American Labor Movement (Case Study Sample)

American Labor Movement Student's First Name, Middle Initial(s), Last Name Institutional Affiliation Course Number and Name Instructor's Name and Title Assignment Due Date American Labor Movement How the American Labor Movement Has Changed Over Time The labor movement within the US developed out of the necessity to safeguard and protect the shared interest of the workers and employees. For individuals within the industrial sector, organized labor movements advocated and fought for improved wages, safer working environments and conditions and reasonable working hours. Additionally, labor movements established efforts to prevent child labor, provide health compensation and benefits and offer assistance to injured and restored workers (History.com Editors, 2020). The early labor unions were more than inspired by the immediate interest of the craft members. The unions protected the conception of a just society basing its tenets on the Ricardian value theory centered on honest labor, social equality and depended on independent and moral citizenship (History.com Editors, 2020). Labor unions today have been instrumental and momentous in ensuring historical occurrences. For example, in 2008, the unions became instrumental in the election of president Barrack Obama (Sandroff, 2022). The labor movement leaders were optimistic that Obama would implement the Employee Free Choice Act to shorten and streamline the process of recruiting new memberships into unions. This, therefore, implies that the labor unions still held their role of advocating for the rights of workers. Currently, labor movements have been known to protect the rights and advocate for the interest of workers. The unions come in to negotiate with employers through the collective bargaining process. Consequently, according to Sandroff (2022), the resulting contract distinctively specifies the pay, benefits, hours, job health and policies for the workers. Progression of Labor The Inheritance is an appropriate presentation for Labor Day. The film celebrates the working individuals by recounting the encounters and experiences of immigrants with determination to escape the dirt, dampness and darkness of their lives. The story starts on Ellis Island, where people flowed for better pay. However, they find things much worse than they anticipate. The film relives the horrors of child labor and wage pittance. Prior to the First World War, the poverty level for a family was higher than their annual salary. This led to the determination to start labor unions to protect workers' rights. The progression in labor history is witnessed when the workers start to come together to advocate for their rights. There are chants and songs of "solidarity forever" in the film, indicating the togetherness of the workers. The key message from the Inheritance is that every generation is patched with a mandate to win their freedom by fighting for their rights, however hard that may seem. The dual meaning of the Inheritance involves assimilating the aspect of the struggle that birthed the labor freedoms and rights and the freedoms already achieved through historical struggles. Certainly, the documentarians are correct in arguing for the above dual meaning since people must understand the importance of struggles and learning from the past (Budd, 2021). The second chapter of Budd's book, titled "Labor Un...