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Summary: The American Labor Movement

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The American labor movement, champions of the ordinary worker has had a downhill battle in the last eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Its membership apogee has had a steady decrease, with labor force percentages in 2016 slipping to 10.7 percent, the lowest in over 70 years. Many factors contributed to the ebb and flow of organized labor, however, the most impactful came after the New Deal legislation, with enactment of the Wagner Act (1935); and Taft Hartley Act (1947), (Union membership rate 10.7 percent in 2016, 2017).
In the early 1930s, union membership plummeted to 3 million, compared to 5 million in the previous decade, because of the many violent strikes and confrontations with union resistant employers. However, this trend would …show more content…

Roosevelt (FDR) took the office of the President. To ease the hardships of the Depression, and safeguard against continued financial destruction the President enacted legislation known as the New Deal - designed to provide “Relief, Recovery, and Reform.” (Dealing With The Great Depression)
The 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) or Wagner Act, and the National Labor Board (NLRB) were derivatives of the New Deal. The NLRA, aimed to encourage collective bargaining, provide a course of court free hindrances to bargaining for unions, gave employees the right to form and join unions; and foster a better relationship between management and labor (John Woolley and Gerhard Peters). The NLRB administered the law.
With the liberty granted under the Wagner Act, growth ensued and unions forced membership, through contracts that required all workers to pay, whether they joined or not. By 1945, an anti-union climate pervaded America due to their extensive growth, power, and the plethora of huge …show more content…

President Reagan warned the strikers to return to work, when they refused, he fired over 11,000 workers. These essential employees were adequately and permanently replaced. This ended the strike, and set a precedence, in the employment sector, that striking workers can be permanently replaced (Michael R. Carrell & Christina Heavrin, 2013, p. 104).
Organized labor received a sharp blow from the debacle – union fees decreased, with the dismissal, membership declined and PATCO no longer exists. Although, labor numbers continue to decline, the labor movement is built on the strength and fortitude to fight. As they focus on immigration reform - 2015, estimates of just over 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. (Jens Manuel Krogstad, Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn, 2017). All of them are employment disadvantaged workers, dispersed in many industries, mainly in the agriculture and service industries. They have no labor protection, earn low wages, operate in poor working conditions, then they need the advocate of labor

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