Labor Law Is Stuck in 1947. It's No Surprise Companies Keep Winning.
In 1947, when Republicans took control of Congress for the first time since the Great Depression, they immediately set out to weaken unions. The bill they drafted provoked sharp condemnation from Democrats: Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the first Black congressman elected in New York, compared it to slave labor and said it could “just as easily have been introduced in the Reichstag in the days of Nazism at its worst.”
The next day, the House passed the bill with overwhelming support from Republicans and Southern Democrats. The Senate quickly passed its own version. President Harry Truman vetoed it, calling it a “shocking piece of legislation.” But it became law when the Senate joined the House in overriding his veto.
The law, known as Taft-Hartley, after its Republican lead sponsors, read like a wish list from the corporations who’d helped write it in response to a wave of strikes seeking higher wages. Among many other attacks on labor, it gave companies the “free speech” rights they now use to force employees to attend anti-union propaganda sessions; banned secondary boycotts, in which unions refused to work with companies whose workers were on strike; and allowed states to pass right-to-work laws, which deprive unions of dues from any workers who don’t want to pay in.
At its core, the law was a repudiation of the landmark National Labor Relations Act that Congress had passed in 1935 to encourage collective bargaining. In the 73 years since, no major pro-union legislation has replaced it. Had no immigration laws been passed since the 1940s, Western Europeans would still be given priority access to the country and Asians would be banned outright from becoming citizens. Without civil rights legislation since then, segregation would still be legal under federal law. Looked at from that perspective, it’s not so surprising that Amazon managed to crush a union drive in Bessemer, Alabama.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/05/labor-law-is-stuck-in-1947-its-no-surprise-companies-keeps-winning/
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'FDR Seizes Control of Montgomery Ward During WWII' History, 2020.
On December 27, 1944, as World War II dragged on, President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders his secretary of war to seize properties belonging to the Montgomery Ward company because the company refused to comply with a labor agreement.
In an effort to avert strikes in critical war-support industries, Roosevelt created the National War Labor Board in 1942. The board negotiated settlements between management and workers to avoid shut-downs in production that might cripple the war effort. During the war, the well-known retailer and manufacturer Montgomery Ward had supplied the Allies with everything from tractors to auto parts to workmen’s clothing–items deemed as important to the war effort as bullets and ships. However, Montgomery Ward Chairman Sewell Avery refused to comply with the terms of three different collective bargaining agreements with the United Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union hammered out between 1943 and 1944.
- Sewell Avery, Montgomery Ward Chairman carried out of his office by Army National Guard troops for not complying with wartime labor agreements, April 1944.
In April 1944, after Sewell refused a second board order, Roosevelt called out the Army National Guard to seize the company’s main plant in Chicago. Sewell himself had to be carried out of his office by National Guard troops. By December of that year, Roosevelt was fed up with Sewell’s obstinacy and disrespect for the government’s authority. (The uber-capitalist Sewell’s favorite insult was to call someone a “New Dealer”–a direct reference to Roosevelt’s Depression-era policies.) On December 27, Roosevelt ordered the secretary of war to seize Montgomery Ward’s plants and facilities in New York, Michigan, California, Illinois, Colorado and Oregon.
In his announcement that day, Roosevelt emphasized that the government would “not tolerate any interference with war production in this critical hour.” He issued a stern warning to labor unions and industry management alike: “strikes in wartime cannot be condoned, whether they are strikes by workers against their employers or strikes by employers against their Government.” Sewell took the fight to federal court, but lost.
For much of the 20th century, Montgomery Ward, founded in 1872, reigned as one of the country’s largest department store and mail-order retail chains. Heavy competition from Wal-Mart, Target and similar discount stores forced the company to close all of its stores in 2000, though it retains a catalog and internet presence.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-seizes-control-of-montgomery-ward
