The modern trade union movement in the United States took shape in 1881, and officially in 1886 with the creation of the American Federation of Labor. This organization was headed by Samuel Gompers for almost half a century, until his death in 1924. Namely he gave the American trade union movement its current features. According to Gompers, the main objective of the trade union movement is to increase wages and achieving better working conditions. The trade union should not participate in the class struggle for changing the social system. Workers should receive increasingly more goods through evolution and not violent revolution. Government intervention in negotiations on collective bargaining is not permitted either on the side of the workers or on the side of the employers.
