of industrial unions to represent unskilled workers. In 1938 the committee split from the AFL and formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The CIO as it was called grew in strength and in 1955 after many years of acrimonious competition the AFL and CIO merges under Lewis' leadership. Today the AFL-CIO is the nations largest union organization |