Irish Labor Reform

The pattern of Irish participation in the labor movement was in some ways like that of Anglo-American workers. Both groups tended to reject revolutionary politics in favor of labor reform. Irish workers often became politically active through Knights of Labor assemblies, which demanded better wages, shorter hours, better working conditions, and union recognition, not the restructuring of the economic and political systems. In the 1880s, nearly all Irish activists supported the reformist, Anglo-American-led Trades and Labor Assembly rather than the revolutionary Central Labor Union. In fact, it was the Chicago Knights of Labor, with its largely Irish leadership, that condemned