In the late 1800s the average workweek for most was 60+ hours — almost double what most Americans work now. By 1937, labor unions created enough political momentum to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, which helped create a federal framework for a shorter workweek that included room for leisure time.

With a decline of unions over the past 35 years, this has mirrored a decline in the middle class’s share of national income. At the time when most Americans belonged to a union — a period of time between the 1940’s and 1950’s — income inequality in the U.S. was at its lowest point in the history of the country.

The very first American Federation of Labor (AFL) national convention passed “a resolution calling on states to ban children under 14 from all gainful employment” in 1881, and soon after states across the country adopted similar recommendations, leading up to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act which regulated child labor on the federal level for the first time.

The rise of unions in the 1930’s and 1940’s led to the first great expansion of health care for all Americans, as labor unions banded workers together to negotiate for health coverage plans from employers. In 1942, the US set up a National War Labor Board. It had the power to set a cap on all wage increases. But it let employers circumvent the cap by offering “fringe benefits” — notably, health insurance. By 1950, half of all companies with fewer than 250 workers and two-thirds of all companies with more than 250 workers offered health insurance of one kind or another.