Labor unions were organizations created by workers who banned together for higher wages, better working conditions and shorter workdays. Because of the belief that these labor unions would possess a threat to the capitalist system, earlier governments banned the labor unions. Unions formed in many different kinds of industries and trades. The workers soon came to realize how much power they held when they were banned together. Workers bargained collectivity with employers, and if this would not work, they would put even more pressure on industrialists by going on strike and refusing to work. this would bring businesses to a grinding halt. Some strikes even turned in to bloody messes when workers and guards threw up arms against each other. Sometimes workers gained nothing of this, and other times unions won the changes they developed. By 1900, strikes were the preferred strategy of the unions. In that year alone, six European countries saw some 4,000 strikes involving 800,000 workers. Labor unions gave workers a new kind of power for themselves.