Union Busting - Anti-union Employers' Organizations in The United States

Anti-union Employers' Organizations in The United States

In the United States shortly after 1900, there were just a few effective employers' organizations that opposed the union movement. By 1903, these organizations started to coalesce, and a national employers' movement began to exert a powerful influence on industrial relations and public affairs.

For nearly a decade prior to 1903, an industrial union called the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) had been increasing in power, militancy, and radicalism as a response to dangerous working conditions, employer-employee inequality, the imposition of long hours of work, and what members perceived as an imperious attitude on the part of employers. In particular, members of the WFM had been outraged by employers' widespread use of labor spies in organizing efforts such as Coeur d'Alene. The miners' frustrations had occasionally exploded in anger and violence. But they had also tried peaceful change, and found that route impossible. For example, after winning a referendum vote for the eight hour day with support from 72 percent of Colorado's electorate, the WFM's goal of an eight hour law was still defeated by employers and politicians.

In 1901, angry WFM members passed a convention proclamation that a "complete revolution of social and economic conditions" was "the only salvation of the working classes." To employers the statement seemed tantamount to a declaration of war. Colorado employers and their supporters reacted to growing union restlessness and power in a confrontation that came to be called the Colorado Labor Wars.

But fear and apprehension on the part of employers, who felt unions were threatening to their businesses, were by no means limited to Colorado. Across the nation, the first elements of a network of employers' organizations that would span the coming century were just beginning to arise.

Anti-union organizations played increasingly prominent roles in American politics. In April 1903, David M. Parry spoke to the annual convention of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and he delivered a speech critical of organized labor, asserting that trade unionism and socialism differ only in method, with both aiming to deny "individual and property rights". Parry asserted the natural laws which governed the nation's economy, and he decried any interference with those laws, whether by legislative or other means. Parry asserted that the goals of the unions would inevitably lead to "despotism, tyranny, and slavery", and the "ruin of civilization."

To control this threat to the status quo, Parry advised that the NAM begin organizing employers and manufacturers' associations into a great national anti-union federation. The NAM convention agreed to the recommendation, and created an employers' organizing committee with Parry in charge. Parry began the organizing effort at once.

The prospect of a federal eight hour law was particularly objectionable to the NAM, which declared it a "vicious, needless, and in every way preposterous proposition."

The NAM has fought against organized labor for more than a century through obliquely named affiliated organizations. However, the organization once sought to moderate its image. After the 1937 La Follette Committee investigated employers and their anti-union allies, uncovering widespread abuses, the NAM denounced "the use of espionage, strikebreaking agencies, professional strikebreakers, armed guards, or munitions for the purpose of interfering with or destroying the legitimate rights of labor to self organization and collective bargaining." The brief nod to union rights didn't last.

Other anti-union organizations have also made vocal contributions to anti-union discourse and union busting activities. The Citizens' Alliance was an employers' organization formed early in the 1900s specifically to fight trade unions. It worked with the NAM to strengthen anti-union movements in the early 20th Century in the United States. The Council on Union Free Environment (CUE) had the specific mission of defeating President Carter's labor law reform bill that was designed to make union-organizing efforts more successful by, among other provisions, allowing for elections to occur within 15 days of filing a petition. The Labor Law Study Group, later called the Construction Users Anti-Inflation Roundtable introduced dozens of labor law reform bills in the U.S. Congress, but their primary focus was repealing state and federal laws that established minimum wage standards on publicly funded projects. Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) is the construction industry's voice and is funded chiefly by non-union builders and related businesses and promoted the "merit shop" which sought to pay each employee according to his qualification and performance. While the group insisted it was not anti-union, the system would preclude workers from exercising many of the worker-related benefits of a union.

Other groups, like the National Right to Work Committee, has lobbied for laws prohibiting compulsory union membership in union-organized shops. Similarly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's core purpose is to fight for free enterprise before Congress, the White House, regulatory agencies, the courts, the court of public opinion, and governments around the world and has actively lobbied against the Employee Free Choice Act. The NLPC makes a case for the end of the use of compulsory union dues for political purposes by exposing abuses in political and organizing activities. The Center for Union Facts maintains an anti-union website that provides financial and other records about unions.