| 1825 | Carpenters in Boston strike for a 10 hour day |
| 1869 | Knights of Labor founded |
| 1877 | Railroad workers stage the first nation-wide strike |
| 1880 | Craft union-oriented American Federation of Labor founded; effort led by Samuel Gompers of cigar makers union |
| 1880 | Anarchists blamed for bomb that explodes at labor demonstration at Haymarket Square in Chicago |
| 1882 | 30,000 march in first labor day parade in New York city. |
| 1886 | Homestead strike at Carnegie Steel turns violent when Pinkerton guards attack strikers |
| 1894 | Eugene Debs leads nation-wide strike against the Pullman Company; troops kill 34 striking workers |
| 1905 | The Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies) union is founded; committed to revolution |
| 1913 | Department of Labor is created |
| 1914 | Clayton Act decriminalizes non-violent strikes |
| 1919 | Wave of strikes in manufacturing following WWI |
| 1929 | The Great Textile strikes closes textile mills across the American South |
| 1935 | Wagner Act is passed, allowing workers to unionize and requiring companies to enter into good faith bargaining |
| 1935 | Mine workers head John L. Lewis breaks with AFL and creates the CIO committed to organizing on an industry-wide basis |
| 1937 | United Auto Workers win contract at General Motors after long sit-down strike |
| 1941 | After Pearl Harbor, AFL issues "no strike" pledge for duration of the war |
| 1947 | Taft-Hartley Act, passed over the veto of President Truman, limits powers of unions and freedom to strike and boycott |
| 1950 | Fearing a crippling strike, President Truman orders a federal takeover of the nation's railroads |
| 1952 | Fearing a crippling strike, President Truman orders a federal takeover of the nation's steel companies; action rejected by the Supreme Court |
| 1955 | AFL and CIO merge to form the AFL-CIO |
| 1955 | 36 percent of American workers in labor unions, the highest proportion in US history |
| 1959 | Landrum-Griffin Act passed; directed at ending union corruption |
| 1970 | After a long and bitter strike by the United Farm Workers union, migrant workers win a collective bargaining contract from California grape growers |
| 1981 | President Ronald Reagan fires striking air traffic controllers and replaces them with non-union workers |
| 2004 | AFL-CIO's effort to win the presidency for John Kerry fails |
| 2004 | Union membership nation-wide falls to 12.5 percent and less than 8 percent in the private sector |
| 2005 | Several large unions bolt the AFL-CIO to form Change to Win |
