アメリカの女性労働運動 : AFLと女性労働組合連盟を中心に

本稿ではアメリカの女性労働運動の中で、19世紀末、20世紀初頭に台頭したAFLと女性労働組合連盟の設立と展開について論じる。This paper discusses the two major labor organizations, the American Federation of Labor and the National Women\u27s Trade Union League. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) did not argue for the unionization of working women. Instead, they generally supported the view that women belonged at home, as wives and mothers, and not in the factories ^ as competitors. The Federation, therefore, was generally slow to aid or encourage the formation of women\u27s trade unions. Moreover, AFL was a federation of unions of relatively skilled and overwhelmingly white workers, organized by trades. Women, by and large, were among the most unskilled workers in the country. A few women\u27s trade unions did affiliate with the AFL, and at national conventions the Federation endorsed the concept of equal pay for equal work for men and women, favored woman suffrage, supported protective legislation for women workers, and called for the organization of female wage earners. In practice, the Federation did little positive work toward unionizing women workers and in many instances actually opposed it. When the new century began, most of the five million female workers were unorganized and unaware of the strength that lay in their numbers. They were cut off from the male labor movement and from the major national women\u27s organizations. Moreover, they were also separated from each other by differences of race, religion, cultural background, and training. In the years after 1900, conditions worsened noticeably for these millions of women workers and for men, too: prices continually went up, wages often shrank, and working conditions remained primitive and unregulated. The National Women\u27s Trade Union League was founded in 1903 by a group of working women, social reformers, and settlement house workers who decided, in the middle of an American Federation of Labor convention they were attending, to form an independent organization that would assist in the organization of women wage workers into trade unions. They were responding to their own conviction that unionization was the key to improvement for working women and to the rather pale performance by the AFL in supporting unionization for women. Membership was open to anyone. While the membership of the League was a mixture of working class and middle class women, at first its leadership was dominated by middle, upper class women. By 1920, most of the leadership were or had been wage earners. The first great work of the National Women\u27s Trade Union League was its unflagging support of striking garment workers during the massive labor protests in 1909 and 1910 in New York. As the League spread into different cities and states, it was able to assist in every important strike involving women workers. The job of interpreting the needs and objectives of laboring people to the middle class became a major function of the League. League representatives worked hard on the lecture platform. They spoke to women\u27s clubs, they urged the General Federation of Women\u27s Clubs to action; they addressed national suffrage conventions. The League published its own magazine. In 1913, the League established a training school to prepare women workers for leadership roles in the labor movement, and increasing numbers of wage earners began to participate in the leadership of the League itself. From this time, League activities concentrated more and more on legislative reform and educational work. However, its commitment to laboring women remained and when, after World War I, many women lost the jobs they had been able to get during the war years, the League came to their aid. The success and contributions of the League in the history of the laboring woman are difficult to assess. With the perspective of time, the League\u27s changing emphasis from unionization of women to protective legislation for women workers appears to have weakened its commitment to labor agitation. The League represented women in craft positions. And like the AFL, it ignored the bulk of unskilled and lowerpaid women workers, many of whom were black and domestic laborers. It was an organization that, like most Progressive groups, sought reform and was ultimately concerned with moderate and gradual change. The National Women\u27s Trade Union League did not seek radical change for women workers