October 23, 2006
More on the Wagner Act Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 09:45 AM EST John Steele Gordon’s post on the Wagner Act reads a bit like an editorial in a business trade journal.
Mr. Gordon doesn’t acknowledge that over the past 25 years American workers have suffered wholesale violations of the spirit and letter of the Wagner Act. For instance, in recent decades increasing numbers of businesses have eliminated full-time employees from their payrolls and instead subcontracted with firms representing temporary workers, who are paid lower wages and denied health care and pension benefits. GOP majorities on the NLRB have consistently ruled that unions may not organize such workers, as was the case in the board’s ruling that denied organized labor the right to represent subcontracted employees at a long-term care facility in Oakdale, New York, or its ruling that artists’ models may not be organized, because they own their own robes and are thus “independent contractors.” Mr. Gordon is certainly right in pointing to structural changes in the postindustrial economy. But noting these changes does not inevitably lead to the conclusion that today’s workers are less in need of representation than their parents and grandparents.
It’s not only the NLRB that stands in the way of workers’ rights. In recent years, capital has become increasingly brazen in its violation of the letter—not just the spirit—of the Wagner Act. When Kate Bronfenbrenner, a Cornell University sociologist, examined 400 union campaigns between 1998 and 1999, she found that over half of the employers threatened to close down their plants in the event of a union victory, while 25 percent went a step further and fired workers who supported unions. Both forms of retaliation are illegal but, in the current climate, often go unpunished. Case in point: When a judge found that Smithfield Food violated workers’ legal rights a whopping 36 times in 2000, including its dismissal of 11 union activists, the Bush administration’s majority appointees on the National Labor Relations Board overturned the ruling.
Mr. Gordon is right to correct my over-zealous claim that the American economy was strongest when unions were strongest. But I hope he won’t deny the equally powerful truth that wages have fallen concurrently with union membership. In real terms (inflation-adjusted 1982 dollars), weekly earnings have fallen from $302.52 in 1964 to $277.57 in 2004. What good is a robust economy to workers, if wages are falling?
The balance between capital and labor that Mr. Gordon fairly credits the Wagner Act with having established is sorely lacking in the current climate. If businesses are to enjoy a new arsenal in their age-old struggle to prevent workers from unionizing, it’s time to empower workers to fight back and claim their legal rights under the NLRA.
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