Sep 2, 2018 5 min read

Editor’s note: This is the first of three parts.

In last term’s 5-4 Janus v. AFSCME decision, the U.S. Supreme Court continued its support of business owners at the expense of workers. Historically, unions played a crucial role in helping spread the benefits of capitalism beyond the capitalists. Early in our nation’s history, most people lived on farms; skilled craftsmen built most nonfarm products in their workshops, which were inevitably small, since there were few economies of scale. As industrialization changed the scale of work from a journeyman and craftsman working (and often living) in close quarters to absentee owners using managers to run massive factories with employees they often never even see, the relationship between the owner and the workers also changed.

Early in this process the owners had all the power; a surplus of workers meant that owners could easily replace uncooperative workers, and since specialization and mechanization had deskilled much of the work, the pool of potential workers was large. This allowed the owners to cut their costs by paying their workers starvation wages, using them as long as they were needed, and letting them go during slack periods or if they got injured. Working conditions were often horrific. Steel mills ran 12-hour shifts seven days a week. Coal mine operators kept track of mules that were killed but not workers because they had to purchase new mules, whereas replacing a worker who was killed cost nothing. Workers were not seen as individuals but simply a cost of production that needed to be minimized to maximize profit.

Workers tried to match the power of the employers by getting together and forming unions so that they could bargain with the employers on more even ground. Many of the battles waged between the workers and the owners were violent, starting with the 1877 Railroad Strike (where Philadelphia Militia ended up killing 20 strikers in Pittsburgh during the strikers’ destruction of the Pennsylvania Railroad yard). Nine more died during the Homestead Strike in 1892, when Frick called in the Pinkertons (private security guards) to protect strike-breakers they brought in to try to run the plant without the striking workers.

Prior to the Great Depression, the employers generally won the battles to keep the unions out, often with the help of the government. (For example, Grover Cleveland used the U.S. Army to break the strike against the Pullman Co. because it was interfering with mail delivery.) The powers that be did not think kindly of unions; governors often used the state militias to oppose strikers as part of their mission to protect private property. Ironically, the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890), which was designed to limit the ability of companies cooperated to exert monopoly control over the market, was used against unions; the Supreme Court interpreted strikes and boycotts as “restraints of commerce.” (The Clayton Antitrust Act corrected this.)

Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal changed that dynamic when the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) gave the unions the ability to organize. It became illegal to fire employees for trying to organize. One reason unions struggled was whenever a company found out employees were trying to organize a union they would fire them, often blackballing them. This legislation was initially derailed by the conservative Supreme Court, which inspired FDR to attempt to change their decisions by appointing enough new justices to preserve the New Deal legislation. While people objected to the court-packing scheme so it never came to fruition, the threat may have been the reason the court stopped overturning popular New Deal legislation (like the Wagner Act, 1935), which allowed unions to gain strength.

This paved the way for the massive organizing efforts of the 1930s and 1940s, when unions grew dramatically as they organized the steel, automobile and coal industries. Growth continued during World War II as FDR pressured industry to allow their shops to be unionized, arguing that the country needed war production to be operating around-the-clock and the companies would be very profitable during the war (even if their workers unionized). Most major unions also pledged not to go on strike during the war. Industrial production for the war soared, and workers earned good wages. But in the war economy, there was little for them to purchase (car companies were making tanks and planes, not cars, e.g.). The percent of the workforce that was unionized reached a peak of 33.4 percent in 1945 (which held until the late 1950s).

After the war, pent-up consumer demand led to massive economic growth and a willingness for companies to accede to many union demands to avoid strikes that might interrupt their booming business. Private sector unionization reached its peak during the 1950s, when many traditional, blue-collar employees working for large companies were union members, which gave them higher wages, pensions and health care (provided by the company) and generally allowed them to enter the middle class. The period from 1945-73 is often considered a golden age for the American economy, when unemployment was low, wages and productivity were high, and inflation was not a factor (until the very end of the period). While unions did not cause this boom, they clearly helped the workers garner a larger share of America’s wealth they helped create.

Part 2: The decline of unions and growing economic inequality

Kent James is an East Washington resident and has degrees in history and policy management from Carnegie Mellon University.