Established in 1869 in Philadelphia the KOL was a secret society of tailors. Following Terence Powderly's rise to leadership in 1877 the organization went public, pursuing such goals as an 8-hour workday, abolishment of child labor, graduated income tax and fair wage. One of several organizations created to "look out for the workers." For students: what was the purpose of labor organizations? How did they differ from labor unions? How was the KOL organized? What power did the labor organizations have? How did they obtain power?
A lot of the pain over restructuring retirement benefits for unionized manufacturing workers was because their unions had specifically negotiated for those benefits instead of wage increases decades before — and management went along because it wanted to push those costs far into the future