Trade union

A trade union is an organization that represents workers in dealings with employers, especially collective negotiations over pay, working conditions, and employment rights.

Collective bargaining: Negotiation between employers and workers’ representatives to set employment terms and resolve workplace issues. Unions negotiate shared terms with employers on behalf of their members.
Industrial Revolution: The transformation from predominantly agrarian economies to mechanized industry, beginning in Britain in the eighteenth century. Factory labor created shared workplace conditions that encouraged collective organization.
Robert Owen: A Welsh social reformer and industrialist who advocated cooperative communities and improved conditions for workers. Owen promoted broad worker organization and influenced early cooperative and labor movements.
Works council: A workplace body elected by employees to represent them in consultation with management, often alongside unions. Unlike a union, it is usually tied to representation within one workplace rather than a wider membership organization.
Minimum wage: The lowest legally permitted rate of pay for covered workers. Union campaigning and bargaining have often pressed for wage floors and stronger enforcement.
Collective agreement: A negotiated agreement that sets employment terms for a group of workers. It records the terms a union secures through collective bargaining.
Friendly society: A voluntary association whose members pooled resources to provide mutual aid, often including sickness or funeral benefits. Some early worker organizations combined mutual support with collective trade action.
George Loveless: A Methodist preacher and agricultural laborer who led the Tolpuddle laborers prosecuted in 1834. His case became a landmark in public campaigns for workers’ right to organize.
Professional association: An organization that advances the interests or standards of people in a profession. It may represent occupational interests without bargaining collectively with employers.
Eight-hour day: A standard working-time demand that limits a normal workday to eight hours. Union movements made shorter working hours a prominent collective demand.

Linked from 74 pages