Trade union

Garment workers on strike, New York City circa 1913
Early 19th century workplace militancy manifested in the Luddite riots, when unemployed workers destroyed labour saving machines.
Poster issued by the London Trades Council, advertising a demonstration held on 2 June 1873
Trade union demonstrators held at bay by soldiers during the 1912 Lawrence textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts
Eight-hour day march circa 1900, outside Parliament House in Spring Street, Melbourne
Costa Rican agricultural unions demonstration, January 2011
2011 National Trade Union Council (Zenrokyo) May Day march, Tokyo
Workers on strike in Oslo, Norway, 2012
Public sector workers in Leeds striking over pension changes by the government in November 2011
Child labourers in an Indiana glass works. Labor unions have an objective interest in combating child labour.
Cesar Chavez speaking at a 1974 United Farm Workers rally in Delano, California. The UFW during Chavez's tenure was committed to restricting immigration.
The Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886 was a trade union strike involving more than 200,000 workers.
A rally of the trade union UNISON in Oxford during a strike on 28 March 2006

Organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment".

- Trade union
Garment workers on strike, New York City circa 1913

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Pin button issued by "The Knights and Ladies of Security" of Topeka, Kansas

Benefit society

Society, an organization or a voluntary association formed to provide mutual aid, benefit, for instance insurance for relief from sundry difficulties.

Society, an organization or a voluntary association formed to provide mutual aid, benefit, for instance insurance for relief from sundry difficulties.

Pin button issued by "The Knights and Ladies of Security" of Topeka, Kansas

Examples of benefit societies include trade unions, burial societies, friendly societies, cooperatives, credit unions, self-help groups, landsmanshaftn, immigrant hometown societies, fraternal organizations built upon the models of fraternal orders such as the Freemasons and the Oddfellows, some coworking communities, and many others.

Two girls wearing banners in Yiddish and English with the slogan "Abolish child slavery!!" at the 1909 International Workers' Day parade in New York City

Labour law

Two girls wearing banners in Yiddish and English with the slogan "Abolish child slavery!!" at the 1909 International Workers' Day parade in New York City
Strikers gathering in Tyldesley, Greater Manchester in the 1926 United Kingdom general strike
As one of the only international organizations with real enforcement power through trade sanctions, the WTO has been the target for calls by labour lawyers to incorporate global standards of the International Labour Organization.
Interior of one of the Eaton's factories in Toronto, Canada
An American builder

Labour laws (also known as labor laws or employment laws) are those that mediate the relationship between workers, employing entities, trade unions, and the government.

Wiki-training with employees of Regional Institute of Culture in Katowice 02

Employment

Relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services.

Relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services.

Wiki-training with employees of Regional Institute of Culture in Katowice 02
Worker assembling rebar for a water treatment plant in Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico.
A call centre worker confined to a small workstation/booth.
All employees, private industries, by branches
Government employment as % of total employment in EU
Youth employment rate in the US, i.e. the ratio of employed persons (15–24Y) in an economy to total labor force (15–24Y).
A worker in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Employees can organize into trade or labor unions, which represent the workforce to collectively bargain with the management of organizations about working, and contractual conditions and services.

Garment workers on strike, New York City circa 1913

Craft unionism

Garment workers on strike, New York City circa 1913

Craft unionism refers to a model of trade unionism in which workers are organised based on the particular craft or trade in which they work.

Bill of sale of a male slave and a building in Shuruppak, Sumerian tablet, circa 2600 BC

Employment contract

Kind of contract used in labour law to attribute rights and responsibilities between parties to a bargain.

Kind of contract used in labour law to attribute rights and responsibilities between parties to a bargain.

Bill of sale of a male slave and a building in Shuruppak, Sumerian tablet, circa 2600 BC

This could be the right to a minimum wage, holiday pay, sick leave, fair dismissal, a written statement of the contract, the right to organise in a union, and so on.

Diagram published by the Industrial Workers of Great Britain explaining industrial unionism in terms of two opposing battle fronts

Industrial unionism

Diagram published by the Industrial Workers of Great Britain explaining industrial unionism in terms of two opposing battle fronts
A cartoon from the May, 1919 IWW periodical One Big Union, published in Revolutionary Radicalism, shows a worker (representing the working class) choosing between an AFL slogan (A Fair Day's Pay for a Fair Day's Work) and an IWW slogan (Abolition of the Wage System).
Anti-IWW cartoon from The American Employer, published 1913, with the Industrial Workers of the World organizing drive editorialized as "a volcano of hate stirred into active eruption at Akron, by alien hands, which pour into the crater the disturbing acids and alkalis of greed, class hatred and anarchy. From the mouth of the pit rise poisonous clouds of suspicion, malice and envy to pollute the air, while from the cracked and breaking sides of the groaning mountain flow streams of lava of murder, anarchy and destruction, threatening to engulf in their path the fair cities and fertile farms of Ohio."
A cartoon from the September, 1919 IWW periodical One Big Union, published in Revolutionary Radicalism (a government publication), shows a worker swimming through shark-infested waters. The shark is labeled capitalism, the boat is industrial unionism, the life buoy is IWW, and the harpoon is direct action.

Industrial unionism is a trade union organizing method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union—regardless of skill or trade—thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in bargaining and in strike situations.

Friar novices in religious habit of the Order of Augustinian Recollects, a religious order of the Catholic Church (2006).

Fraternity

Organization, society, club or fraternal order traditionally of men associated together for various religious or secular aims.

Organization, society, club or fraternal order traditionally of men associated together for various religious or secular aims.

Friar novices in religious habit of the Order of Augustinian Recollects, a religious order of the Catholic Church (2006).
A meeting of Freemasons in West Germany (1948).
Kraków's Kur Fraternity during the inauguration of Józef Piłsudski Monument in Kraków.
The Syndics of the Drapers' Guild by Rembrandt, 1662.
Square and Compasses of Freemasonry.
The German Student Corps are known for practicing their tradition of engaging in academic fencing by rules dating back to the 1750s.

The development of fraternities in England can be traced from guilds that emerged as the forerunners of trade unions and friendly societies.

Garment workers on strike, New York City circa 1913

General union

Garment workers on strike, New York City circa 1913

A general union is a trade union (called labor union in American English) which represents workers from all industries and companies, rather than just one organisation or a particular sector, as in a craft union or industrial union.

Electricians are often trained through apprenticeships.

Apprenticeship

System for training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study .

System for training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study .

Electricians are often trained through apprenticeships.
A medieval baker with his apprentice. The Bodleian Library, Oxford, England.
Typology of Apprenticeships
Students in a vocational training restaurant, Bagan (Myanmar)
Cook with her apprentice, Euroinstitut vocational school, Czech Republic
Canadian Inter-provincial 'Red Seal' certification (note that license number was replaced with the word 'CANOE')
A master chimney sweep and apprentice in 2008

Although the formal boundaries and terminology of the apprentice/journeyman/master system often do not extend outside guilds and trade unions, the concept of on-the-job training leading to competence over a period of years is found in any field of skilled labor.

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General strike

A general strike has two meanings that we can clarify with two separate names:

A general strike has two meanings that we can clarify with two separate names:

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William Benbow pictured in Punch in 1848
The 1905 general strike in Tampere, Grand Duchy of Finland
1926 United Kingdom general strike
Spanish general strike of 1988
General strike in Catalonia, 21 February 2019
On 26 November 2020, a nationwide general strike of 250 million people, as per trade unions claim, took place in support of Indian farmers' protests.

A General Strike or Solidarity Strike was when various trade unions would go on strike sympathetically to help another trade union.