Abstract
Reviewed by: Sean O’Brady, Université de Montréal, QC, Canada
Right-to-work legislation has been the subject of immense controversy in the United States. For that reason, there is much need for work explaining the rise and outcomes of such legislation. In Raymond L Hogler’s book The End of American Labor Unions: The Right-to-Work Movement and the Erosion of Collective Bargaining, he demonstrates that he’s up to the task. The main argument presented by Hogler is simple. This argument is that ‘embedded cultural values’ in the United States, particularly those in the south, shaped strong anti-union attitudes and corporate campaigns that have enabled entire regions to erode unionism through prohibitive labor regulations. The key policy tool used by states for achieving this outcome is right-to-work legislation. This legislation, argues Hogler, has created a patchwork of labor regulation across the country which is in no small part responsible for the demise of American labor unions, hence the title.
Hogler essentially traces the history of the right-to-work movement from 1806 until today and concludes by assessing the current state of the right-to-work movement as well as the arguments that uphold it. The book begins by examining conspiracy doctrine in early 19th-century labor cases from which right-to-work is rooted. This doctrine was constructed through a trilogy of cases between 1806 and 1815 in Philadelphia, New York and Pittsburgh, in which jurists condemned any type of worker arrangement resembling a closed shop as impinging individual freedoms. These early 19th-century jurists labeled such activity as explicit criminal conduct or as giving credence to the notion that unions are monopolistic entities pursuing their self-interest at the expense of individual freedoms and the common good of society. According to Hogler, these cases ‘cemented the legal bias against union efforts to maintain collective solidarity’ (p. 34). During the 1910s and 1920s, a period of growing union and employer organization, employers felt increasingly threatened by an upsurge of union organization. In this tense climate, some employers attempted to deflect the union threat by augmenting benefit programs and employee representation plans, while others opted for a strategy of union suppression.
The major interruption of the path paved by conspiracy doctrine arose from changes in the national climate, most notably the Depression and the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. Roosevelt moved forward with a progressive labor agenda in the New Deal era entailing the National Industrial Recovery Act, and most importantly the Wagner Act which banned company unions, offered them exclusive representation and explicitly legalized the closed shop. The closed shop was short-lived, however, ending with the passage of the Taft Hartley Act in 1947. The Taft Hartley Act, otherwise known as the Labor-Management Relations Act, prohibited the use of closed shops and granted states authority over the regulation of union security (Section 14(b)). This legislation came after a wave of corporate and political resistance emanating from the state level. The controversial passage of Colorado’s Labor Peace Act curtailing labor rights, the consequence of a heated battle imbued with racism and anti-labor sentiments, proved particularly influential to the adoption of Taft Hartley. This legislation precipitated decades of statism in labor regulation, leading to divergent outcomes across states contingent on state political configurations and cultural values. Interestingly, Colorado, the state that inspired Taft-Hartley, rejected right-to-work legislation in 2008, due to labor organization and industry’s loss of appetite for such legislation.
Hogler then assesses federal attempts at revitalizing federal labor legislation by Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, concluding that a significant revamp of the National Labor Relations Act is unlikely in the current climate. Reform is needed, he argues, especially since the economic and liberty arguments expounded by right-to-work proponents do not hold when measured against empirical and philosophical standards. However, this requires not repeating past mistakes by not attempting an ambitious overhaul of federal legislation. He proposes two alternatives. First, he suggests that modest palatable changes be made to federal labor legislation, such as merely removing state authority to legislate union security and improving elections on issues of security. The advantages of such changes are that they would put states on an even playing field for economic competition and would meanwhile address personal liberty concerns by enforcing democratic principles. Second, he suggests that progressive lawmakers propose legislation to protect workers from being fired without just cause, protecting their actual right to work and providing workers with new advantages for exercising employee voice.
While this book has many strengths (which I will get to below), this book also contains some obvious weaknesses. First, while the core of this thesis is said to be a cultural argument, the cultural dimension is not sufficiently explored. In fact, it is taken as a given. The judicial and political outcomes described in this text are described as an outcome of embedded values, yet little is done to unpack the essence of such values, along with their roots, and how they are linked to legislative outcomes. Second, the claim that right-to-work legislation is a core cause of union erosion in the United States is not substantiated. There is no correlation between union security, especially closed shops, and union vitality across Western countries. Germany is commonly regarded as having some of the most powerful unions in Europe, yet, as a consequence of the country’s experience with Nazism, the right of German workers to reject forced association with any organization is guaranteed by their constitution. Unions are by no means exempt from this constitutional right.
Criticisms aside, this book occupies an important space in the literature. The major strength of this book is that it provides a comprehensive analysis of the history of right-to-work legislation in the United States. It makes a convincing argument on how 19th-century jurisprudence, coupled with immense corporate power and organization throughout American history, has perpetuated the furtherance of right-to-work legislation long after the New Deal. The history of this movement is told in a clear chronological fashion, much like a contemporary history textbook. For these reasons, I would recommend this book to anyone looking to understand the major events that have shaped right-to-work legislation in the United States today. There was a clear need to explain the core political dynamics associated with the right-to-work movement in one substantial work, and I would argue that Hogler largely met that need.