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Business & Labor
Founders and financiers on one side, organizers and union leaders on the other — and the fights between them.
Role:
Any
Philanthropist 42
Founder 36
Executive 21
Industrialist 16
Investor 16
Financier 15
Labor Organizer 15
Activist 9
Broadcaster 4
Designer 4
15 people
Eugene V. Debs 1855–1926Labor & Workers' MovementsSocialist Party leader who ran for president five times from prison and championed labor rights.
Samuel Gompers 1850–1924Labor & Workers' MovementsFounding leader of the American Federation of Labor who established durable craft-union organization.
Jimmy Hoffa 1913–1975Labor & Workers' MovementsTeamsters president who won American truckers their first national contract, and disappeared in 1975
Mother Jones 1837–1930Labor & Workers' MovementsOrganizer whose militant campaigns for miners and against child labor made her an icon of American labor.
John L. Lewis 1880–1969Labor & Workers' MovementsUnion leader who built the United Mine Workers and helped found the CIO, expanding industrial unionism and collective bargaining.
Walter Reuther 1907–1970Labor & Workers' MovementsUnited Auto Workers leader who helped build organized labor into a major economic and political force.
George Meany 1894–1980Labor & Workers' MovementsNew York plumber who merged the AFL and the CIO in 1955 and ran the combined federation for 24 years, through the peak of American labor and the beginning of its decline.
Bill Haywood 1869–1928Labor & Workers' MovementsCo-founded the Industrial Workers of the World and led major mining and textile strikes.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn 1890–1964Labor & Workers' MovementsOrganized IWW strikes and helped found the American Civil Liberties Union.
Terence V. Powderly 1849–1924Labor & Workers' MovementsLed the Knights of Labor as it became the first mass national labor organization in the United States.
Harry Bridges 1901–1990Labor & Workers' MovementsLed West Coast longshore workers through the 1934 strike and headed the ILWU for decades.
Sidney Hillman 1887–1946Labor & Workers' MovementsLabor leader who built the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and linked organized labor to New Deal politics.
Lucy Parsons 1851–1942Labor & Workers' MovementsRadical labor organizer and writer who advocated for workers, free speech, and racial and gender equality over seven decades.
Rose Schneiderman 1882–1972Labor & Workers' MovementsLabor organizer who championed women workers, workplace safety, and social reforms later incorporated into the New Deal.Larry Itliong 1913–1977Labor & Workers' MovementsFilipino American labor leader whose organizing initiated the Delano grape strike and helped build the United Farm Workers.