Thread by @ErikLoomis

This Day in Labor History: July 5, 1935. FDR signs the National Labor Relations Act, giving workers a framework to finally form unions and win contracts. Let's talk about this great, great day in American history and a little about why this system is broken today!

When Franklin Roosevelt took over the presidency in 1933, the economy was in the worst state in American history. But Roosevelt wanted to help business, not hurt it. His first New Deal labor legislation was really more a pro-business measure.

The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) intended to bring business on the board with a reform program, and in fact parts of the act were welcomed by corporations, especially as it promoted bigness to undermine harmful competition.

Somewhat unintentionally, the NIRA’s provision protecting collective bargaining for workers was interpreted by American workers as giving them approval to strike.

1934 saw some of the greatest militancy in American history, with major strikes in San Francisco, Minneapolis, Toledo, and the textile plants in New England and the South. This growing labor movement helped cleave corporate support from the New Deal.

In 1935, when the right-wing Supreme Court ruled the NIRA unconstitutional, Roosevelt moved for greater empowerment of workers. In fact, it was only when the NIRA was shut down that FDR moved toward this greater empowerment of workers.

He was originally skeptical of the act because it did so much for workers and seemed anti-business. But the election of 1934 created an overwhelmingly liberal Congress that the political space existed for Roosevelt to take such a significant step.

Senator Robert Wagner (D-NY) shepherded the bill through Congress (and giving it its popular name of the Wagner Act). Wagner had long been a champion of labor.

Wagner had served as chairman of the New York State Factory Inspection Commission in the aftermath of the Triangle Fire and built upon that to become a Democratic senator from the state in 1927.

Wagner was the Senate’s leading liberal during the New Deal, shepherding a variety of legislation through the body, particularly around labor issues.

The NLRA created “the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, & to engage in concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid & protection.”

The law applied to all workers involved in interstate commerce except those working for government, railroads, airlines, and agriculture. And of course there were a lot of workers not engaged in interstate commerce such as nurses.

The agriculture exception, as in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, continues to lead to the exploitation of agricultural workers today and is one of the more unfortunate aspects of the New Deal.

But basically southern senators would have filibustered labor legislation that gave rights to black workers in the South. The choice was a flawed bill that reinforced racial divides or no labor rights for anyone. That, my friends, is America in a nutshell.

The most important part of the NLRA was the establishment of the National Labor Relations Board, creating a government agency with real authority to oversee the nation’s labor relations.

The government had now declared its neutrality in labor relations, seeing its role as mediating them rather than openly siding with employers to crush unions. This was a remarkable turnaround in a nation where unionbusting was a good political move for the ambitious politician.

After all, Calvin Coolidge, out of office only 4 years before Roosevelt took over, made his name by busting the 1919 Boston police strike. It was why he was named VP in 1920!

Business went ballistic after the NLRA passed.

Business Week ran an editorial titled “NO OBEDIENCE!” It read: “Although the Wagner Labor Relations Act has been passed by Congress and signed by the President, it is not yet law. For nothing is law that is not constitutional.”

Conservatives immediately challenged the constitutionality of the NLRA. But Roosevelt’s war on the Supreme Court, while damaging his prestige and ability to get new legislation passed, did have an effect.

The pressure of a changing nation by the time the case came to them had an effect. In the 1937 decision in NLRB v. Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation, the Court ruled 5-4 in favor of the government and the act’s future was ensured.

Within a year of the decision, three justices retired and Roosevelt ensured the future of his programs.

Worth noting here as well that the NLRA also banned company unions, which corporations had used for twenty solid years to destroy any real labor organizing.

It’s also important to remember what life for workers was life before the National Labor Relations Act. It wasn’t just that they couldn’t form strong unions and thus were poor, although that was a piece of it.

It’s that companies could do basically anything they wanted to in order to stop or bust a union. They could hire spies. They could hire a police force. They could kill union organizers. They could fire you for joining a union.

Corporations had all the power and workers had none because in the end, the government was willing to back up the companies through legislation or even through military intervention to bust unions.

The NLRA ended that, perhaps not entirely, but largely. Leveling the playing field meant workers now had the right to a decent life, a right they were happy to grasp and fight for. And fight for it they did, as union membership skyrocketed after the NLRA was upheld by the Court.

In other words, social movements require accessing the levers of power, even if that means compromising on key principles, in order to codify change.

Now, there's no question that the NLRA is a shell of what it once was. The National Labor Relations Board yo-yos between moderate liberals and radical conservatives, depending on the president. It's effectively nonfunctional for long-term change.

Really, this process started in the Eisenhower era (never let anyone tell you he was to the left of Obama) and has continued to get worse to the present, as I explored here.

democracyjournal.org/arguments/the-…

It's an open debate within the labor movement whether to keep plugging away in this broken system or start something completely new. The problem with the latter is that you still have to have the political power to get new ideas codified in law.

And if we had that political power, we wouldn't need the new labor law framework.

If there's one thing that the history of American labor should tell you, it's that unions can't win if the government is actively opposed to it. There's just no real evidence supporting a different conclusion, as I show in my last book.

amazon.com/History-Americ…

I don't really have the answer. There are people such as @Ess_Dog who are thinking through these issues. It's really tough. But the reality is that we are entering a period much more like the 1920s than the 1950s and it is very, very bad for workers.

We have not had comprehensive labor legislation that helped workers in 81 years. There in lies the problem. Labor simply hasn't had the political power to win big needed changes. Much of that is that unions failed to organize effectively in a majority of states.

That has meant that a majority of senators owe nothing to unions. That also includes Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, who both rose to power without union help. Why didn't unions organize Arkansas and Georgia? The racism of white workers was the biggest obstacle.

The CIO did try to organize those states after World War II and there were some successes, but companies, the media, and politicians used redbaiting, racebaiting, and anti-Semitism to tremendous effectiveness to cut off white working class support from unions.

So like most things in American history, this all comes down to race in the end.

Speaking of race, back tomorrow with a brand new thread on the relationship between black power and labor activism. Tomorrow is Homestead day too, but somehow I feel the former is actually more relevant today.