Official unions and the American labor movement were born from a need for change in the working world. Laborers worked too many hours for too little money in dangerous conditions, and union members faced the added strain of job discrimination. It was evident that industry needed guidelines to control the clashes between companies and workers that were sure to come. Politicians made weak attempts to protect the interests of labor organizations, but these token gestures accomplished nothing because they were too broad and were so easily manipulated that most companies completely ignored them. The labor movement continued without making any significant gains until the Great Depression. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal brought laws that gave strength to the unions’ positions. The 1930s was the most fruitful period in the history of the American labor movement.

It was not until 1932 that labor received any noticeable support in the political arena. With the passing of the Norris-La Guardia Act, employers could no longer keep workers from joining unions, and it was no longer illegal in any way for unions to organize. These significant steps were only to be added to in years to come. Roosevelt’s National Recovery Act (NRA) brought organized labor its biggest victory ever. Its famous section 7(a) stated that industrial codes should contain three important provisions: employees should have the right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, free from interference from employers; no one seeking employment should be required to join or refrain from joining a union; and employers should comply with maximum hours, minimum wages, and other standards determined by law (Dulles 257). This infamous step marked a definite trend. Organized labor was on the rise.

Many corporations, afraid of the unions and their gradual distance with political and judicial America, took matters into their own hands. They hired spies "to report on union activities, stir up discontent among employees and generally block labor organization" (Zieger 68). All of this fell open before the La Follotte Civil Liberties Committee. The disregard of legal and constitutional rights, made public in 1937, brought even more sympathy to labor’s cause. With such subversive activities taking place, it seems hardly unbelievable that workers, especially union members, would be suspicious of possible spies. In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the members of the paint union quickly accuse the narrator of being a spy. By just his appearance, the group writes him off as a spy, saying he "looks like a fink. A first-class enameled fink!" (219) The spying and munitions amassed by large corporations made it obvious that companies were preparing for a small war against organized labor with the intention of ending the glory days of American labor unions.

With these new insights into the industrial world, the American political and judicial systems, as well as the press and population, began to shift their weight to stand behind organized labor. Even without this support, the law that championed union rights was doomed. The constitutionality of the NRA challenged, the government just squeezed out the Wagner Act, days before the ruling that officially killed the NRA. The Wagner Act restated section 7(a) with fewer loopholes, making it a generally more secure piece of legislation. While the Wagner Act maintained workers’ rights as union members, the Fair Labor Standards Act supported workers' rights in another way. It established that over a set period of time, minimum wage would rise to forty cents per hour and the work week would be reduced to forty hours. It also prohibited child labor in industries whose products entered into interstate commerce (Flagler 31). With everyone on their side, labor advocates found they could accomplish quite a bit. Many of the laws put in place during the New Deal to reform business were molds for the laws in place today that govern the industrial world, protecting companies and unions alike.

New Deal policies were definitely pro-labor, but only from a need to stabilize an unbalanced economy. With the advent of the World War II, the American economy received the boost it needed to pull itself from depression. The newly stabilized economy did not rely on labor as it did during the depression. Anti-union forces threatened the stability of labor unions and managed to rip them from their powerful position in the political world. A stable country found groups at every turn that wanted to destroy the union movement. Because there is no longer a great need for strong labor groups, unions will never have as much power as they did in the 1930s. It was truly the greatest decade in the history of the American worker.

Dulles, Foster Rhea and Melvyn Dubofsky. Labor in America: A History. Boston: Harlan, 1984.

Flagler, John J. The Labor Movement in the United States. Minneapolis: Lerner, 1990.

Ziegler, Robert H. American Workers, American Unions. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994.

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