Transcript The 1920s and 1930s

The 1920s and 1930s
Class 1
Labor Movement Issues in the
1920s and Public Policy
Administrative
• Reading for next class
– “Atkins v. Children’s Hospital”
– “Preamble to NLRA”
Review
• Competition among AFL, IWW and
Socialists in the Progressive Era
• Growing importance of labor injunctions,
despite passage of the Clayton Act
• Growth of protective labor legislation
• Post-war period, Red Scare and Boston
Police Strike
Today
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Developments in the AFL
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
Employer Approaches
Court Decisions in the 1920s and 30s
The Railway Labor Act
The Norris-LaGuardia Act
I. Developments in the AFL
• AFL emerged unchallenged as the center
of the trade union movement
• Philosophy unchanged
• Gompers died in 1924
• Replaced by William Green of the United
Mine Workers
AFL and African-Americans
• AFL found it could do little to prevent
discrimination by its affiliates
• Unions usually discriminated
• African-Americans often served as strike
breakers
II. Brotherhood of Sleeping Car
Porters
• Porters were almost entirely AfricanAmerican
• Almost all worked for Pullman
• Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
decided to make an outsider president
• Chose A. Philip Randolph
Pullman
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Bargained with unions of white conductors but
for blacks had company dominated employee
representation plan
When union began to organize, Pullman
brought in Filipinos to replace them on best
runs
Fired those identified as BSCP ringleaders
Company refused to acknowledge BSCP at all
III. Employer Approaches
• The American Plan
• Another name for the Open Shop
• Promoted by the National Association of
Manufacturers
Implementation of the American
Plan
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Discrimination and blacklist
Yellow Dog Contract
Injunction
Espionage
Strike-breaking
Use of Detective Agencies and private police
systems
• Employer Associations
• Company Unions
Welfare Capitalism
• Grew out of Rockefeller and the Ludlow
Massacre
• Harmony of Interest Doctrine
• In theory provided industrial democracy,
better working conditions and better living
conditions
• Key was still employee representation
plans
IV. Court Decisions
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Truax v. Corrigan S.C. 1921
Duplex v. Deering S.C.1921
Bedford Cut Stone S.C. 1927
Court Decisions Affecting AfricanAmericans
• 1934 N.Y. court enjoined African-American
boycott of shoe store
• 1938 Supreme Court finally upheld right of
blacks to organize boycotts of businesses
which would not hire them
V. The Railway Labor Act
• Issue of Federal Jurisdiction
• RLA was jointly drafted by labor and
management
• Dislike of arbitration
Railway Labor Act
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Emphasis on worker representation
through union's and voluntary bargaining
Outlawed interference by either side in
other's choice of representatives
Required employer to negotiate with
representatives of his/her employees
Texas and New Orleans Railroad v.
Brotherhood of Railway Clerks S.C. 1930
VI. The Norris-LaGuardia Act 1932
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Conservative legislation
Intent clearly pro-union and
pro-bargaining
Philosophy clearly laissez-faire
Provisions
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Most Important - Made injunctions almost
impossible to get from a federal court in
a labor dispute
Made Yellow dog contract unenforceable
in federal court
Protected specific self-help measures
Next Time
• The National Labor Relations Act
1920s and the 1930s
Lecture 2
NIRA and NLRA
Administrative
• Reading for next class
– Two articles on “War Labor Board”
– “Women’s Work in California Airplane”
– “Arbitrator Harry Shulman
– For following class read the first two essays
Review
• Supreme Court decisions undermining
workers and unions
• Court decisions undermining any attempts
by African-Americans to improve their
employment situation
• Railway Labor Act (1926)
• Norris-LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Act
(1932)
Today
Roosevelt’s approach and the National
Industrial Recovery Act
II. Background to the National Labor
Relations Act
III. Philosophy and Approach of the NLRA
IV. Provisions of the NLRA
V. Impact of the NLRA
I.
I. Roosevelt and the National
Industrial Recovery Act
• Roosevelt’s Campaign Promises
• National Industrial Recovery Act – June
1933
– Allowed industry to “collude” to raise prices
– Provided for right to unionize
• Resulted in rapid union growth
II. Background to the National
Labor Relations Act
• Senator Wagner’s bill
• Constitutionality – NLRB v. Jones and
Laughlin Steel, SC 1937
• Based in part on the desire to eliminate
organizational strikes
III. Philosophy and Approach of the
National Labor Relations Act
Philosophy
• Unionism is good – unions and
bargaining will help promote recovery
and labor peace
• Workers should have the choice of which
union, if any, represents them
• Workers have a right to withhold their
labor
Approach of the NLRA
• Government will intervene to protect the
right to unionize, the right to bargain, and
the right to strike
• Government will limit employer anti-union
and anti-bargaining tactics
IV. Provisions of the NLRA
• Heart of the Act is section 7
• "Employees shall have the right to
self-organization, to form, join or assist labor
organizations, to bargain collectively through
representatives of their own choosing and to
engage in concerted activities for the purpose of
collective bargaining or other mutual aid or
protection"
Provisions of the NLRA
• Created NLRB to oversee and enforce the
Act
• Unfair labor practices
Provisions - ULPs
• Employers may not “restrain or coerce”
employees exercising their rights
• No company unions
• No discrimination to discourage union
membership
• Refusal to bargain
Provisions - Representation
• Exclusive Representation
• Uniqueness of this method
• Replaced the practice of employers
avoiding unions where they could and
recognizing them where they had no
choice
V. Impact of the NLRA
• In the late 1930's the N.L.R.B. held 1000's
of elections with millions of workers
participating
• By 1941 company unions had all but
disappeared
• Courts went on to enhance worker rights
Next Time
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The New Deal
Racial Issues
Developments in the Union Movement
The “Sit-down” strikes
Employers in the 1930s
The 1920s and 1930s
Class 3
Workers and Trade Unions in the
1930s
Administrative
• Reading for next time
– For class after (World War II) do the two
readings on the War Labor Board and the one
on Women’s Work in a California Warplanes
Factory
Review
• National Labor Relations Act – the Wagner
Act
• Rights of workers to organize, to bargain
and to strike
• Right of workers to elect their own
representative if they want one
• Unfair labor practices and their
consequences
Today
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The New Deal
Race at Work
Unions in the Depression
CIO Challenge to the AFL
Sit-down Era
Employers in the 1930s
I. The New Deal
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What was the New Deal?
What programs did it involve?
How successful was it?
How did the depression end?
II. Race at Work
• In depression groups of whites tried to
take over traditional black jobs and
insisted employers fire blacks
• Much of New Deal accepted local
segregationist practices
• National Industrial Recovery Act
• Impact of Wagner Act
Race in the Unions
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Blacks formed sharecropper unions in
south but little success
Unions affiliated with Trade Union Unity
League often fought for equal pay for the
races and the sexes
1934 AFL appointed committee to study
racial discrimination
III. Unions in the Depression
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Depression initially crippled unions as a
collective bargaining instrument
A.F.L. - Philosophy - Depression forced
reconsideration of voluntarism
Organizing Boom Begins
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1880's and 1930's only two periods in
U.S. history of “organization from below”
– Initially spurred by passage of N.I.R.A.
– Industrial unions made greatest gains
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1934 amendments to Railway Labor Act
specifically included Pullman
1934 west coast maritime strike
IV. CIO Challenge to the AFL
• CIO began as caucus within the AFL –
Committee for Industrial Organization
• Fought in AFL for industrial charters
• When member unions expelled from AFL,
reconstituted itself as the Congress of
Industrial Organizations
IV. CIO Challenge to the AFL
Basic Reasons for the split?
• Power
• Principles
• Personality
CIO
• Never really radical
• Never advocated voluntarism
• Believed in organizing across racial lines
V. Sit-down Era
• Wave of organizing strikes against
employers who simply wouldn’t talk to
unions
• Began in rubber industry and spread to
automobiles and steel
Steel
• Organizing Campaign in steel begun by
the CIO in 1936
• Steel Workers Organizing Committee
• Presence of communists among CIO
organizers gave employers a propaganda
tool
Little Steel Strike
• Response to offensive by the virulently
anti-labor and reactionary president of
Republic Steel, Tom Girdler
• Police fired on a peaceful picnic of strikers
and their families in Chicago killing ten of
them
VI. Employers
• Ignored the National Industrial Recovery
Act
• Ignored the Wagner Act as long as they
could
• Influenced state and local government
Mohawk Valley Formula
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Encouraged by N.A.M.
Systematic campaign to oppose union
organizing and strikes
Important to understand most of this was
illegal
LaFollette Civil Liberties Committee
• Reported on 1933-1937
• Found employer tactics involved frequent
total disregard for legal and constitutional
rights of employees
Next Time
• Labor during the War Period