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Limiting Labor: Business Political Mobilization and Union Setback in the States

Part of: JPH 30th Anniversary Most Cited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

Marc Dixon
Marc Dixon
Affiliation:
Florida State University
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The 1940s were heady times for the American labor movement. The tight wartime labor market and the backing of the federal government in defense industries facilitated impressive membership gains for both AFL and CIO unions. By 1945, labor unions represented almost 35 percent of the workforce—a more than fivefold increase from the early 1930s. What is more, union membership gains penetrated previously unorganized and resistant regions like the South. Unions indeed appeared on the verge of recruiting millions of new members and establishing a truly national social movement. Critics and supporters alike viewed unions as the most powerful institutions of the day. Following the war, Fortune Magazine foresaw little resistance to unionism and to the postwar southern labor organizing drives, while sympathetic scholars like C. Wright Mills viewed labor leaders as the “new men of power.”

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , July 2007 , pp. 313 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2007

References

Notes

1. For wartime gains in union membership, see Dubofsky, Melvyn, The State and Labor in Modern America (Chapel Hill, 1994)Google Scholar; Troy, Leo, Distribution of Union Membership Among the States (New York, 1957).Google Scholar

2. Fortune reference in Goldfield, Michael, Race and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York, 1997), 243Google Scholar. Mills, C. Wright, The New Men of Power (Urbana 2001 [1948])Google Scholar. Mills viewed union leaders as influential, strategic actors. This was the view of many labor observers during the 1940s. Yet, union gains were under attack even as Mills was writing, and by the end of the decade the very title of the book did not correspond with the diminished status of labor.

3. Gross, James A., “Conflicting Statutory Purposes: Another Look at Fifty Years of NLRB Law Making,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 39 (1985): 7–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Millis, Harry and Brown, Emily Clark, From the Wagner Act to the Taft-Hartley Act (Chicago, 1950).Google Scholar

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5. For important exceptions, see Canak, William and Miller, Berkeley, “Gumbo Politics: Unions, Business, and Louisiana Right-to-Work Legislation,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 43 (1990): 258–271CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gall, Gilbert, The Politics of Right-to-Work: The Labor Federations as Special Interests, 1943–1979 (New York, 1988).Google Scholar

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7. The composition of activists promoting Right-to-Work shifted in the immediate postwar years when mainstream conservatives, including the National Association of Manufacturers, began to see Right-to-Work as an especially useful tool. Before this, the most vocal proponents were more often tied to extreme right-wing politics, particularly in the South with organizations like the Christian American Association. See Gall, The Politics of Right-to-Work, 35–36. A useful feature of the Texas case is that both types of organizations were present and active to varying degrees throughout the decade. The intensity and range of antilabor mobilization enhance the insight this particular case can provide into the origins of, and shifts in, Right-to-Work and other antilabor activism, and to the diverse actors involved in these struggles.

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11. Nearly every state considered legislative restrictions on union activities during the late 1930s and 1940s. A handful of states did consider and adopt progressive labor legislation along the lines of the Wagner Act. For examples, see Killingsworth, Charles C., State Labor Relations Acts (Chicago, 1948)Google Scholar; Holter, Darryl, “Labor Law and the Road to Taft Hartley: Wisconsin's Little Wagner Act, 1935–1945,” Labor Studies Journal 15 (1990): 20–47.Google Scholar

12. Millis and Brown, From the Wagner Act to the Taft-Hartley Act; Wilcox, Richard C., “Industrial Management's Policies Toward Unionism,” in Labor and the New Deal, ed. Derber, Milton and Young, Edwin (Madison, 1957).Google Scholar

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14. Millis and Brown, From the Wagner Act to the Taft-Hartley Act, 319; Pichardo, Nelson, “The Power Elite and Elite Driven Countermovements: The Associated Farmers of California,” Sociological Forum 10 (1995): 21–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. On the negative effects of Right-to-Work laws on union density and union organizing flows, see Elwood, David T. and Fine, Glenn, “The Impact of Right-to-Work Laws on Union Organizing,” Journal of Political Economy 95 (1987): 250–273CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moore, William J., “The Determinants and Effects of Right-to-Work Laws: A Review of the Recent Literature,” Journal of Labor Research 19 (1998): 445–469.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. See Lichtenstein, Nelson, Labor's War at Home: The CIO in World War II (New York, 1982), 80–81.Google Scholar

17. Ibid.

18. Troy, Leo, “The Growth of Union Membership in the South, 1939–1953,” Southern Economic Journal 24 (1958): 407–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. Zeitlin and Weyher's analysis shows that increased CIO presence had an independent and significant effect on reductions in black-white employment inequality between 1940 and 1950 in some nonsouthern states. See Zeitlin, Maurice and Weyher, L. Frank, “‘Black and White, Unite and Fight’: Interracial Working-Class Solidarity and Racial Employment Equality,” American Journal of Sociology 107 (2001): 430–467.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. Farhang and Katznelson, “The Southern Imposition.” For two important works on the CIO and African American workers in the South during this period, see Honey, Michael, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers (Urbana, 1993)Google Scholar; Korstad, Robert, Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth Century South (Chapel Hill, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. Lewis was the central figure for antiunion advocates during the war years and early postwar period. He was a featured target in many national news magazines, who variously characterized him as a racketeer or dictator, including one Newsweek cover featuring his face and the headline “Lewis: The Power to Paralyze.” News features on Lewis from Dubofsky, Melvin and Van Tyne, Warren, John Lewis: A Biography (Urbana, 1986), 323.Google Scholar

22. In Marshall, F. Ray, Labor in the South (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 241.Google Scholar

23. Gall, The Politics of Right-to-Work.

24. Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth, Selling Free Enterprise (Urbana, 1994).Google Scholar

25. American Federation of Labor, “Statement by the Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor,” for release in Friday morning papers, 21 May 1943, in American Federation of Labor Papers, series 3, State Legislation Files, Box 1 (Florida), Wisconsin Historical Society.

26. U.S. Department of Labor, Annual Digest of State and Federal Labor Legislation.

27. Gall, The Politics of Right-to-Work, 42.

28. Amenta, Edwin, Bold Relief: Institutional Politics and the Origins of Modern American Social Policy (Princeton, 1998), 192.Google Scholar

29. Brewer, Thomas B., “State Anti-Labor Legislation: Texas—A Case Study,” Labor History 10 (1970): 59–76Google Scholar; Marshall, Labor in the South.

30. Dauer, Manning J., “Recent Southern Political Thought,” Journal of Politics 10 (1948): 327–353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31. Green, The Establishment in Texas Politics, 17.

32. Dauer, “Recent Southern Political Thought,” 334–35.

33. Canak and Miller contend that Christian American received some support from the Du Pont family (“Gumbo Politics,” 260). See also the account of writer Kennedy, Stetson, Southern Exposure (Garden City, N.Y., 1946), 251–254Google Scholar, which points to prominent industrialists as early sources of support for Christian American and Vance Muse.

34. Green, The Establishment in Texas Politics, 61–63.

35. Building contractors were no doubt a driving force behind the Open Shop efforts of the early twentieth century, including those activities in Texas. Notably, however, in some northern cities in the 1920s, contractors might just as often have viewed unions as a stabilizing force, and were thus, at least in these circumstances, a less potent source of antiunion activism. See Gordon, Colin, New Deals: Business, Labor, and Politics in America, 1920–1935 (Cambridge, 1994), 118Google Scholar; Bonnett, Clarence E., A History of Employers' Associations in the United States (New York, 1956), 471–477Google Scholar; Griffin, Larry J., Wallace, Michael E., and Rubin, Beth A., “Capitalist Resistance to the Organization of Labor Before the New Deal: Why? How? Success?” American Sociological Review 51 (1986): 147–167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36. Brewer, “State Anti-Labor Legislation,” 71; Polakoff, Murray Emanuel, “The Development of the Texas State CIO Council” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1955).Google Scholar

37. Troy, “The Growth of Union Membership in the South.”

38. See Davidson, Chandler, Race and Class in Texas Politics (Princeton, 1990)Google Scholar; Mayhew, David R., Placing Parties in American Politics: Organization, Electoral Settings, and Government Activity in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 1986), 139.Google Scholar

39. See Zamora, Emilio, The World of the Mexican Worker in Texas (College Station, 1993)Google Scholar. There are vivid historical examples of Mexican workers being used a strikebreakers, and the Bracero program likely intensified such fears on the part of unions. However, the primary racial cleavages among workers in urbanizing Texas during the 1940s revolved around black-white relations.

40. Polakoff, “The Development of the Texas State CIO Council.”

41. Brewer, “State Anti-Labor Legislation.”

42. Mullenix, Grady, “A History of the Texas State Federation of Labor” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1955)Google Scholar. There are TSIUC references to “United Action” on the part of craft and industrial factions as late as 1946. But this apparently did not carry over into legislative activism following the disbanding of the United Labor Committee. Texas State Industrial Union Council, CIO Notes (2 December 1946), 2.

43. Troy, Distribution of Union Membership Among the States; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufacturers (Washington, D.C., 1947).

44. Solidarity was admittedly far from assured among Texas workers. Just how workers' interests are formed, and whether or not they align with labor organization and the varied goals of particular unions, are of course complex processes and are beyond the scope of this study. What this article contends is that there were favorable openings for unionism, and, indeed, notable union gains during the decade.

45. Key, V. O., Southern Politics in State and Nation (New York, 1949), 260.Google Scholar

46. Green, The Establishment in Texas Politics.

47. In Polakoff, “The Development of the Texas State CIO Council,” 272.

48. Brewer, “State Anti-Labor Legislation,” 70–71; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Work Stoppages Caused by Labor-Management Disputes (Washington, D.C., various years).

49. Green, The Establishment in Texas Politics, 61. Reports of lobbying by the Christian American Association across several states are frequent in correspondence between AFL officers in the states and AFL president William Green, in American Federation of Labor Papers, series 3, State Legislation Files, Box 1 (Arkansas, Florida), Wisconsin Historical Society.

50. In Canak and Miller, “Gumbo Politics,” 261.

51. Some labor leaders signed a no-strike pledge with Stevenson (it had been in effect orally for more than a year) in a failed effort to stave off the legislation. Marshall, Labor in the South, 243; Mullenix, “A History of the Texas State Federation of Labor.”

52. Mullenix, “A History of the Texas State Federation of Labor”; Troy, “The Growth of Union Membership in the South.”

53. See McKay, S. S., Texas Politics, 1906–1944 (Lubbock, 1952), 431–452Google Scholar; Texas Regular Party, “Why Is There a Texas Regular Party?” in Collection 239, Margaret Carter Papers, Texas Labor Archives, University of Texas at Arlington.

54. Amberg, Stephen, “Governing Labor in Modernizing Texas,” Social Science History 28 (2004): 145–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55. In Polakoff, “The Development of the Texas State CIO Council,” 300.

56. Ad in Green, The Establishment in Texas Politics, 90. Some Texas labor activists saw Smith as tightly connected with the Fight for Free Enterprise. A Texas House committee investigated lobbying efforts related to Right-to-Work—including that of the Fight for Free Enterprise—but found no wrongdoing. See Texas State Industrial Union Council, CIO Notes (19 July 1945).

57. Gall, The Politics of Right-to-Work, 231.

58. CIO and AFL testimony in Polakoff, “The Development of the Texas State CIO Council,” 302. The CIO did not devote much time or resources to the Right-to-Work problem until the mid-1950s. It is not until after the merger in 1957 that the labor movement establishes a formal committee to deal with Right-to-Work in the states. See Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise.

59. On notable differences in the racial practices of AFL and CIO unions during this period, see Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights; Zeitlin and Wheyer, “‘Black and White, Unite and Fight.’”

60. When the Right-to-Work issue gained interest in the Midwestern states in the late 1950s, some employers did try to appeal to black workers, noting the opportunities that the laws would generate. By this point, however, union appeals in the states had changed significantly; unions increasingly attempted to reach out to minority workers and their appeals were more streamlined with those of the national union movement. See Gall, The Politics of Right-to-Work; Jacobs, David and Dixon, Marc, “The Politics of Labor-Management Relations: Detecting the Conditions that Affect Changes in Right-to-Work Laws,” Social Problems 53 (2006): 118–137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61. Marshall, Labor in the South, 244.

62. Texas Manufacturers Association, Texas Industry, April 1946.

63. Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise; Workman, Andrew, “Manufacturing Power: The Organizational Revival of the National Association of Manufacturers, 1941–1945,” Business History Review 72 (1998): 279–317CrossRefGoogle Scholar. These changes undertaken by the NAM are consistent with literature on framing that probes the cultural work of social movement actors (and their antagonists) and the processes by which they generate and maintain meaning for potential supporters and other audiences. As this section shows, the TMA generally mirrored the efforts under way by national organizations like the NAM. Unfortunately, there are not enough surviving materials to code and systematically analyze the changes in their framing of the labor question relative to the varied union claims. Assessing the impact of employer and union framing efforts across place is undoubtedly an important task for labor researchers. For the impact of framing on other types of mobilization, see Cress, Daniel and Snow, David, “The Outcomes of Homeless Mobilization: The Influence of Organization, Disruption, Political Mediation, and Framing,” American Journal of Sociology 105 (2000): 1063–1104CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hewitt, Lyndi and McCammon, Holly J., “Explaining Suffrage Mobilization: Balance, Neutralization, and Range in Collective Action Frames, 1892–1919,” Mobilization 9 (2004): 149–166.Google Scholar

64. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Work Stoppages Caused by Labor-Management Disputes (Washington, D.C., various years).

65. See Lichtenstein, Labor's War at Home, for employers, strikes, and the OPA. Sheffield Steel ad in Houston Press, 31 July 1945, 9. From Texas Labor Archives, Collection 110, Clippings, Box 11, University of Texas at Arlington.

66. Gabriel, Milton and Gabriel, Hortense, “Texas Newspaper Opinion: I,” Public Opinion Quarterly 10 (1946): 57–70.Google Scholar

67. Pomper, Gerald, “The Public Relations of Organized Labor,” Public Opinion Quarterly 23 (1959–1960): 483–494.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

68. Brewer, “State-Anti-Labor Legislation,” 69; Lynd, Robert, “Labor and the Grass-Roots Community,” Labor and Nation (04–05 1946): 20–24.Google Scholar

69. In Griffith, Barbara S., The Crisis of American Labor: Operation Dixie and the Defeat of the CIO” (Philadelphia, 1988), 90.Google Scholar

70. Texas Manufacturers Association, Texas Industry, April 1946, 22.

71. Marshall, Labor in the South, 244.

72. Texas State Industrial Union Council, CIO Notes (3 August 1946; 2 December 1946); Troy, “The Growth of Union Membership in the South.”

73. See Griffith, The Crisis of American Labor, for an account of the organizing failures in textiles.

74. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for highlighting this political riddle. Many have demonstrated the political consequences of the narrow scope and orientation of the postwar union movement. See Rogers, Joel, “Divide and Conquer: Further Reflections on the Distinctive Character of American Labor Laws,” Wisconsin Law Review (1990): 1–128Google Scholar; Form, William, Segmented Labor, Fractured Politics (New York, 1995).Google Scholar

75. This strategy intensified following the explosion of the Communist issue within the CIO. In 1949, the Steelworkers, among others, repeatedly raided and even broke those organizing unions hospitable to Communists. See Lichtenstein, “From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining,” 137.

76. Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights, 227. See also Goldfield, Race and the Mainsprings of American Politics.

77. Mullenix, “A History of the Texas State Federation of Labor,” 411.

78. Green, The Establishment in Texas Politics; Texas State Industrial Union Council, CIO Notes (18 April 1946). Before the Baker Supreme Court decision in 1962, unequal representation in state legislatures (including Texas) was the norm. David and Eisenberg's relative Right to Vote scores show significant declines in the value of the vote in the more urban counties in Texas between the early 1900s and 1950. See Paul T. David and Ralph Eisenberg, Devaluation of the Urban and Suburban Vote (Charlottesville, 1961), 15. Yet labor would even have trouble mustering support from these urban districts.

79. Texas State Federation of Labor, State Labor Proceedings, Microfilm Collection (1947), 119, Center for Research Libraries.

80. H. W. Akin, “Address to the Ninth Annual Convention of the Texas State Industrial Union Council” (1946), 4, in Texas State Industrial Union Council Records, Collection 110, Series 16, Box 8, Texas Labor Archives, University of Texas at Arlington.

81. Texas State Federation of Labor, “Report of Officers for Month of January, 1947,” American Federation of Labor Papers, series 3, State Legislation Files, Box 2 (Texas), Wisconsin Historical Society; Texas State Federation of Labor, State Labor Proceedings, 119.

82. State of Texas, Journal of the House of Representatives of the Regular Session of the Fiftieth Legislature (Austin, 1947).

83. Green suggests that it is unlikely the Communist Party had much of a presence in Texas or in Texas unions (The Establishment in Texas Politics, 106). The affiliates accounting for almost half of the increase in unionism in the state included the Communication Workers, the Machinists, the UAW, the Carpenters, the Steelworkers, and the Plumbers (from Troy, “The Growth of Union Membership in the South,” 411). None of the CIO unions represented here falls into the “Communist camp” of the late 1940s as identified by Judith Stepan-Norris and Maurice Zeitlin, and are not among those unions purged in 1949–50. See Stepan-Norris, Judith and Zeitlin, Maurice, Left Out: Reds and America's Industrial Unions (Cambridge, 2003), 13.Google Scholar

84. Koeing testimony from Fort-Worth Star Telegram, 19 February 1947, 1; Houston Post, 20 February 1947, 1,9. Labor reaction to Koeing's testimony and activities of Muse and the Christian American Association in The Labor Advocate, 28 February 1947; Houston Labor Messenger, 21 March 1947, Texas Labor Newspaper Collection, Texas Labor Archives, University of Texas at Arlington.

85. Meyers, Frederic, The Right to Work in Practice (New York, 1959), 3.Google Scholar

86. Labor testimony from the Austin American, 4 March 1947, 1; 6 March 1947, 2; Fort-Worth Star Telegram, 19 February 1947, 1.

87. Hart Stilwell quoted in Green, The Establishment in Texas Politics, 106.

88. State of Texas, Journal of the House of Representatives; Journal of the Senate of the Regular Session of the Fiftieth Legislature (Austin, 1947).

89. Texas State Federation of Labor, “Anti-Labor Laws Passed by the 50th Texas Legislature,” in Collection 239, Margaret Carter Papers, Texas Labor Archives, University of Texas at Arlington.

90. Texas Manufacturers Association, Texas Industry, June 1947, 18.

91. Earl Bunting quote from National Association of Manufacturers, “For Release in Morning Newspapers of Wednesday, March 26, 1947,” in the Records of the National Association of Manufacturers (Accession 1411), series VII, Box 197, Hagley Archives, Wilmington, Delaware. Lee Pressmen in CIO Executive Board Proceedings, 16–17 May 1947, 270–71, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University.

92. See Texas State Federation of Labor, State Labor Proceedings, 120.

93. Amberg, “Governing Labor in Modernizing Texas.”

94. Gall, The Politics of Right-to-Work, 47.