How did employers respond to the growth of labor unions?

1. Lockout: Closing the factory to break a labor movement before it could get organized

2. Blacklists: Names of prounion workers circulated among employers

3. Yellow-dog contracts: Workers being told, as a condition for employment, that they must sign and agreement not to join a union

4. Calling in private guards or state militia

5. obtaining court injunctions against strikes

Since the XIX Century, the labor unions have been in constant evolution, in the beginning, were ignored almost by every single government entity.

This lack of support by the public power allowed to the employers an enormous advantage until recent times, the worker normally was exploited at the maximum way possible (ridiculous long shifts, no healthcare benefits, etc).

In the XX and XXI Centuries, a lot of changes benefiting the laborers have been improving, however this doesn't mean that the employers were too happy about it, once the labor unions started to grow and be heard with more attention, the power of the employers started to decrease, due to this, the labor unions gained power in a fast and effective way, gaining a considerable number of changes and benefits aiming to the workers.

The Employers tried to make alliances with the government, offering benefits in exchange, not accepting the multiple changes the laborers were asking, a lot of strikes happened, with pacific and sometimes violent protests were both sides were clearly affected, in order to finalize with all the public disorder, the government, employers and laborers get an agreement, where changes asked by the laborers were made, however a couple of regulations were made in order to guarantee the proper rights to the employers.

So based on this, the response by the employer since weren't too friendly, they tried to respond and counter the unions, however we can say that the answer arrived late, when the unions were organized and supported by other entities, this way generating an obligated agreement for all the parts involved, in order to guarantee rights to the laborers.