Labor strife meaning1/19/2024 In one famous series of incidents called the “Bread and Roses Strike” which immediately preceded Abdu’l-Baha’s arrival in North America, female textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts-many of them recent immigrants-united with the militant Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Union and walked out of their jobs in manufacturing plants. Violence often accompanied such strikes, especially when factory and mine owners hired “strikebreakers,” armed enforcers who assaulted and killed striking workers. Labor strikes spread all across Europe and the United States, and began to occur worldwide. Because of those conditions, and because of the great disparity of wealth and poverty in multiple cultures, by the early 1900s labor and management had come to violent, polarized odds. Unions developed as a result of the Industrial Revolution, the harsh exploitation of employees by capitalist “Robber Barons” and the grim, often fatal conditions for the working class during that period. For example, the International Workingman’s Association, the first international labor union, came into being in 1864, a year after Baha’u’llah founded the Baha’i Faith in 1863. These labor movements happened as an increasingly industrialized world impelled the growth of a large population of working-class people in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Historically-and interestingly-the modern labor and trade union movements developed during almost exactly the same timeframe as the emergence of the Baha’i Faith. This is at once contrary to justice, to humanity, and to fairness it is the very height of iniquity and runs counter to the good-pleasure of the All-Merciful. Now, the root cause of these difficulties lies in the law of nature that governs present-day civilization, for it results in a handful of people accumulating vast fortunes that far exceed their needs, while the greater number remain naked, destitute and helpless. The Baha’i teachings clearly describe the origins of labor strife between workers and management: During Abdu’l-Baha’s visit to Europe and North America in the early 1900s, the labor movement took the Western world by storm-sometimes a very violent storm.
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