Big Labor Meets Arabella: A Coalitional Case Study
Social justice unionism is a theory of organized labor politics under which organized labor marches together with the social-liberal Left on noneconomic issues. This is part of a broad left-wing…
social justice unionism
Creation of the Labor-Progressive Alliance: Industrialization and Labor Unionism
The ties that bind organized labor to the left-of-center infrastructure, the Democratic Party, and the modern expansionist administrative state date predate the Wagner Act of 1935. While early labor movements…
Creation of the Labor-Progressive Alliance: Why Unions Came to Be
Labor organization before the Civil War was typically local, short term, and haphazard. Mass industrialization that took off following the end of the conflict drew millions out of farm work…
Creation of the Labor-Progressive Alliance: Defining the Workforce
Aiding Gompers’s shift from Marxist-influenced radicalism to the capital-P Progressive mainstream of the early 20th century was a debate within organized labor that continues to the present day. Should the…
Creation of the Labor-Progressive Alliance: Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste
The story of organized labor’s development and rise to prominence from the end of the Civil War through the elections of 1946 is complicated. That the difficult, poorly paid, and…
A Mandate for Labor Error: Statism from the Right
For almost 80 years, the conservative movement and the Republican Party that has served as its imperfect electoral vehicle have sought to advance three goals related to labor relations. But…
A Mandate for Labor Error: Big Labor Radicalizes
As conservatives advanced their moderate aims in the post–New Deal era, Big Labor started radicalizing. As workers’ freedom not to join unions thrived under right-to-work laws led to stalled growth…
A Mandate for Labor Error: Strange Bedfellows
A Mandate for Labor Error Statism from the Right | Big Labor Radicalizes Strange Bedfellows | Coming to Policy at Last…
A Mandate for Labor Error: Coming to Policy at Last
Project 2025 did not fully abandon the policies of the Taft-Hartley consensus. The document rejects the Biden administration–Big Labor approach to expanding union power and membership. But the worst proposal…
A Mandate for Labor Error: Conclusion
The Taft-Hartley consensus—making union membership voluntary, subjecting unions to government oversight, and protecting consumers and the economy from labor strife—worked. It apparently worked so well that conservatives forgot why they…