( BrE ) ( also labor union AmE )) union
an organization of workers which exists to protect their interests, improve conditions of work etc. In Britain, the trade union movement started in the 19th century after the Industrial Revolution when workers began to form groups to argue for improved working conditions and pay. Each trade (= type of work) formed its own trade union but, over the years, some combined to form larger, more powerful groups. In 1900 the Labour Representation Committee was founded to enable the unions to enter politics and it later became the Labour Party . By 1926 45% of the workforce were members of a union and the General Strike showed there was wide support for the union movement. After World War II union membership continued to grow, reaching a peak in 1979 with a total of 13.5 million members. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s industrial relations in Britain were bad, with many strikes and in 1979 the Conservative government introduced a number of changes to the law to control the activities of unions. Unions were not allowed to send members to support strike action by another union (called secondary picketing ), union leaders could only declare a strike with the support of the majority of their members in a secret ballot and the closed shop which required all employees in an industry to join a union, was ended. Many trade unions are affiliated (= linked) to the TUC which represents the trade union movement as a whole and in 2004 had 71 affiliated unions and about 7 million members. In the US, the early unions were mainly craft unions, but in 1905 the IWW united miners and textile workers and became the first labor union . Modern labor unions began as a result of Franklin D Roosevelt ‘s New Deal and in 1935 the Wagner Act gave workers the right to collective bargaining (= negotiation by a group of people) for pay increases, and this led to many new unions being formed. The many strikes after World War II caused Congress to pass the Taft-Hartley Act which restricted the right of workers to strike and also made the closed shop illegal. Most labor unions belong to the AFL-CIO , which was created in 1955 when the American Federation of Labor joined the Congress of Industrial Organizations. In 2004 there were 61 unions in the AFL-CIO, representing over 14 million workers.