The Cases Against Sectoral Bargaining: Sectoral Bargaining
Leftists and their fellow travelers on the ostensible right like Oren Cass and his American Compass think tank look to Europe for their ideal of labor relations: “sectoral bargaining.” For…
Taft-Hartley Act
The Cases Against Sectoral Bargaining: The Practical Case
The reforms made by the Taft-Hartley Act advanced three pillars that would come to define the Republican and conservative approaches to labor-management relations. Sectoral bargaining explicitly opposes two of the…
The Cases Against Sectoral Bargaining: The Political and Advocacy Case
Organized labor in the United States serves as a functional adjunct to the Democratic Party and the left-wing advocacy movement. Expanding the power of union commissars by adopting sectoral bargaining…
The Cases Against Sectoral Bargaining: The Ideological Case
The ideological case against sectoral bargaining is subtly different than the political-advocacy case. Organized labor has always been susceptible to Marxist or Marxist-influenced class-conflict analysis, which has been alien to…
The Cases Against Sectoral Bargaining: The Economic Case
On the question of the economic effects of European-style sectoral bargaining versus American-style enterprise bargaining, the world has been running a sort of general economic experiment since the end of…
Trump-Supporting Steamfitters Show the Union-Member Divide
Whether they like it or not, Trump-supporting union members' real American dollars are supporting the reelection of President Joe Biden and his Democratic allies in Congress. Big Labor does not…
PRO Act Just Gives Unions More Power
The PRO Act is back from the dead and is little more than a labor union–backed mandate to force Americans to pay unions their own hard-earned money for the privilege…
Big Labor’s Decline and Left Turn: A New Power Rises
As President John F. Kennedy took office in January 1961, organized labor looked ahead toward a future of ever-increasing power and influence. States had begun to advance laws requiring themselves…
Big Labor’s Decline and Left Turn: Labor’s Private-Sector Left
In the 1960s, government worker unionism subordinating the wider labor movement was still decades away. The Left of organized labor (laying aside some straggling outright communists and fellow-travelers like International…
Big Labor’s Decline and Left Turn: Causes of the Long Decline
By 1979, when Lane Kirkland succeeded George Meany as head of the AFL-CIO, fundamental changes to the economy had led to a decline in the unionized share of the private…