Anytime you wonder why labor unions declined in America, its simple: Taft-Hartley Act of 1947

[AZ Progressive]

The Republican dominated Congress in 1947 passed with a veto-proof majority, the Taft Hartley Act, which is highlighted in this article:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_great_divergence/features/2010/the_united_states_of_inequality/the_great_divergence_and_the_death_of_organized_labor.html

Levy and Temin don't dwell on this, but in his 1991 book Which Side Are You On?: Trying To Be For Labor When It's Flat On Its Back,Thomas Geoghegan, a Chicago-based labor lawyer, argues that Taft-Hartley was the principal cause of the American labor movement's eventual steep decline:

First, it ended organizing on the grand, 1930s scale. It outlawed mass picketing, secondary strikes of neutral employers, sit downs: in short, everything [Congress of Industrial Organizations founder John L.] Lewis did in the 1930s.

It also allowed and even encouraged employers to threaten workers who want to organize. Employers could hold "captive meetings," bring workers into the office and chew them out for thinking about the Union.

Read the full article because there were more paragraphs that I would have liked to fit in this and are worth reading. Taft Hartley gave the tools employers and other labor enemies needed to bring down labor unions. Europe never had this, and this is why labor unions remain relatively strong in Europe.

[otherone]

1. Which Side Are You On?: Trying To Be For Labor When It's Flat On Its Back

This is a great little book.
I was reading it when I met my wife..

[Depaysement]

3. +1

[pampango]

2. Not only "passed with a veto-proof majority"; Truman vetoed it then the "Republican dominated

Congress" passed it over his veto.

You are right. Unions cannot regain the health they had under FDR, or the relative health they now have in Europe and other developed countries, with Taft-Hartley restrictions, including 'right-to-work' laws, in effect.

[mountain grammy]

4. Very good book. I read it while I was a union steward

and my employer was actively engaged in union busting. They finally succeeded, three years after I quit.