Workers hoped that labor unions would help them to receive better working conditions, increased wageas, and a reduced workload.
When labor unions started to develop, many workers faced unfair working conditions. This included roughly an 80-100 hour work week, low wages, and not safety standards at their potentially dangerous jobs. Since there was very little government intervention in business during this era, workers hoped that the creation of these labor unions would help to solve some of their work problems. However, in the beginning of this labor movement, unions and business owners/managers often fought. In several different instances, these confrontations turned violent.
The deskilling of manufacturing. As technology advanced, workers increasingly lost the proud Independence that had been a characteristics of their craftwork. This was because of the deskilling of labor under a new system of mechanized manufacturing that industrialist Henry Ford woould come to call "mass production".
