Travis
the U.S. Constitution
If you mention the labor amendment to the United States Constitution today, most people get a puzzled look on their faces. They know that the first amendment guarantees the right of free speech, and they may even know that the same amendment secures the right of assembly. But few have ever heard of the labor amendment. It takes awhile before they realize that you are talking about the thirteenth amendment, which provides: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." At that point, they are likely to ask what in the world the thirteenth amendment could possibly have to do with labor rights today; after all, the amendment was intended to do away with slavery, a goal that was accomplished more than a century ago.
But according to the Supreme Court, the purpose of the thirteenth amendment is not simply to eliminate slavery, but also "to make labor free by prohibiting that control by which the personal service of one man is disposed of or coerced for another's benefit." Before the NLRA, unionists understood from their own experience that in a modern industrial economy there was no way to prohibit "that control by which the personal service of one man is disposed of or coerced for another's benefit" without the rights to organize, bargain collectively, strike, and act in solidarity with other workers.
Bob Mast
-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20050127/63e91c6b/attachment.htm>