On 2011-12-29, at 11:00 AM, Shane Mage wrote:
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> On Dec 29, 2011, at 10:23 AM, Marv Gandall wrote:
>> The crown jewels of its labour friendly legislation such as the Wagner Act, social security, and unemployment insurance, still bore the imprint of corporate lobbyists rather than the trade unions, which is not to say that they were not gains and that the working class should not have struggled for them.
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> This is entirely true about social security and unemployment insurance. But not so for the Wagner Act which (after Norris-LaGuardia had outlawed antistrike injunctions) reimposed a legal/bureaucratic control over all aspects of labor organization that soon was used to impose loyalty oaths, to outlaw secondary boycotts, and in general to emasculate the unions it was supposed to "protect." Union organization and activities, especially strikes and boycotts, were already, from a constitutional point of view, fundamental rights immune from government
> interference under the First and Thirteenth amendments. But as these rights could be exercised, against the will of the courts and the government, only through militant working class power, the leaders of both AFL and CIO gladly renounced them in return for the patronage of their "labor friendly" Democratic Party masters.
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The Wagner Act was welcomed by the CIO for requiring employers to bargain collectively with the unions, although labour's so-called "bill of rights" was , as you note, hedged with bureaucratic restrictions embodied in the National Labour Relations Board which it created. AFAIK, Norris-Laguardia forbade yellow dog contracts and other forms of employer and court interference with unions and strike action, and the Wagner Act extended it to compel firms to enter into collective agreements with the unions, seen as necessary to restoring social peace. It was the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 which required loyalty oaths and imposed the open shop and other reactionary provisions. But these are quibbles, and your comments underscore that where there is conflict over the scope of a reform, or where the corporations later want to weaken it when the relationship of forces has swung back in their favour, its interests will always be treated as paramount by the state - "the executive committee of the ruling class" whose autonomy from the latter is only relative and never absolute.