LABOR AND THE LAW
Labor on the Defensive
The coming of the Depression hurt the unions as much as it did any other organization. Like everyone else, the unions were unprepared at first to deal with the drastic changes these new conditions brought to the workplace. Membership declined as layoffs increased and shops closed. Without an effective plan or vision, organized labor's response to the desperation many workers felt was erratic and often ineffectual. Disputes between management and the workers, however, continued and even worsened as the availability of a cheap pool of labor grew. President Roosevelt's approach to the problems of labor in the early days of the New Deal was that of a conciliator. He believed that through cooperation the interests of both would be inevitably served, and toward that end he attempted to gain the workers' confidence by acknowledging that they were entitled to a voice in industry. No other piece of legislation more reflected this attitude than did Section 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which gave laborers the right to organize and to bargain collectively through unions of their own choosing. There were some in Congress and many more in the unions who believed the president was placing too much faith in the employers' goodwill. They felt that his paternalistic views of the workers' needs and his belief that it was the government's responsibility to administer to those needs were preventing organized labor from getting the recognition and bargaining equality it was due.
Labor Ignored
By 1934, moreover, it was becoming increasingly apparent to the now rapidly growing unions that the intent of Section 7(a) was being subverted. Employers had taken advantage of the provision to establish company unions that they used to factionalize their labor forces. Under the NIRA employers had been given the authority to create and impose industrywide codes controlling not only prices and production but also wages, a power which they frequently abused to protect profits. In practically every industry employers were resisting collective bargaining demands, and doing so successfully. Neither Section 7(a), which lacked any enforcement mechanism, nor the president had been of much help. But Congress was. Later that same year Sen. Robert Wagner introduced a bill to protect the nation's industrial workers by assuring them of the right to organize and by establishing a National Labor Relations Board. The board
would be authorized to prohibit unfair practices by employers opposed to the unionization of their employees and to conduct elections to determine whether workers wished to bargain collectively and, if so, whom they desired to represent them for that purpose. Nothing could have conflicted more with the president's approach to the relations between management and labor, and he refused to endorse the bill, thereby delaying its consideration until after Congress had reconvened in 1935.
"Labor's Great Friend."
The year 1935 was to be eventful. The results of the midterm and congressional elections held late the previous year clearly showed that the public was prepared to go yet further in implementing reform. Organized labor had been a major contributor to the Democratic Party's election success and expected to wield greater influence with the membership of the new, far more liberal Congress. None of this was lost on the president, who had become increasingly disappointed with the NIRA and the failure of his national labor policy. With some adroit maneuvering on the part of its sponsor and his allies, the Wagner bill was passed in the Senate and sent to the House of Representatives for its consideration. The president, perhaps sensing that any further opposition to the bill would prove futile, reversed his position in time to see and take credit for the passage of the National Labor Relations Act (the Wagner Act) on 5 July.
The Supreme Court Steps In
In quick succession, the Supreme Court delivered a series of decisions that would affect labor no less than it did any other group or aspect of national life. On 7 January 1935 in what became known as the "Hot Oil Cases" (Panama Refining Company v. Ryan ), the Court invalidated the provision in the NIRA that regulated the oil industry, having found the act to be an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power. On 6 May the Supreme Court, by a vote of five to four, found the Railroad Retirement Act—an act similar in structure to the social security bill then under consideration in the Congress—unconstitutional because it was a violation of due process and involved matters beyond the scope of the commerce clause. Then, on 27 May in the "Sick Chicken" case (Schechter Poultry Corp. v. U. S.), the Court invalidated the NIRA itself. Section 7(a) had been eliminated.
… And Labor Steps Out
The National Labor Relations Board, to which the Wagner Act had given birth, began operating on 27 August and was immediately inundated with lawsuits challenging its authority and existence. Spurred on by the Supreme Court's recent opinions in the Schechter case, organizations such as the ultra-conservative, anti-New Deal American Liberty League sought injunctions to paralyze the board and to prevent it from pursuing its congressional mandate. While the government was struggling to respond to the challenge, labor grew increasingly restless and belligerent. Toward the end of the year the major rubber companies announced an increase in work hours with no corresponding increase in pay. The workers reacted swiftly: they struck the plants and in the process refused to give up possession of the company's factories. To its first important test the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) responded with both aid and leadership, major factors in bringing about the manufacturers' capitulation.
The Battle for Flint
In 1935 automobile-plant workers in Michigan reached the limit of their patience with conditions in their plants. Both the CIO and the United Auto Workers had been hamstrung by the reluctance of the employers to reach an agreement. At meetings convened by the unions' leadership, a proposal to strike was approved, but it was postponed pending further attempts to negotiate. On 30 December, however, the workers took matters into their own hands and shut down the plants. Two weeks later, police and striking workers who were gathered outside the plant clashed. The police, in what became known as the "battle of the running bulls," were forced to retreat, and the sit-down was expanded to include other manufacturing plants in the Chevrolet division. The auto companies were able to obtain an injunction against the strikers, but there was no attempt to enforce it, a factor that contributed to the strike's settlement sometime thereafter.
The Memorial Day Massacre
Many of the country's largest corporations entered into contracts with CIO member unions, effectively recognizing the unions' authority to bargain on behalf of the companies' work-forces. Still, there were others who continued to resist, including Republic Steel. In 1937 the Steel Workers Organizing Committee ordered a work stoppage and posted pickets around many of Republic's mills. At one in south Chicago, the picketing was stopped by the police. A protest was organized and generated a march on the plant's main gate, where waiting police confronted the crowd and, in the melee that followed, killed ten of the demonstrators. Despite the outcry that followed, public reaction to labor's renewed militancy, its use of the sit-down strike to deprive company owners of their property, and its defiance of the law left many Americans with ambivalent feelings respecting labor's methods. When the Supreme Court eventually concluded, in the case of NLRB v. Fansteel Metallurgical Corp., that the sit-down strike was an unconstitutional abridgment of the rights of property holders, the decision was met with some relief by many citizens.
The Supreme Court Steps Back … a Little
Whatever effect the president's court-packing plan may have had in 1937, the fact that labor benefited from the rather sudden and startling change in the Supreme Court's position regarding a host of concerns to its membership is undisputed. In 1938, in the case of Lauf v. E. G. Shinner & Co., the Court sustained the constitutionality of the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932, which prohibited federal courts from issuing injunctions against strikers in all but certain rare instances. The year before, in National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., the Court
had upheld the National Labor Relations Act, laying to rest the fear that the protections it afforded the working man would be driven into oblivion. The decision also meant that the National Labor Relations Board could resume its function, free of the harassment it had suffered since its formation. During that period complaints of unfair labor practices had increased from a few hundred annually to more than nine thousand.
Sources:
Irving Bernstein, Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933-1941 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970);
Robert S. McElvaine, The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941 (New York: Times Books, 1984);
Newsweek (13 February 1937): 10-11;
Newsweek (17 April 1937): 7-9.
