one big union was the goal of which labor union
One Big Union (concept) As envisioned by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) – which for many years prior to 1919 had been associated with the concept[1] – One Big Union was not just the idea that all workers should be organised into one big union. In the 1911 pamphlet "One Big Union", IWW supporters Father Thomas J. Hagerty and William Trautmann enumerated two goals: One Big Union needed to "combine the wage-workers in such a way that it can most successfully fight the battles and protect the interests of the workers of today in their struggles for fewer hours of toil, more wages and better conditions," and it also "must offer a final solution of the labor problem—an emancipation from strikes, injunctions, bull-pens, and scabbing of one against the other."[2]
Colored National Labor Union Following underrepresentaton within the predominately white National Labor Union, the National Colored Labor Convention met in 1869. This convention resulted in the formation of the Colored National Labor Union in the same year.[2] The "Colored" National Labor Union was a post-civil war organization founded in December 1869 by an assembly of 214 African American mechanics, engineers, artisans, tradesmen and trades-women, and their supporters in Washington D.C. This organization was created in pursuit of equal representation for African Americans in the workforce. The labor union was organized by Isaac Myers, and elected its first president; civil rights activist Frederick Douglass was selected the president of the CNLU in 1872. Douglass' newspaper, The New Era was chosen as the official organ of this National Labor Union.[3]