Americans Love Unions. The Supreme Court’s Conservatives Are Gutting Them
For decades, union-busting bosses and Republican politicians have had a powerful ally in their war on organized labor: the United States Supreme Court.
by JOE MAYALL
It’s official: Unions are cool again. Spearheaded by high-profile unionization drives at brand name companies like Starbucks, Amazon, Tesla, and REI, the labor movement has garnered national media attention. And, win or lose, each attempt seems to make organized labor more popular. Last August, a Gallup poll found that 71 percent of Americans approve of labor unions—the highest approval rating in over fifty years.
Yet despite this half-century high, rates of union membership are historically low: 10.1 percent in 2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s a slight decrease from the year prior, and the lowest union membership rate on record. The data is even more troubling when parsed between the public and private sectors: About a third of public workers are unionized, compared to just 6 percent of private-sector workers.
The discrepancy between the rates of union approval and union membership can be attributed to many of the usual suspects: union-busting bosses and Republican politicians. But for decades, the anti-union team has been aided by a third co-conspirator: the United States Supreme Court.
(Bettmann / Getty Images)
Nearly a century ago, Congress passed a landmark labor law known as the Wagner Act, which, among other things, created the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to enforce workers’ rights to unionize, collectively bargain, and strike. Workers took advantage of these rights almost immediately: After the World War II “no-strike pledge” ended, frustration with low wages reached a breaking point, leading to a massive wave of strikes in major industries.
But a pro-capital backlash soon followed: In 1947, Congress overrode President Harry Truman’s veto to pass the Taft-Hartley Act, which cut into the Wagner Act’s labor protections by making unions (not just employers) susceptible to unfair labor practice charges and legalizing so-called “right to work” laws that undermine union power. Taft-Hartley also hampered the NLRB’s ability to protect unions by establishing a general counsel position, subject to confirmation by the notoriously undemocratic and historically anti-labor Senate. As employers continued their attacks on organized labor throughout the Cold War era, the NLRB was their primary target, and the Supreme Court was their weapon of choice.