Looking at Labor Law
Kellman’s book a quick tour of how we got this way
Building Unions Past, Present and Future
By Peter Kellman
Illustrated by Matt Wuerker
Apex Press, 37 pp, $8
Although its title might suggest so, Peter Kellman’s book, “Building Unions Past, Present and Future” is not a manual on how to organize at your workplace. What this small book does do is survey the history of commercial and labor law in the United States. It’s a small package, but it packs a wallop in its 37 pages.
Mention free trade and cheap labor these days and you are likely to be discussing the NAFTA treaty or the fast-track legislation wending its way through Congress. But Kellman shows they’ve been at issue from the very earliest days of the New World colonies — figuring in the American Revolution and making their way into the Constitution, let alone serving as centers of contention in the new millennium.
Consider the question of cheap labor. Many of the immigrants in the colonies were indentured servants. These workers agreed to serve rich landowners or corporations for seven years in exchange for passage from Europe, after which they usually leased land from these entities and continued in semi-servitude. Indentured servants were subject to the same fugitive slave laws as the enslaved Africans. Both classes of people were considered property and sold and traded as such. Much of America’s wealth was created by this cheap labor and corporations continue to search around the world for this source of enrichment.
The other concern, free trade, was a subject of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Kellman writes, “In the legislatures, conflicts arose between small business owners and artisans and those involved in national and international trade. The small businessmen wanted high state tariffs to protect their small concerns, while those with large commercial interests demanded so-called “free trade” between states.”
The large commercial interests won and the result was Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.
“Building Unions” tracks the labor movement of the 1800s and those workers’ idea of a democracy day. That meant a four-day workweek with a fifth day to participate in creating a democracy. As Kellman writes, “The corporate lobbyists would be shaking and quaking if millions of working class people had the time and resources to participate in the legislative process the way the wealthy do.”
Moving into the 1900s, the book chronicles the buildup to passage of the Norris-LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Act of 1932 that helped open the door to union organizing by guaranteeing workers “full freedom of association … and that he shall be free from the interference, restraint, or coercion of employers of labor.” Unfortunately, as the book shows, that freedom has been constrained by laws such as the Taft-Hartley Act and numerous judgments in favor of employers.
The final section calls for future labor law to be based on human rights rather than in the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. It also says that those rights will most likely not come without struggle.
Point after point in this book is brought home by the illustrations of Matt Wuerker, whose political cartoons are often seen in progressive publications.
“Building Unions” covers a lot of the same ground as Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States.” But Zinn’s 675-page tome takes a certain commitment of time. Those who work long hours might want to try Kellman’s effort.
