Photo by photobunny
It would be an understatement to say that unions have had some setbacks recently, so what’s wrong with hogging a holiday all to themselves as they lick their wounds?
The Marathon County Labor Council originally tried to ban Republican lawmakers from Monday’s parade, but it backed down when the Wausau mayor threatened to refuse insurance costs and other expenses to the public event.
While it is true that organized labor was behind the establishment of Labor Day, when you consider that at their peak in the 1950s, unions only represented a little over a third of all workers, it never would have happened without a lot of non-union support to get them more than the fifty percent needed to pass any legislation. So just how did we get in this mess?
Another New Deal Idea
The National Labor Relations Board was created as part of the National Labor Relations Act, also known as the Wagner Act, passed in 1935, in the midst of the progressive movement. The Wagner Act is an interesting study.
First of all there is nothing in the Constitution that empowers Congress to pass any law regarding the conditions under which private businesses could or could not hire people. The Wagner Act only applied to private companies, as even Roosevelt said that allowing public sector employees to organize was crazy, or to use his own words:
All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters. — Letter to Luther C. Steward, President of the National Federation of Federal Employees, August 16, 1937
The Act also allowed states the prerogative to protect against compulsory union membership. This is exactly backwards. The federal government doesn’t tell the states what it can or cannot do. The states created the federal government (remember that ratification process back in 1788?) and in case there was any doubt, they erased it with the Tenth Amendment.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. {emphasis added}
You will notice that it is the states, through the Constitution, that are granting powers to the federal government, not the other way around. The Act tells private employers that if they fire someone for joining a union they have committed a federal crime, but if they fire someone for not joining a union that was okay and is federally protected.
Adding the Public Sector
Despite Roosevelt’s views on public sector unions, if there is a political opportunity to stick it to the citizens to advance one’s political career by all means do so. New York City Mayor Robert Wagner, the very son of the Senator who sponsored the Wagner ACT, was facing a tough reelection. All five Democrat county leaders were against him. That’s not good when that happens. Wagner needed to pull a rabbit out of his hat if he was going to win. So, in 1958 an aide came up with the idea of allowing public sector employees to unionize and create a huge voting block in his favor. Eureka! He went on to win again. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988, allowing the unionization of federal workers. It wasn’t a law debated and passed by Congress, just an executive order from one president.
In the private sector union membership declined from it’s peak to its current level of around 7% of all workers. In the public sector is has continued to grow, and to cost a bundle. Why? As union leader Victor Gotbaum said, “we have the ability to elect our own boss.” And elect they did, unions almost always come out in force for Democrats, those who get elected have been more than happy to negotiate generous pay packages, early retirement, retirement pay formulas that allow loading up on overtime the last few years to jack up the calculation, numerous sick days that can be converted to cold hard cash upon retirement, etc., etc. The cookie jar is empty. The party is over. Stop whining, kid, that you didn’t get more ice cream.
Labor Day for All Americans
How about we celebrate Labor Day for all Americans, who work and have worked to make this country great? How about a little round of applause for all those non-union workers who supported the rights of union workers to organize? This is not a private party with a union goon manning the velvet rope. This is an American holiday that is open to all Americans, because it was passed into law as a legal holiday by our Congress. Thank you. Now, I’ll have a beer and a Hot Dog, please.
That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.