Beating the Union: Union Avoidance in the US

Abstract

For much of the history of American capitalism, its owners and managers have fought unions to a degree unknown among their European counterparts. The nineteenth century was rife with employer-promoted violence against unions and union activists, much of it successful in preventing and defeating the implantation of worker representation and collective bargaining in rapidly growing industry until the twentieth century. In the 1930s, in the wake of an enormous labour upsurge, labour unionism was imposed upon the very commanding heights of industry. Even then, and with rare exceptions, employer resistance among those not yet unionised was the norm until World War II (WW2). Most analyses would agree with this sketch up to the end of WW2, but looking back on the 1940s and 1950s from the vantage point of the 1970s and 1980s many historians, economists and industrial relations academics saw a changed landscape. Often described as a ‘social compact’ or ‘labour-management accord’, the immediate post-war era was seen as a period of relative industrial peace and the general acceptance or tolerance, if not the enthusiastic embrace, of unions and collective bargaining by America’s corporate managers and leading capitalists. The rise of management resistance to unionism in the 1970s was seen as a change.