History of Unions and Right-to-Work Laws

Archives

History of Unions and Right-to-Work Laws

December 17, 2013 10:36:50 pm

During the colonial and revolutionary period of the US, most Americans practiced agriculture. The early US also had a substantial population of laborers, a group that included artisans, indentured servants and slaves. Many laborers resided in the major colonial cities of Philadelphia, New York and Boston, and at times these urban laborers organized against poor working conditions and low pay. The population of laborers in the US increased during the Industrial Revolution, as many Americans, including women and children, transitioned from agriculture to industrial jobs. Some unions existed by the start of the US Civil War in 1861, but by and large laborers remained unorganized.

The late 19th century, however, witnessed an increase in union activity. Early unions like the National Labor Union and the Knights of Labor emerged in the post-Civil War landscape but did not last long. On May 3, 1886, the Haymarket Affair turned public support against organized labor. After Chicago police fired into a group of striking laborers, an anarchist threw a stick of dynamite at the police and the explosion killed an officer. The incident did not spell doom for unions in America and Samuel Gompers helped the American Federation of Labor establish itself as one of the nation’s largest labor unions.

Union activity in the US continued to increase, and in July 1935, unions received greater political protection when President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the National Labor Relations Act. According to Roosevelt, the Act protected “the right of self-organization of employees in industry for the purposes of collective bargaining.” It imposed a duty on employers to engage in collective bargaining with unions, and imposed a duty on workers to pay those negotiating unions under union security agreements. By 1947, however, some members of Congress proposed changes to the pro-union structure of the NLRA, and, over the veto of President Harry Truman, passed the Taft-Hartley Act. That Act amended parts of the NLRA, such as subjecting labor unions to claims of unfair practices and only allowing union shops in the absence of state law to the contrary.

Section 164 of the Taft-Hartley Act established the foundation for right-to-work laws by allowing states to prohibit union security agreements, or compulsory union membership. Within a year of the Taft-Hartley Act’s passage, 12 states passed [PDF] right-to-work laws. Several more followed suit throughout the 1950’s. As of December 2013, 24 states had enacted right-to-work laws. Michigan became the most recent state to pass a right-to-work law in December 2012. Michigan’s law covers both public and private sector employees. The law does not prohibit employees from becoming members of labor unions, and instead allows employees the right to choose whether to refrain from union activity. The law creates a “right-to-work” by prohibiting union activity from being a required condition of employment.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.