The first organization acting as a federation to encompass American unions was the National Labor Union which truly came into force after the Civil War but was reasonably short-lived. The largest ...

Labor unions are associations that aim to protect ... native-born males throughout the 19th century. These higher-paid workers had the funds to pay union dues and to contribute to strike funds.

And those were really important to unions even a century ago. But many of the visions that inspired the early labor unions in the late 19th and early 20th century were actually much broader than that.