The Bosses' Union

How Employers Organized to Fight Labor before the New Deal

Vilja Hulden

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9780252086922, 9780252044830
• eBook ISBN: 9780252053887
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

At the opening of the twentieth century, labor strife repeatedly racked the nation. Union organization and collective bargaining briefly looked like a promising avenue to stability. But both employers and many middle-class observers remained wary of unions exercising independent power.

Vilja Hulden reveals how this tension provided the opening for pro-business organizations to shift public attention from concerns about inequality and dangerous working conditions to a belief that unions trampled on an individual's right to work. Inventing the term closed shop, employers mounted what they called an open-shop campaign to undermine union demands that workers at unionized workplaces join the union. Employer organizations lobbied Congress to resist labor's proposals as tyrannical, brought court cases to taint labor's tactics as illegal, and influenced newspaper coverage of unions. While employers were not a monolith nor all-powerful, they generally agreed that unions were a nuisance. Employers successfully leveraged money and connections to create perceptions of organized labor that still echo in our discussions of worker rights.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Who Makes the Rules?
• 1. The Invention of the Closed Shop: The NAM Weighs In on the Labor Question
• 2. The Deep History of the Closed or Union Shop
• 3. The Potential and Limitations of the Trade Agreement
• 4. The Range and Roots of Employer Positions on Labor
• 5. Employers, Unite? The Bases and Challenges of Employer Collective Action
• 6. The Battle over the State
• 7. The Battle over Public Opinion
• 8. Defending the Status Quo Ante Bellum
• 9. The Gift That Keeps on Giving: Institutionalizing the Open-Shop Ideal in the 1920s
• Coda: The Working Class and the Prerequisites of Power
• Abbreviations
• A Note on Sources and Methods
• Notes
• Index