160 Years Ago, America’s First National Union Put Politics Ahead of Its Members. Sound Familiar?
On August 20, 1866, a group of union leaders met in Baltimore and founded the National Labor Union (NLU), the first attempt to organize American workers on a national scale.
Seven years later, it collapsed.
The standard explanation is that the economy did it in. The Panic of 1873 hit hard, hurting every labor organization in the country. True enough. But the National Labor Union had already been eating itself for years by that point.
Founder William Sylvis died on July 27, 1869, just three years after starting the organization. Weeks later, at the NLU's next congress that September, the men in charge turned on one of their own delegates: Susan B. Anthony.
She had been seated at the NLU the year before, representing the Working Women's Association. During a New York printers' strike, she had urged employers to hire women typesetters in the strikers' place, betting it would prove women deserved equal pay. The men's Typographical Union called it an attack on the strike. They branded her "an enemy of labor" and had her expelled.
So much for solidarity.
Then, in 1872, NLU leadership made its final, nail-in-the-coffin move: it stopped being a union altogether and rebranded itself as a political party. Its presidential candidate, David Davis, dropped out mid-campaign after failing to win a different party's nomination first. The whole project collapsed, and Davis earned just one electoral vote.
Unfortunately, national unions today seem to be following the NLU's playbook. Government unions alone spent an estimated $915 million on politics in the 2024 election cycle. More than 85 percent of that money came straight out of member dues rather than voluntary contributions. Members don't get a line-item veto or much of a say in how their money is spent. They pay in, and the union decides which candidates and causes that money supports.
At the Center for Independent Employees (CIE), we believe employees deserve better.
When a union stops listening to its members and starts serving its own agenda, employees should not have to wait for it to collapse. They should have a way out.
CIE gives them one.
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The Center for Independent Employees (CIE) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides legal representation and assistance to independent employees who are opposed to union oppression in their workplaces.