The Rise and Fall of Labor Unions in the U.S. - Who Rules America?
When union leaders signed on with liberals in supporting the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, they were well aware of the risk they were taking by giving up traditional organizing tactics in exchange for promises of government protection through the NLRB and the courts. They took that risk in part because they were having little or no success except for a few business sectors in which employers could not afford to bring in replacement workers for one or more of several reasons, including high skills levels (e.g., printing), geographic isolation (e.g., coal mining), and time-sensitivity (e.g., railroads) (Kimeldorf 2013). Furthermore, the usefulness of the original act for union organizers was not automatic. Its value depended on the protection and possible extension of the several specific statutory guarantees that were included in it. But the Taft-Hartley Act and many later decisions by both Congress and the NLRB narrowed or withdrew those guarantees in what turned into a class struggle at the legislative and regulatory levels.
was the outlawing of the manufacture, sale and transport of alcohol. Drinking itself was never prohibited. Throughout the Progressive Era, it remained one of the prominent causes associated with progressivism at the local, state and national level, though support across the full breadth of Progressives was mixed. It pitted the minority urban Catholic population against the larger rural Protestant element, Progressivism's rise in the rural communities was aided by the general increase in public consciousness of social issues of the , which achieved national success with the passage of the 18th Amendment by Congress in late 1917, and the ratification by three-fourths of the states in 1919. Prohibition was backed by the Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists, Scandinavian Lutherans and other evangelical churches. In the South, especially in Texas, prohibition was a top priority of the Protestant progressives. Predatory wealth—of the wealth accumulated on a giant scale by all forms of iniquity, ranging from the oppression of wageworkers to unfair and unwholesome methods of crushing out competition, and to defrauding the public by stock jobbing and the manipulation of securities. Certain wealthy men of this stamp, whose conduct should be abhorrent to every man of ordinarily decent conscience, and who commit the hideous wrong of teaching our young men that phenomenal business success must ordinarily be based on dishonesty, have during the last few months made it apparent that they have banded together to work for a reaction. Their endeavor is to overthrow and discredit all who honestly administer the law, to prevent any additional legislation which would check and restrain them, and to secure if possible a freedom from all restraint which will permit every unscrupulous wrongdoer to do what he wishes unchecked provided he has enough money....The methods by which the Standard Oil people and those engaged in the other combinations of which I have spoken above have achieved great fortunes can only be justified by the advocacy of a system of morality which would also justify every form of criminality on the part of a labor union, and every form of violence, corruption, and fraud, from murder to bribery and ballot box stuffing in politics. Several provisions in the Taft-Hartley Act very likely played a significant role in the gradual decline of the union movement since its passage. However, it is difficult to pinpoint any one act or ruling, or any one piece of the Taft-Hartley Act, as "the" turning point in undermining the union movement. To begin with, that's because unions already had lost their most potent pre-war organizing tactic, the sit-down strike. Moreover, the Taft-Hartley Act was followed in the 1950s by numerous anti-union rulings by the NLRB and further legislative changes and court decisions that hampered union organizing. One of the most damaging decisions by the Supreme Court was issued in 1951, which declared that it was illegal for a union to close down an entire construction site over an argument with a single contractor or subcontractor, an issue that is usually discussed using the phrase "common-situs picketing" (Gross 1995, pp. 83-84, 341). However, the Taft-Hartley Act did result in one unanticipated consequence for the corporate community. It reinforced union leaders' resolve to bargain for health and pension benefits, despite strong opposition by most corporate leaders, as the only way to overcome the challenges to the long-term viability of unions created by the new law. The possibility for such negotiations was created by two separate government decisions during World War II. To begin with, the Internal Revenue Service ruled that corporations could count health and pension benefits as expenses for tax purposes. Then the National War Labor Board ruled that wage controls did not apply to increases in fringe benefits. After a post-war drive to unionize the South failed badly, thereby making it impossible to unseat Southern Democrats or force compromises from them, several labor leaders realized that any improvements in worker security would have to come through collective bargaining for social benefits, not government programs. Despite the initial threat posed to the liberal-labor alliance and the Democratic Party by the Progressive Party challenge, the Democrats nonetheless returned Truman to the White House and reclaimed majorities in both houses of Congress, in part due to the efforts of organized labor. Labor leaders therefore had every hope that they could reverse some of the changes brought about by the Taft-Hartley Act. In particular, labor wanted to remove 14b, the clause that legalized state-level right-to-work-laws. However, the union movement was stopped cold in its effort to make any changes in Taft-Hartley. Once again, the power of the southern segment of the ownership class was the determining factor. As historian Robert Zeiger (1986, p. 119) points out, a united working class could do nothing against the Southern Democrats, who of course had the support of most Republicans as well: Activists were mobilized by the highly effective . Timberlake (1963) argues the dries sought to break the liquor trust, weaken the saloon base of big-city machines, enhance industrial efficiency, and reduce the level of wife beating, child abuse, and poverty caused by alcoholism. Agitation for prohibition began during the in the 1840s when crusades against drinking originated from evangelical Protestants. Evangelicals precipitated the second wave of prohibition legislation during the 1880s, which had as its aim local and state prohibition. During the 1880s, referendums were held at the state level to enact prohibition amendments. Two important groups were formed during this period. The (WCTU) was formed in 1874. The Anti-Saloon League which began in Ohio was formed in 1893, uniting activists from different religious groups. The league, rooted in Protestant churches, envisioned nationwide prohibition. Rather than condemn all drinking, the group focused attention on the saloon which was considered the ultimate symbol of public . The league also concentrated on campaigns for the right of individual communities to choose whether to close their saloons. In 1907, Georgia and Alabama were the first states to go dry followed by Oklahoma, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee in the following years. In 1913, Congress passed the , which forbade the transport of liquor into dry states.
[PDF] 2000 AP U.S. History Scoring Guidelines - College Board
Nascent and highly dynamic industries such as the rideshare industry have disrupted traditional industries and business models. The use of technology has allowed firms like Uber and Didi to compete over both consumers and workers on an increasingly sophisticated level. This paper explores the use of algorithmic pricing strategies employed by the rideshare industry and the impact of such strategies on the overall level of competition in the market. It uses the Mexico City, Mexico, rideshare industry as a case study. The paper shows that specific firms target specific consumers based on whether those consumers are informed or uninformed about other options in the market, and do so at specific times based on the level of demand in the market. The findings of the paper are relevant for both economic understanding of such markets as well as policy responses.
Unionization and Workers Quality of Life Essay - IvyPanda
A debate sparked by Trinidadian politician and historian in his work (1944) concerned the role of in financing the Industrial Revolution. Williams argued that European capital amassed from slavery was vital in the early years of the revolution, contending that the rise of industrial capitalism was the driving force behind instead of motivations. These arguments led to significant debates among historians, with American historian critiquing Williams' arguments in (1977).
An Essay on the Essential Role of Labor Unions - Kibin
I conduct content analysis and extent the existing models of analysing the reaction of the stock market and foreign currency markets to the release of Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) statements and meeting minutes. The tone changes and uncertainty level of the monetary policy communication are constructed using the dictionary-based word-count approach at the whole document level. I further apply the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) algorithm to investigate the different impacts of topics in the meeting minutes. High-frequency data is used as the analysis is an event study. I find that the tone change and uncertainty level have limited explanation power on the magnitude of the effect of the release of FOMC documents especially statements on the financial market. The communication from FOMC is more informative for the market during the zero lower bound period, compared to the whole sample period.