Editing Trade union (section)

=== 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 ''[[The Communist Manifesto|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.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Perlman|first=Selig|title=A History of Trade Unionism in the United States|publisher=MacMillan|year=1922|location=New York|pages=1–3}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/social-science/economy/labor/strike/strikes-in-the-united-states |title=Strike: Strikes in the United States |website=infoplease.com |access-date=9 August 2023}}</ref> The origins of modern trade unions can be traced back to 18th-century Britain, where the [[Industrial Revolution]] drew masses of people, including [[dependant|dependents]], peasants and immigrants, into cities. Britain had ended the practice of [[serfdom]] in 1574, but the vast majority of people remained as [[Tenant farmer|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]]",<ref>{{Cite book|last=Tomich|first=Dale W.|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/55090137|title=Through the prism of slavery : labor, capital, and world economy|date=2004|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|isbn=1417503572|location=Lanham|oclc=55090137}}</ref> 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]].<ref name="Clark 1948">{{cite journal |last1=Clark |first1=O. L. |date=January 1948 |title=Application of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to Unions since the Apex Case |journal=SMU Law Review |volume=1 |issue=1 |pages=94–103 |url=https://scholar.smu.edu/smulr/vol2/iss1/6}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=Restraint of Trade. Sherman Anti-Trust Law. Liability of Labor Unions |date=1908 |journal=Harvard Law Review |volume=21 |issue=6 |page=450 |doi=10.2307/1325438|jstor=1325438 }}</ref> This pool of unskilled and semi-skilled labour spontaneously organized in fits and starts throughout its beginnings,{{sfn|Webb|Webb|1920}} and would later be an important arena for the development of trade unions. Trade unions have sometimes been seen as successors to the [[guild]]s 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.<ref>{{cite news |date=3 March 1928 |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1300&dat=19280303&id=rN9VAAAAIBAJ&sjid=AdgDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7279,410871 |title=The Guild and the Trade Union |author=C. M. N. |work=The Age |page=25 |via=Google News Archive}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Kautsky|first=Karl|date=April 1901|title=Trades Unions and Socialism|url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1901/04/unions.htm|journal=International Socialist Review|volume=1|issue=10|access-date=27 July 2011}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Frank|first=Christopher|date=January 2005|title="Let But One of Them Come before Me, and I'll Commit Him": Trade Unions, Magistrates, and the Law in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Staffordshire|journal=Journal of British Studies|volume=44|issue=1|pages=76–77|jstor=10.1086/426157|doi=10.1086/426157}}</ref>

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.{{Sfn|Cole|2010|p=3}}