Employers' Association of Greater Chicago - Attacks On Federal Labor Policy

Attacks On Federal Labor Policy

The passage of the National Labor Relations Act (the Wagner Act) in 1935 energized the Employers' Association, and drew it into a new field of activity. Although the EA had long opposed collective bargaining, federal legislation protecting labor unions took the organization by surprise. The Association vociferously attacked President Franklin D. Roosevelt's labor policies. But like many employers, the EA took a "wait and see" attitude until the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled on the Wagner Act's constitutionality. The court upheld the constitutionality of the statute in 1937 in National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation 301 U.S. 1 (1937). The EA rarely attacked the act for the remainder of the 1930s or during World War II.

However, in the post-war period it once more blasted unions and the federal government's labor policies. The EA undertook a campaign to influence Congressional opinion, and pushed strongly for repeal of the Wagner Act. When repeal seemed out of reach, the EA supported the Taft-Hartley Act and the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA). It also sponsored a program to take advantage of the provisions of both acts by bolstering the role foremen played in the workplace.

By the late 1930s, labor-related disruptions and violence in Chicago had been greatly reduced. Chicago law enforcement was also cracking down heavily on labor violence and racketeering, which won high praise from the Employers' Association.

The Association became much less active in labor relations in the 1950s and 1960s. The organization undertook a brief resurgence of interested in rackets in 1951, however. It attacked the Chicago Retail Druggists Association for "forcing" pharmacies to pay dues to the group, accused the restaurant workers' union of extorting money from cafes, threatened to sue the Teamsters union for violations of the LMRDA, and more. It even went so far as to hire a former FBI agent, Frederick W. Turner, Jr., to investigate labor racketeering in the city. But none of these campaigns had the impact of its 1920 efforts, and Turner's investigations produced next to nothing. No indictments or grand jury investigations occurred, either. By November 1951, the EA dropped its pretense of "fair play" and announced it openly opposed unionization of every workplace. But this militaristic stand did little to revive the group.

The EA tried again to focus public attention on labor racketeering in 1962. Once more, it hired an ex-FBI agent to investigate racketeering in the city of Chicago, and accused unions of using simple picketing as a means of extortion. But the legal and political climate had changed, and these efforts were often unsuccessful. In November 1964, Chicago City Council Alderman Thomas E. Keane accused the EA of anti-union bias—a charge the Association roundly denied.

The EA played a role in three more strikes, both of them affecting mechanics at auto dealerships. In 1968, the Association acted as a spokesperson for the auto dealers in their attempt to resist unionization. The mechanics unionized, and struck the auto dealers in 1975, 1978 and 1981. During each strike, the EA strongly and publicly supported the dealerships and continued to act as their primary spokesperson. But the EA played little role other than that of public relations.