A few key moments not only stemmed the tide of these gains in power from within the ranks of the labor class but stymied efforts of Black and brown communities to build solidarity with the white working class. The National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbied successfully for the Taft-Hartley Act, which passed in 1947 and made it much tougher for labor organizing and unionizing. The Act allowed states to pass right-to-work laws, permitting non-union employees to join a unionized workplace, as well as granting employers the right to spread anti-union sentiment during elections. The prospect of employees benefiting from unionization without having to pay dues made voting for unionization a much riskier gamble. Employers were not beholden to accuracy in their efforts to spread dissent, allowing them to imply that jobs or entire industries might collapse as a result of unionization. Sympathy strikes were also banned. Most aggressively, the bill required that union officers affirm they were not members of the Communist Party, removing some of the more radical elements of the labor movement that were strong supporters of women’s rights and racial solidarity.
The business establishment saw the political threat that a multiracial, multiethnic labor movement could pose. “The power of unions transcends the collective bargaining done on behalf of their workers,” explains Tamara Draut in Sleeping Giant: How the New Working Class Will Transform America (2016). “The real power is that through union dues, the labor movement can amass significant resources to engage in voter turnout, agenda setting, and issue advocacy, all on behalf of ordinary Americans.” She continues:
It’s that amassing of political power that is so threatening to conservatives and corporate America. After all, big labor has been responsible for advances in our day-to-day lives that still make conservatives livid: Medicare, Medicaid, and, yes, Obamacare too; unemployment insurance; Social Security; the forty-hour workweek; pensions (what’s left of them, anyway), and the minimum wage.
“In every presidential election between 1948 and 1964,” Draut notes, “the Democratic candidate launched his campaign with a Labor Day rally in Detroit’s Cadillac Square.”
