New York State AFL-CIO Records

The New York State AFL-CIO is a statewide federation of trade unions that has its origins in the Workingmen's Assembly, founded in the mid-1860s, and the New York State Branch of the American federation of Labor, founded in 1888. The two organizations merged in 1898 to form the New York State Workingmen's Federation (whose name was changed in 1910 to the New York State Federation of Labor). Its primary aim was to lobby the state legislature in favor of legislation of concern to the labor movement. Issues of concern to the Federation included the abolition of child labor, equal pay for equal work, enactment of workmen's compensation law, shorter work hours and the protection of strikers and immigrant laborers. The federation grew steadily through the 1930s, under the leadership of its president (from 1934) George Meany, who had been a business agent for Plumbers Local 463 in New York City and brought the building trades unions into the state federation. Meany went on to become national president of the American Federation of Labor in 1940, and was later instrumental in negotiating the 1955 merger of the AFL with its rival federation the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). In 1958 the New York organization followed suit and adopted the name New York State AFL-CIO. The newly merged federation quickly went on to press for and win the state's first minimum wage law, and improved insurance coverage for disabled and unemployed workers. The state federation also fought for Medicaid legislation in the 1960s and won enactment of the Taylor Law, which gave public employees in New York the right to organize and bargain collectively.