Anti-union organizations in the United States
Encyclopedia
In the United States shortly after 1900, there were just a few effective employers' organizations that opposed the union movement. By 1903, these organizations started to coalesce, and a national employers' movement began to exert a powerful influence on industrial relations and public affairs.
For nearly a decade prior to 1903, an industrial union
called the Western Federation of Miners
(WFM) had been increasing in power, militancy, and radicalism as a response to dangerous working conditions, employer-employee inequality, the imposition of long hours of work, and what members perceived as an imperious attitude on the part of employers. In particular, members of the WFM had been outraged by employers' widespread use of labor spies
in organizing efforts such as Coeur d'Alene
. The miners' frustrations had occasionally exploded in anger and violence. But they had also tried peaceful change, and found that route impossible. For example, after winning a referendum vote for the eight hour day with support from 72 percent of Colorado's electorate, the WFM's goal of an eight hour law was still defeated by employers and politicians.
In 1901, angry WFM members passed a convention proclamation that a "complete revolution of social and economic conditions" was "the only salvation of the working classes." To employers the statement seemed tantamount to a declaration of war. Colorado employers and their supporters reacted to growing union restlessness and power in a confrontation that came to be called the Colorado Labor Wars
.
But fear and apprehension on the part of employers, who felt unions were threatening to their businesses, were by no means limited to Colorado. Across the nation, the first elements of a network of employers' organizations that would span the coming century were just beginning to arise.
" which sought to pay each employee according to his qualification and performance.
is an anti-union group launched by Richard Berman
, the executive director of the Center for Consumer Freedom
, a food industry lobby group. The group has spent millions of dollars on advertising campaigns, including advertisements featuring actors playing workers stating what they 'love' about unions, like paying dues, union leaders' "fat-cat lifestyles", and discrimination against minorities.
The Center for Union Facts maintains an anti-union website that provides financial and other records about unions.
labor law reform bill that was designed to make union-organizing efforts more successful by, among other provisions, allowing for elections to occur within 15 days of filing a petition. However, the National Right to Work Committee and employers were successful in blocking this bill."
The Council on a Union Free Environment continued its anti-union work, focusing on disseminating the portrayal of union leaders as arrogant, incompetent, and criminal, lobbying against other legislation favorable to labor unions, lobbying for laws to make organizing more difficult; reducing unions' power and, teaching business leaders how to avoid union conflict.
CUE currently claims 300 member companies, with and without unions, covering small to large firms.
of 1931 requires payment of wage rates and fringe benefits prevailing in a local area, on any federally financed contract. This pay rate generally amounts to "union scale." The Roundtable has called for the repeal of Davis-Bacon.
(NAM). He delivered a speech critical of organized labor, asserting that trade unionism and socialism differ only in method, with both aiming to deny "individual and property rights". Parry asserted the natural laws which governed the nation's economy, and he decried any interference with those laws, whether by legislative or other means. Parry asserted that the goals of the unions would inevitably lead to "despotism, tyranny, and slavery", and the "ruin of civilization."
Parry declared that union members were "men of muscle rather than men of intelligence", that they were mere puppets who must depend upon the "brains of others for guidance." He stated that the AFL
was a breeding place for "boycotters, picketers, and socialists", and that unions denied individual workers the right to sell their labor as they saw fit. Union leaders preached "hatred of wealth and ability", he claimed. In his opinion, organized labor knows but "one law, and that is the law of physical force—the law of the Huns and the Vandals, the law of the savage."
To control this threat to the status quo, Parry advised that the NAM begin organizing employers and manufacturers' associations into a great national anti-union federation. The NAM convention agreed to the recommendation, and created an employers' organizing committee with Parry in charge. Parry began the organizing effort at once.
The prospect of a federal eight hour law was particularly objectionable to the NAM, which declared it a "vicious, needless, and in every way preposterous proposition."
The NAM has fought against organized labor for more than a century through obliquely named affiliated organizations. However, the organization once sought to moderate its image. After the 1937 La Follette Committee investigated employers and their anti-union allies, uncovering widespread abuses, the NAM denounced "the use of espionage, strikebreaking agencies, professional strikebreakers, armed guards, or munitions for the purpose of interfering with or destroying the legitimate rights of labor to self organization and collective bargaining." The brief nod to union rights didn't last. In the late 1970s the NAM "was so confident in the appeal of its anti-union position that it no longer bothered to hide behind the euphemisms."
, established in 1968, was established as a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees "whose human or civil rights have been violated by abuses of compulsory unionism". In the 1970s the National Right to Work Committee began forming state organizations intent on passing right-to-work law
s. Some state organizations hid their affiliations, for the national organization was widely considered by union supporters and others a "rabidly anti-union lobby." The National Right to Work Committee rejects the "anti union" label, pointing out that the freedom to choose whether to pay union dues is "neither 'anti-union' nor 'pro-union.'"
, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World
, said of Pinkerton's detectives:
.
It should be noted, however, that local Chambers of Commerce are not required to share the views of the national Chamber on all issues. For example, in 2008 the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce in Denver, Colorado
opposed an anti-union amendment
which would have introduced right to work language into the Colorado Constitution. The Denver Metro Chamber opposed the initiative because, in their view, right-to-work states “do not perform significantly better in wages, economic development or business growth than Colorado.” Although several other Chambers of Commerce throughout Colorado supported the amendment, the measure was defeated by Colorado voters.
For nearly a decade prior to 1903, an industrial union
Industrial unionism
Industrial unionism is a labor union organizing method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union—regardless of skill or trade—thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in bargaining and in strike situations...
called the Western Federation of Miners
Western Federation of Miners
The Western Federation of Miners was a radical labor union that gained a reputation for militancy in the mines of the western United States and British Columbia. Its efforts to organize both hard rock miners and smelter workers brought it into sharp conflicts – and often pitched battles...
(WFM) had been increasing in power, militancy, and radicalism as a response to dangerous working conditions, employer-employee inequality, the imposition of long hours of work, and what members perceived as an imperious attitude on the part of employers. In particular, members of the WFM had been outraged by employers' widespread use of labor spies
Labor spies
Labor spies are persons recruited or employed for the purpose of gathering intelligence, committing sabotage, sowing dissent, or engaging in other similar activities, typically within the context of an employer/labor organization relationship....
in organizing efforts such as Coeur d'Alene
Coeur d'Alene miners' dispute
There were two related incidents between miners and mine owners in the Coeur d'Alene Mining District of North Idaho: the Coeur d'Alene, Idaho labor strike of 1892, and the Coeur d'Alene, Idaho labor confrontation of 1899. This article is a brief overview of both events.The strike of 1892 had its...
. The miners' frustrations had occasionally exploded in anger and violence. But they had also tried peaceful change, and found that route impossible. For example, after winning a referendum vote for the eight hour day with support from 72 percent of Colorado's electorate, the WFM's goal of an eight hour law was still defeated by employers and politicians.
In 1901, angry WFM members passed a convention proclamation that a "complete revolution of social and economic conditions" was "the only salvation of the working classes." To employers the statement seemed tantamount to a declaration of war. Colorado employers and their supporters reacted to growing union restlessness and power in a confrontation that came to be called the Colorado Labor Wars
Colorado Labor Wars
Colorado's most significant battles between labor and capital occurred primarily between miners and mine operators. In these battles the state government, with one clear exception, always took the side of the mine operators....
.
But fear and apprehension on the part of employers, who felt unions were threatening to their businesses, were by no means limited to Colorado. Across the nation, the first elements of a network of employers' organizations that would span the coming century were just beginning to arise.
Associated Builders and Contractors
Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) is the construction industry's voice with the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the federal government and with state and local governments, as well as with the news media. It is a national association representing 25,000 merit shop construction and construction-related firms in 79 chapters across the United States. ABC's membership represents all specialties within the U.S. construction industry and is composed primarily of firms that perform work in the industrial and commercial sectors of the industry. ABC was funded chiefly by non-union builders and related businesses and promoted the "merit shopMerit Shop
A merit shop is a firm or organization whose employees have chosen to perform hiring, promotion, salary adjustments, bonuses and termination based on the laws of the state and federal government, along with the individual's ability to accomplish the tasks assigned to them by their employer...
" which sought to pay each employee according to his qualification and performance.
Center for Union Facts
The Center for Union FactsCenter for Union Facts
The Center for Union Facts is an interest group critical of union officials’ activities. It is one of several advocacy and public relations groups created by Richard Berman...
is an anti-union group launched by Richard Berman
Richard Berman
Richard Berman is a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer, public relations executive, and lobbyist. Through his public affairs firm Berman and Company, Berman runs several industry-funded non-profit organizations such as the Center for Consumer Freedom and the Center for Union Facts...
, the executive director of the Center for Consumer Freedom
Center for Consumer Freedom
The Center for Consumer Freedom , formerly the Guest Choice Network, is a non-profit American lobby group. It describes itself as "dedicated to protecting consumer choices and promoting common sense," and defending "the right of adults and parents to choose how they live their lives, what they eat...
, a food industry lobby group. The group has spent millions of dollars on advertising campaigns, including advertisements featuring actors playing workers stating what they 'love' about unions, like paying dues, union leaders' "fat-cat lifestyles", and discrimination against minorities.
The Center for Union Facts maintains an anti-union website that provides financial and other records about unions.
Citizens' Alliance
The Citizens' Alliance was an employers' organization formed early in the 1900s specifically to fight trade unions. David M. Parry was one of the founding members, which began in 1903 in Minneapolis. The Citizens Alliance represented smaller sections of business, but working with the NAM helped to strengthen anti-union movements in the early 20th Century in the United States. The Citizens' Alliance was particularly active in the western United States and involved in strike breaking and the formation of militias to fight unions.Council for Union Free Environment
In 1977 the NAM created the Council on Union Free Environment (CUE) with the specific mission of defeating President Carter'sJimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
labor law reform bill that was designed to make union-organizing efforts more successful by, among other provisions, allowing for elections to occur within 15 days of filing a petition. However, the National Right to Work Committee and employers were successful in blocking this bill."
The Council on a Union Free Environment continued its anti-union work, focusing on disseminating the portrayal of union leaders as arrogant, incompetent, and criminal, lobbying against other legislation favorable to labor unions, lobbying for laws to make organizing more difficult; reducing unions' power and, teaching business leaders how to avoid union conflict.
CUE currently claims 300 member companies, with and without unions, covering small to large firms.
Labor Law Study Group
The Labor Law Study Group, later called the Construction Users Anti-Inflation Roundtable, claimed to represent 1,100 businesses in 1973. The Roundtable introduced dozens of labor law reform bills in the U.S. Congress, but their primary focus was repealing state and federal laws that established minimum wage standards on publicly funded projects. The Davis-Bacon ActDavis-Bacon Act
The Davis–Bacon Act of 1931 is a United States federal law which established the requirement for paying prevailing wages on public works projects...
of 1931 requires payment of wage rates and fringe benefits prevailing in a local area, on any federally financed contract. This pay rate generally amounts to "union scale." The Roundtable has called for the repeal of Davis-Bacon.
National Association of Manufacturers
In April 1903, David M. Parry spoke to the annual convention of the National Association of ManufacturersNational Association of Manufacturers
The National Association of Manufacturers is an advocacy group headquartered in Washington, D.C. with 10 additional offices across the country...
(NAM). He delivered a speech critical of organized labor, asserting that trade unionism and socialism differ only in method, with both aiming to deny "individual and property rights". Parry asserted the natural laws which governed the nation's economy, and he decried any interference with those laws, whether by legislative or other means. Parry asserted that the goals of the unions would inevitably lead to "despotism, tyranny, and slavery", and the "ruin of civilization."
Parry declared that union members were "men of muscle rather than men of intelligence", that they were mere puppets who must depend upon the "brains of others for guidance." He stated that the AFL
American Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers was elected president of the Federation at its...
was a breeding place for "boycotters, picketers, and socialists", and that unions denied individual workers the right to sell their labor as they saw fit. Union leaders preached "hatred of wealth and ability", he claimed. In his opinion, organized labor knows but "one law, and that is the law of physical force—the law of the Huns and the Vandals, the law of the savage."
To control this threat to the status quo, Parry advised that the NAM begin organizing employers and manufacturers' associations into a great national anti-union federation. The NAM convention agreed to the recommendation, and created an employers' organizing committee with Parry in charge. Parry began the organizing effort at once.
The prospect of a federal eight hour law was particularly objectionable to the NAM, which declared it a "vicious, needless, and in every way preposterous proposition."
The NAM has fought against organized labor for more than a century through obliquely named affiliated organizations. However, the organization once sought to moderate its image. After the 1937 La Follette Committee investigated employers and their anti-union allies, uncovering widespread abuses, the NAM denounced "the use of espionage, strikebreaking agencies, professional strikebreakers, armed guards, or munitions for the purpose of interfering with or destroying the legitimate rights of labor to self organization and collective bargaining." The brief nod to union rights didn't last. In the late 1970s the NAM "was so confident in the appeal of its anti-union position that it no longer bothered to hide behind the euphemisms."
National Legal and Policy Center
NLPC makes a case for the end of the use of compulsory union dues for political purposes by exposing abuses in political and organizing activities. Since 1997, NLPC has become a high-profile source for information on union corruption. Every two weeks, NLPC distributes a newsletter entitled Union Corruption Update which has been both criticized and referenced in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and National Journal.National Right to Work Committee
Since 1955 in the U.S., the National Right to Work Committee has lobbied for laws prohibiting compulsory union membership in union-organized shops. The National Right to Work Legal Defense FoundationNational Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a charitable organization that provides free legal assistance to employees who claim that their civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism. The Foundation was founded in 1968 and has represented 20,000 employees in over 2,200 cases,...
, established in 1968, was established as a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees "whose human or civil rights have been violated by abuses of compulsory unionism". In the 1970s the National Right to Work Committee began forming state organizations intent on passing right-to-work law
Right-to-work law
Right-to-work laws are statutes enforced in twenty-two U.S. states, mostly in the southern or western U.S., allowed under provisions of the federal Taft–Hartley Act, which prohibit agreements between labor unions and employers that make membership, payment of union dues, or fees a condition of...
s. Some state organizations hid their affiliations, for the national organization was widely considered by union supporters and others a "rabidly anti-union lobby." The National Right to Work Committee rejects the "anti union" label, pointing out that the freedom to choose whether to pay union dues is "neither 'anti-union' nor 'pro-union.'"
Pinkerton Agency
The Pinkerton Agency is a private military, security, and spy agency founded in 1850 in the United States, and was used extensively by those who wished to break strikes or infiltrate unions to destroy them from within. "Big" Bill HaywoodBill Haywood
William Dudley Haywood , better known as "Big Bill" Haywood, was a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World , and a member of the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America...
, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
, said of Pinkerton's detectives:
-
- 'A detective is the lowest, meanest and most contemptible thing that either creeps or crawls, a thing to loathe and despise. [...] That you may know how small a detective is, you can take a hair and punch the pith out of it and in the hollow hair you can put the hearts and souls of 40,000 detectives and they will still rattle. You can pour them out on the surface of your thumbnail and the skin of a gnat will make an umbrella for them.
-
- 'When a detective dies, he goes so low that he has to climb a ladder to get into Hell — and he is not a welcome guest there. When his Satanic Majesty sees him coming, he says to his imps, "Go get a big bucket of pitch and a lot of sulphur, give them to that fellow and put him outside. Let him start a Hell of his own. We don't want him in here, starting trouble."'
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the world's largest business federation representing 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions, as well as state and local chambers and industry associations. More than 96% of U.S. Chamber members are small businesses with 100 employees or fewer. As the voice of business, the Chamber's core purpose is to fight for free enterprise before Congress, the White House, regulatory agencies, the courts, the court of public opinion, and governments around the world and has actively lobbied against the Employee Free Choice ActEmployee Free Choice Act
The Employee Free Choice Act was a legislative bill that was introduced into both chambers of the U.S. Congress on March 10, 2009. The bill's purpose was to,...
.
It should be noted, however, that local Chambers of Commerce are not required to share the views of the national Chamber on all issues. For example, in 2008 the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce in Denver, Colorado
Denver, Colorado
The City and County of Denver is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Denver is a consolidated city-county, located in the South Platte River Valley on the western edge of the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains...
opposed an anti-union amendment
Colorado Amendment 47 (2008)
Amendment 47 was a proposed initiative on the Colorado ballot for 2008. It was defeated.The initiative was proposed jointly by Ryan Frazier of Aurora and Julian Jay Cole of Golden...
which would have introduced right to work language into the Colorado Constitution. The Denver Metro Chamber opposed the initiative because, in their view, right-to-work states “do not perform significantly better in wages, economic development or business growth than Colorado.” Although several other Chambers of Commerce throughout Colorado supported the amendment, the measure was defeated by Colorado voters.
See also
- Anti-union violenceAnti-union violenceAnti-union violence may take the form of bullying of or aggression against union organisers or sympathisers in the workplace, or outside the workplace. It may happen at the instigation of management, may be committed by agents hired or recruited by management, or by government bodies or others...
- History of union busting in the United StatesHistory of union busting in the United StatesThe history of union busting in the United States dates back to the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century which produced a rapid expansion in factories and manufacturing capabilities. As workers moved away from farm work to factories, mines and other hard labor, they faced harsh working...
- Union OrganizerUnion organizerA union organizer is a specific type of trade union member or an appointed union official. A majority of unions appoint rather than elect their organizers....
- Union threat model
- Salt (union organizing)Salt (union organizing)Salting is a labor union tactic involving the act of getting a job at a specific workplace with the intent of organizing a union. A person so employed is called a "salt"....
- PATCO
External links
- 2011 Crackdown on Organized Labor: States Urge Laws to Curb Union Influence - video report by Democracy Now!Democracy Now!Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...