Trade guilds A
collegium was any association in ancient Rome that acted as a
legal entity. Following the passage of the
Lex Julia during the reign of Julius Caesar (49–44 BC), and their reaffirmation during the reign of
Caesar Augustus (27 BC–14 AD),
collegia required the approval of the
Roman Senate or the Roman emperor in order to be authorized as legal bodies. Ruins at
Lambaesis date the formation of burial societies among Roman Army soldiers and
Roman Navy mariners to the reign of
Septimius Severus (193–211) in 198 AD. In September 2011, archaeological investigations done at the site of the artificial harbor
Portus in Rome revealed inscriptions in a shipyard constructed during the reign of
Trajan (98–117) indicating the existence of a shipbuilders guild. Rome's
La Ostia port was home to a guildhall for a
corpus naviculariorum, a
collegium of merchant mariners.
Collegium also included fraternities of
Roman priests overseeing
Sacrificium Romanam (ritual sacrifices), practising
augury, keeping scriptures, arranging festivals, and maintaining specific religious cults.
Modern trade unions While a commonly held mistaken view holds modern trade unionism to be a product of
Marxism, the earliest modern trade unions predate Marx's
Communist Manifesto (1848) by almost a century (and Marx's writings themselves frequently address the prior existence of the workers' movements of his time.) The first recorded labour strike in the
United States was by
Philadelphia printers in 1786, who opposed a wage reduction and demanded $6 per week in wages. The origins of modern trade unions can be traced back to 18th-century Britain, where the
Industrial Revolution drew masses of people, including
dependents, peasants and immigrants, into cities. Britain had ended the practice of
serfdom in 1574, but the vast majority of people remained as
tenant-farmers on estates owned by the
landed aristocracy. This transition was not merely one of relocation from rural to urban environs; rather, the nature of industrial work created a new class of "worker". A farmer worked the land, raised animals and grew crops, and either owned the land or paid rent, but ultimately sold a
product and had control over his life and work. As industrial workers, however, the workers sold their work as labour and took directions from employers, giving up part of their freedom and self-agency in the service of a master. The critics of the new arrangement would call this "
wage slavery", but the term that persisted was a new form of human relations: employment. Unlike farmers, workers often had less control over their jobs; without job security or a promise of an on-going relationship with their employers, they lacked some control over the work they performed or how it impacted their health and life. It is in this context that modern trade unions emerge. In the cities, trade unions encountered much hostility from employers and government groups. In the United States, unions and unionists were regularly prosecuted under various restraint of trade and conspiracy laws, such as the
Sherman Antitrust Act. This pool of unskilled and semi-skilled labour spontaneously organized in fits and starts throughout its beginnings, and would later be an important arena for the development of trade unions. Trade unions have sometimes been seen as successors to the
guilds of medieval Europe, though the relationship between the two is disputed, as the masters of the guilds employed workers (apprentices and journeymen) who were not allowed to organize. Trade unions and collective bargaining were outlawed from no later than the middle of the 14th century, when the
Ordinance of Labourers was enacted in the
Kingdom of England, but their way of thinking was the one that endured down the centuries, inspiring evolutions and advances in thinking which eventually gave workers more power. As collective bargaining and early worker unions grew with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the government began to clamp down on what it saw as the danger of popular unrest at the time of the
Napoleonic Wars. In 1799, the
Combination Act was passed, which banned trade unions and collective bargaining by British workers. Although the unions were subject to often severe repression until 1824, they were already widespread in cities such as
London. Workplace militancy had also manifested itself as
Luddism and had been prominent in struggles such as the
1820 Rising in Scotland, in which 60,000 workers went on a
general strike, which was soon crushed. Sympathy for the plight of the workers brought repeal of the acts in 1824, although the
Combination Act 1825 restricted their activity to bargaining for wage increases and changes in working hours. By the 1810s, the first labour organizations to bring together workers of divergent occupations were formed. Possibly the first such union was the General Union of Trades, also known as the Philanthropic Society, founded in 1818 in
Manchester. The latter name was to hide the organization's real purpose in a time when trade unions were still illegal.
National general unions The first attempts at forming a national
general union in the United Kingdom were made in the 1820s and 30s. The
National Association for the Protection of Labour was established in 1830 by
John Doherty, after an apparently unsuccessful attempt to create a similar national presence with the National Union of Cotton-spinners. The Association quickly enrolled approximately 150 unions, consisting mostly of
textile related unions, but also including mechanics, blacksmiths, and various others. Membership rose to between 10,000 and 20,000 individuals spread across the five counties of
Lancashire,
Cheshire,
Derbyshire,
Nottinghamshire and
Leicestershire within a year. To establish awareness and legitimacy, the union started the weekly
Voice of the People publication, having the declared intention "to unite the productive classes of the community in one common bond of union." In 1834, the Welsh socialist
Robert Owen established the
Grand National Consolidated Trades Union. The organization attracted a range of
socialists from Owenites to revolutionaries and played a part in the protests after the
Tolpuddle Martyrs' case, but soon collapsed. More permanent trade unions were established from the 1850s, better resourced but often less radical. The
London Trades Council was founded in 1860, and the
Sheffield Outrages spurred the establishment of the
Trades Union Congress in 1868, the first long-lived
national trade union center. By this time, the existence and the demands of the trade unions were becoming accepted by
liberal middle-class opinion. In
Principles of Political Economy (1871)
John Stuart Mill wrote: If it were possible for the working classes, by combining among themselves, to raise or keep up the general rate of wages, it needs hardly be said that this would be a thing not to be punished, but to be welcomed and rejoiced at. Unfortunately the effect is quite beyond attainment by such means. The multitudes who compose the working class are too numerous and too widely scattered to combine at all, much more to combine effectually. If they could do so, they might doubtless succeed in diminishing the hours of labour, and obtaining the same wages for less work. They would also have a limited power of obtaining, by combination, an increase of general wages at the expense of profits.Beyond this claim, Mill also argued that, because individual workers had no basis for assessing the wages for a particular task, labour unions would lead to greater efficiency of the market system.
Legalization, expansion and recognition in
Lawrence, Massachusetts British trade unions were finally legalized in 1872, after a
Royal Commission on Trade Unions in 1867 agreed that the establishment of the organizations was to the advantage of both employers and employees. This period also saw the growth of trade unions in other industrializing countries, especially the United States, Germany and France. In the United States, the first effective nationwide labour organization was the
Knights of Labor, in 1869, which began to grow after 1880. Legalization occurred slowly as a result of a series of court decisions. The
Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions began in 1881 as a federation of different unions that did not directly enrol workers. In 1886, it became known as the
American Federation of Labor or AFL. In Germany, the
Free Association of German Trade Unions was formed in 1897 after the
conservative Anti-Socialist Laws of Chancellor
Otto von Bismarck were repealed. In France, labour organisation was illegal until the
1884 Waldeck Rousseau laws. The
Fédération des bourses du travail was founded in 1887 and merged with the Fédération nationale des syndicats (National Federation of Trade Unions) in 1895 to form the
General Confederation of Labour. In a number of countries during the 20th century, including in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, legislation was passed to provide for the voluntary or statutory recognition of a union by an employer. ==Prevalence worldwide==