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Why Wagner? A Response to Robert Zieger
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2011
Extract
Robert Zieger's “Historians and the U.S. Industrial Relations Regime” offers both a crisp historiographical survey of the field and a thoughtful agenda for further research. Iagree with much of what he has to say, particularly concerning our fascination with the first fifteen yearsof modern labor policy (running from the early New Deal through the Taft-Hartley Act) and our relative neglect of the postwar era. Having said this, I want to turn our attention back to 1935, in part because the Wagner Act is such an important and defining moment, and in part becauseZieger casually dismisses critical interpretations of the Wagner Act's passage and logic as “ahistorical” or “ideologically-driven speculations.” As one whose scholarship is caricatured in this way, I appreciate the opportunity to respond.
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- Perspective in Policy History–An Exchange
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- Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1999
References
Notes
1. Zieger, Robert, “Historians and the U.S. Industrial Relations Regime,” Journal of Policy History 9 (1997): 477.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2. See Brody, David, “Workplace Contractualism in Comparative Perspective,” in Industrial Democracy in America: The Ambiguous Promise, ed. Lichtenstein, Nelson and Harris, Howell (New York, 1993), 176–203;Google Scholar, Brody, “Section 8(a)(2) and the Origins of the Wagner Act,” inRestoring the Promise of American Labor Law, ed. Friedman, Sheldon et al. (Ithaca, 1994), 29–44;Google ScholarCohen, Lizbeth, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939(New York, 1990), 251–90,Google ScholarDubofsky, Melvyn, The State and Labor in Modem America (Chapel Hill, 1994), 107–35Google Scholar.
3. See especially Plotke, David, Building a Democratic Political Order: Reshaping American Liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s (New York, 1996), 92–127, 364-71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4. I draw here from Rogers, Joel, “Divide and Conquer: Further ‘Reflections on the Character of American Labor Laws,’” Wisconsin Law Review (1990): 43–98;Google ScholarFerguson, Thomas, Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems (Chicago, 1995), 17–172;Google ScholarLindblom, Charles, “The Market as a Prison,” Journal of Politics 44 (1982): 324–36;Google Scholar, Lindblom, Politics and Markets: The World's Political-Economic Systems (New York, 1977), 154–57, 170-200;Google Scholar and Cohen, Joshua and Rogers, Joel, On Democracy (New York, 1982), 47–51Google Scholar.
5. I develop these points in greater detail in New Deals: Business, Labor, and Politics, 1920-1935 (Cambridge, 1994).See alsoGoogle ScholarRogers, Joel, “Reforming U.S. Labor Relations,” in Restoring the PromiseofAmerican Labor Law, 15–17;Google ScholarTomlins, Christopher, The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880-1960 (New York, 1985), 103–47, 317-28;Google ScholarKaufman, Bruce, “Why the Wagner Act? Reestablishing Contact with Its OriginalPurpose,” Advances in Industrial and Labor Relations 7 (1996): 15–68;Google Scholar and Swenson, Peter, “Arranged Alliance: Business Interests in the New Deal, Politics and Society 25:1 (1997): 66–116Google Scholar.
6. , Zieger, “Historians and the U.S. Industrial Relations Regime,” 477.Google Scholar
7. I develop these ideas in “Does the Ruling Class Rule?” Reviews in American History 25:2 (06 1997): 288–93;Google Scholar“A Disorganizational Synthesis? Business, Labor, and Politics in Modern America” (paper presented at the Seminar in the Comparative History of Labor, Industry, Technology, and Society, Atlanta, 10 1996); andGoogle Scholar“Why No Corporatism in the United States? The Political Disorganization of Business andIts Consequences” (paper presented at the Business History Conference, College Park, 03 1998)Google Scholar.
8. See, Tomlins, State and the Unions, 317–28;Google ScholarMontgomery, David, “American Workers and the New Deal Formula,” inWorkers' Control in America (New York, 1979), 153–80;Google Scholar and Davis, Mike, Prisoners of the American Dream (New York, 1987), 52–101.Google Scholar I do not consider here the related question of the relationship between rank-and-file radicals and CIO leadership. The parameters of this debate are neatly laid out in , Zieger at al., “We Are All Leaders: A Symposium on a Collection of Essays Dealing with Alternative Unionism in the Early 1930s,” Labor History 38 (1997)Google Scholar.
9. See the debate suggested by , Brody, “Workplace Contractualism in Comparative Perspective,” 176–203;Google Scholar, Tomlins, The State and the Unions, 99–196;Google ScholarLichtenstein, Nelson, “Great Expectations: The Promise of Industrial Jurisprudence and Its Demise, 1930-1960,” in industrial Democracy, 113–41;Google Scholar and , idem, “Industrial Democracy, Contract Unionism, and the National War Labor Board,” Labor Law Journal 33 (1982): 520–26Google Scholar.
10. See, in addition to the work cited above, Harris, Howell, The Right to Manage: Industrial Relations Policies of American Business in the 1940s (Madison, 1982),Google ScholarLichtenstein, Nelson “From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining: Organized Labor and the Eclipse of Social Democracy i n the Postwar Era,” in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, ed. Fraser, Steve and Gerstle, Gary (Princeton, 1989), 122–52;Google ScholarGordon, David, “Chickens Home to Roost: From Prosperity to Stagnation in the Postwar Economy,” in Understanding American Economic Decline (New York, 1994), 55–61;Google ScholarGoldfield, Michael, The Decline of Organized Labor in the United States (Chicago, 1987);Google ScholarMoody, Kim, An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism (New York, 1988)Google Scholar.