Labor in America by Melvyn Dubofsky & Joseph A. McCartin

Author:Melvyn Dubofsky & Joseph A. McCartin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781118976845
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2017-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Wagner Act

By the beginning of 1935, the failure of the NRA not only to solve the problem of labor relations but also to stimulate recovery could no longer be disguised. It was being openly attacked on all fronts in sad contrast to the exuberant fervor of the parades and flag waving with which it had first been greeted. Big business was generally in revolt against the labor provisions of the codes. Small business felt itself squeezed to the wall, both by the revival of monopoly and by union demands. Labor was convinced that it had been betrayed. The whole program was bogging down because of inner contradictions. So it was with relief rather than regret that the nation accepted the announcement in May 1935 that the Supreme Court had pulled the plug on the entire set-up by declaring, in A. L. A. Schechter Poultry Corporation v. the United States, that the National Industrial Recovery Act was unconstitutional.

This development completely swept away such safeguards for labor as had been written into Section 7(a). However, an amendment to the Railway Labor Act had definitely extended these measures to railroad employees, and a drive to secure them on a firmer basis for all other workers had already been launched. In March 1934, Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York had introduced a bill to close the loopholes that enabled industry to cripple labor's strength by setting up company unions and refusing to bargain collectively with any other group. Wagner had temporarily withdrawn this measure on the president's plea for a further trial period under existing legislation, but he reintroduced it early in 1935. Just eleven days before the NRA was declared unconstitutional, it passed the Senate.

The Wagner Bill had strong support from labor, and the collapse of the NRA naturally intensified the demand for its immediate acceptance by the House. “I do not mind telling you that the spirit of the workers in America had been aroused,” an unusually militant Green testified before one congressional committee. “We cannot and will not continue to urge workers to have patience, unless the Wagner bill is made law and unless it is enforced once it becomes law.”

Roosevelt had no part in developing this new measure, and, according to both Secretary Perkins and Raymond Moley, one of Roosevelt's chief advisers, FDR did not particularly like it when it was described to him. But with the NRA out of the picture, the president suddenly embraced it. Labor could not be completely let down, and here was the means to reenact a stronger Section 7(a) so far as collective bargaining was concerned. With administration support, the measure promptly passed the House. Roosevelt signed it on July 5.

Although the general policy of the Wagner Act – or the National Labor Relations Act as it was officially called – had been foreshadowed by Section 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act, the new law heavily underscored the basic change in governmental attitude toward labor. Not only were old notions of

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