Closed Shop

CLOSED SHOP

A closed shop was a workplace in which anyone who hoped to gain employment had to first join a labor union. Closed shop requirements remained one of the most aggressive methods a labor union could use to maintain its power among a company's workforce. A less radical form was a "union shop," in which nonunion workers could join the workforce provided they joined the union within a certain period of time. Conversely, a workplace where workers freely belonged to a union or remained nonunionized was called an "open shop."

Labor unions first became powerful during the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century when workers banded together for improved pay and working conditions. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, economic conditions became so difficult that the federal government passed laws such as the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. These acts gave workers the right to bargain collectively (as a single group) with management and required management to negotiate with duly elected union officials. However, during the remainder of the 1930s and in the 1940s some unions in the Northeast and Midwest, the regions with the most heavy industries and the most unions, began requiring that prospective employees be union members before a company could hire them.

After World War II (1939–45) and the damaging labor strikes of 1946, attempts were made to rein in the growing power of the U.S. labor union, culminating in the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. The act sharply limited the circumstances in which closed shops were legal and enabled state governments to outlaw union shops if they chose. However, even after the Taft-Hartley Act became law many workplaces continued to be informal closed shops. In such workplaces there was no "union only" requirement written anywhere in the labor agreement, but only workers who were already members of the union were ever hired. In some workplaces union workers would simply refuse to work with anyone who was not already a member of the union—this practice is a "de facto" closed shop. Closed shops are most common in industries where the company allowed the union to hire workers and where workers were employed by a specific company for a short time, as in the construction industry or among longshoremen.

See also: Labor Movement, Labor Unionism, National Industrial Recovery Act, National Labor Relations Act, Taft-Hartley Act