A Short History of the U.S. Working Class by Paul Le Blanc

Author:Paul Le Blanc
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Labor History, ebook
ISBN: 978-1-60846-669-6
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2016-11-08T16:00:00+00:00

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* This repression was carried out with the full support of conservative and bureaucratic elements in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Breaking the left-wing influence facilitated the expansion of gangster-linked elements in the union.

chapter 12

Cold War and Social Compact

U.S. corporations did launch a counterattack against what they insisted was excessive union power and against radical labor challenges to “America’s free enterprise system.” Massively financed pro-business propaganda campaigns dovetailed with big contributions to the election campaigns of pro-business Republicans and Democrats—culminating in conservative congressional amendments to the nation’s labor law. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 did not outlaw unions outright—public opinion and working-class power would no longer permit that—but rather was designed to moderate and de-radicalize the labor movement. Limitations on picketing, prohibition of secondary strikes and boycotts, the imposition of “cooling-off periods,” and other governmental controls were designed to undercut the natural militancy and organizing techniques that had been so effective in the 1930s and again in 1946.* There was also a ban on direct union contributions to political parties (there were no such restrictions on businesses)—in part to undercut labor support to the Democratic Party, but perhaps in part to hinder the future development of the sort of union-based Labor Party that had recently swept into office in Britain. Another key provision of the Taft-Hartley Act was that union officers could not be members of the Communist Party, and that all labor officials must sign non-Communist affidavits if their organizations were to be granted labor-law protections.

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