Law & Labor: Organizing in a Rigged System
Benjamin A. Berry
8/12/2024
For the past century, organized labor in the United States has existed within a restrictive framework of laws and court rulings that have dramatically changed the behavior and approach of unionized workers. This legal complex has been designed by the ruling owning class for their own class’s benefit, neutering the more militant tendencies within organized labor and corralling labor-management relations into the jurisdiction of the judges and attorneys, far away from the class war battles of the past. To be sure, working people must utilize the law when beneficial to our class’s interests—such as pursuing unfair labor practice (ULP) charges, combatting union-busting and unjust firings, etc.—but workers must also develop collective power to challenge the owning class through direct action when necessary. Our exploiters and oppressors will not hand over the tools for our liberation; therefore, when the system is rigged against us, there are times when civil disobedience becomes the necessary course of action.
Prior to the 1930s, the resolution of labor-management conflicts had no prescribed state-sponsored process. This is due to a number of factors, including the fact that, really until the first World War, the United States was still a young nation with a budding industrial economy. The average citizen’s aversion to governmental interference and the “rugged individualism” baked into the American consciousness also contributed to the lack of a state-sanctioned resolution process for labor-management conflicts. So, too, did the southern and western colonial expansions of the rising American empire make legal jurisdictions uncertain, creating another obstacle to governmental intervention into labor disputes. With this lack of a formally recognized conflict resolution process for labor and management, a sort of “anarchy” pervaded labor struggles prior to the 1930s. Two rising ideologies within organized labor were able to flourish during this era: firstly, the craft unions, with their characteristic isolation from the broader labor struggle and more conservative values, were able to thrive within this environment. Conversely, a strong strain of class struggle unionism also rose during this period—characterized by the Knights of Labor’s fight for the eight-hour workday in the late nineteenth century and the establishment of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905—providing a counterapproach to the narrow focus of the craft unions.
The first World War placed the United States on the international stage as the premier and hegemonic ruler of global industry and capitalist economics. This was made possible by the ascendant imperialism the U.S. was quickly embracing across the globe. The labor struggles during WWI necessitated government intervention to keep the war time production going, marking the first major federal interference in labor disputes. Though a brief interlude allowed for a short return to “anarchy” in labor-management relations during the “roaring 20’s” and the beginning of the Great Depression, state intermediation into labor struggles quickly returned with the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the beginning of wartime preparations leading up to WWII. In order to “manage” workers, to prevent widespread work stoppages and an actual workers’ revolution—a distinct possibility at the time, given the universal suffering of the masses in the depths of the Depression—the ruling class, through the state and their political lackeys, began instituting a vast portfolio of legal reforms which would sequester labor-management relations into the realm of the courts. This, the ruling class rightly strategized, would ensure near-continual production to feed profits and Empire. It would help maintain “law and order,” values so highly cherished by the owning class who loathe struggle and direct action.
The first of these major legislative decrees was the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, establishing the National Recovery Administration. This was quickly replaced in 1935 by the more robust National Labor Relations Board which was formed in the passing of the National Labor Relations Act, sometimes called the Wagner Act. While couched within pro-labor rhetoric, these laws further enshrined “the right of management to manage,” reaffirming the nation’s illogical reverence for private (corporate) property above the dignity of workers. Later legislation, building off of these poisonous roots, would recognize corporations as people, granting them rights that exceed the rights of actual human beings. Though certain rights and protections were conceded to the working class within these bills—such as the right to collective bargaining and the difficult-to-enforce bans on some forms of union-busting—these laws represent an effective assault against the working class by the owning class through the judicial, executive, and legislative bodies of the state.
This assault handicapped labor’s ability to fight. Direct action was almost completed outlawed, making strikes, boycotts, and other tactics more difficult. Reliance on legal appeals for redress and resolution becomes the norm, cutting off the rank-and-file from a militant fight for themselves and their interests. Acts of civil disobedience against these unjust restrictions are met with harsh punishment and are criminalized. Struggle is replaced with a legalistic funnel which now directs the workers’ grievances to the courts—courts which highly favor the owning class, despite occasional token rulings which concede minor victories to the working class.
The problem with this legal complex surrounding labor-management relations is that the courts and ruling governmental bodies of our country serve the interests of the owning class. Despite rhetoric or token concessions, the state will always favor the owning class because the owning class has crafted our current state for its own purposes. The legalism that has ruled labor for nearly the past century has served to dull the fighting spirit of workers, has minimized rank-and-file involvement in struggle, and has dictated, by force of law, which approaches are acceptable for exploited people to utilize in combatting their superiorly resourced exploiters. Within this framework, true justice and liberation for working people is made impossible, offering only occasional victories of little importance. Such victories, history shows, can and often are reversed by later regimes, legislative bodies, and Supreme Court justices. The fruits of labor legalism and organized labor’s capitulation to it are record low unionization numbers, weaker contracts, and bloated labor bureaucracies detached from the rank-and-file.
Even worse, because labor-management relations are now sequestered into the realm of jurisprudence, legislative and judicial assaults on working people have been made easier. Take, for instance, the passing of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, just a decade after labor legalism was sanctioned as the approved method for dealing with labor struggles. Officially named The Labor Management Relations Act, Taft-Hartley criminalized jurisdictional, political, and solidarity strikes, most wildcat strikes, and many types of boycotts. The bill also opened the states to pass right-to-work laws and targeted the most militant, class struggle-minded union leaders within the movement. The passing of this law was not a reaction to the supposedly “pro-labor” legislation passed a decade prior, but was a continuation of the trend to restrict the ways and means workers struggle against exploitation.
Class struggle unionism does not ignore the legal avenues for redress and resolution, but it also does not exclusively rely on the preapproved tools of resistance paternalistically handed down to us by our exploiters and oppressors. This means that working people should utilize the courts, the NLRB, etc. for combatting union-busting, unjust terminations, and rigged union elections. Nevertheless, class struggle unionism also sees the vital importance of civil disobedience and direct action when these laws inevitably prove insufficient to address the urgent needs of working people. Class struggle unionism pushes against the “civility” that labor legalism attempts to shove down the throat of organized labor, recognizing the paramount importance of abolishing exploitation over liberal insistence for “civil discourse.” It acknowledges the class war being waged against working people and engages in the struggle against the owning class. It refuses to buy stock in the lie that class struggle can be replaced with a legal complex that offers “neutral, unprejudiced justice” for workers. Class struggle unionism demands liberation, not just token reforms that can be ripped away with the election of a new president or the appointment of a new Supreme Court justice.
This assertion that class struggle must overcome labor legalism has manifested throughout the last century, albeit only occasionally and always remaining a minority opinion in the broad American labor movement. We see this idea take root in the old United Packinghouse Workers of America and United Farm Equipment Workers of America unions when they refused to agree to no-strike policies during World War II. The struggle arose again in the “illegal” Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization strike of 1981, the Pittston Coal Strike of 1989-1990 in Appalachia, and the 2018-2019 teachers strikes. Though some of these struggles ended in defeat, outmatched by the power and force of the owning class and the owning class’s state apparatus, many of these actions resulted in gains which would have been impossible to secure within the restrictive confines of American labor jurisprudence. Through the nurturing and continuance of this militancy, paired with a collective unity within the American working class, the strength of working people can become a force that overcomes labor legalism with class struggle unionism and can secure real, lasting gains for our class.
To a great extent, the modern labor movement has been neutered by labor legalism over the past century. The allure of “civil” legal maneuvering, as opposed to vigorous class struggle, has entrapped many unions, union leaders, and workers. The result of this trap has been catastrophic for the American working class. Through class struggle unionism, working people can utilize the courts in the times the law can be made to work for workers, but they must also push back against the law’s narrow restraints which handicap worker power, specifically at the point of production where work stoppages have the ability to secure the most gains. Ultimately, for working people to achieve complete liberation from exploitation and oppression, a new ruling class must be put in power—the working class—and with that revolutionary change, a new set of working class laws, legal systems, political bodies, etc. must be established. Such a transition of power cannot be accommodated by the law, but instead must be brought about through revolution—the changing of the ruling class. Our exploiters and oppressors will not hand over the keys to our liberation; we must engage in militant class struggle to achieve that end.