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The history of strikes before federal labor law illustrates exactly why federal labor law is so essential to maintain a functioning economy that is fair for bot

The history of strikes before federal labor law illustrates exactly why federal labor law is so essential to maintain a functioning economy that is fair for both capital and labor. Would you rather have a system run by the government where workers can vote to form unions and the unions can formally negotiate working conditions with the employer or an informal system where workers can form unauthorized unions and renegotiate or even go on strike at any time they wish? Would you rather have peaceful strikes where the union stands outside protesting but ensures no damage is done to the equipment or strikes where the union vandalizes the equipment and federal troops get called in to shoot union members? Getting rid of labor law does not eliminate unions. It simply turns labor disputes into small scale wars rather than peaceful negotiations that usually end with concessions from each side. Besides, it is much easier for corporations to just use anti-union propaganda to ensure the union loses the secret ballot election or get the legislature to pass "right to work" laws so people can work at a unionized workplace without joining the union.

toss1 3y ago
This immediately reminded me of a quote, of US President John F. Kennedy: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hammock 3y ago
Why is federal jurisdiction required for this? State-level regulation enables greater accountability to local constituents, empowering communities to shape labor policies directly. States can enact labor laws more quickly in response to local labor market conditions, and state-level regulations can be tailored to address specific economic and social contexts. States can experiment with new labor policies, fostering innovation in labor relations. Favorable labor laws in some states may attract businesses and workers, fostering healthy competition. Proximity between policymakers, workers, and employers facilitates better understanding and responsiveness
- georgeecollins 3y ago
  Because corporations act across states and individual states can't restrict interstate commerce.
  - bdw5204 3y ago
    This is a big problem because corporations will just leave a state if they don't like its labor laws and operate out of whatever state has the laxest labor laws. States used to have their own laws limiting interest on loans, usually between 10 and 20 percent. Then in 1978 the Supreme Court ruled[0] that banks can ignore these state laws if they are based out of a different state. This eventually led to pretty much all of the banks moving their headquarters to South Dakota or Delaware which repealed their laws limiting interest rates to attract banks to those states. Today, pretty much every credit card charges an interest rate well above the old legal limits. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquette_National_Bank_of_Minneapolis_v._First_of_Omaha_Service_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquette_National_Bank_of_Min....
- dctoedt 3y ago
  > State-level regulation enables greater accountability to local constituents, empowering communities to shape labor policies directly. In theory, yes. In practice: 1. State legislators are heavily influenced by local trade associations and their lobbyists — and their campaign contributions. See, e.g., car dealers, liquor distributors, and landlords, to name some that come to mind immediately. 2. Federal-level regulation is needed to prevent a "race to the bottom" among states competing to be the most "business-friendly" in the hope of attracting jobs. See, e.g., South Dakota's banking laws that caused so many banks to locate their credit-card operations in that state, as well as Delaware's famously management-friendly corporate laws.
  - margalabargala 3y ago
    > 1. State legislators are heavily influenced by local trade associations and their lobbyists — and their campaign contributions. See, e.g., car dealers, liquor distributors, and landlords, to name some that come to mind immediately. There's functionally no difference here from federal legislators. You might think "oh a federal congressperson runs a larger campaign so it would take more money to buy them off". Then you'd look at the scale of the donations it took some of them to vote certain ways for interest groups. Net neutrality was a recent example. Single digit thousands was all it took for some. That's not out of the reach of any business with an interest in influencing legislation.
petsfed 3y ago
Worth noting that a major factor in lowering the tempo from the Battle Blair Mountain (first confirmed use of airplane-dropped bombs and chemical weapons on American soil) to your average strike at a Starbucks is the huge concessions wrung out of the capital holding class. The Battle of Blair Mountain was precipitated by the forced evictions of miners' families from company towns, over the miners' attempts to unionize. Its hard to fathom now, but imagine that the only job available was to work in a mine, the only way to do so was to live in a company town, you worked completely at will and could be fired at any time, and your family had minutes to vacate the house the company rented to you, if you got fired (and you still owed any debt you'd racked up at the company store, which was your only source for food and supplies). There are all kinds of horrendous allegations leveled against the mine operators because of the extreme leverage they had over their workers (its not clear if it ever actually happened, but the allegation of forced prostitution of miners' wives to cover the "debts" incurred when their husbands failed to meet quota because of injury or mine collapse are pretty common). Its not clear if those allegations are true, if so, indicative of a systemic issue or just the natural consequence of putting in power people with a natural penchant for imperiousness and brutality. The coal wars are as close to a second civil war as the US has ever gotten since the first one. When you consider the working conditions the workers were trying to fix, its not difficult to say that those workers were as close to being legal slaves as it was possible to be after the first civil war without being prisoners. Of course, some mines did use prison labor, which is explicitly slavery. To further complicate that comparison most labor unions of the time explicitly barred black members, so many strikebreakers were black, and the mine operators sought them out for that reason. Coal mining remains, to this day, one of the most dangerous jobs you can work, with horrendous impacts on the workers' health long-term, provided you survive long enough to retire. It was so much worse in the past that miners fought actual battles, with machine guns and artillery, just for the seemingly basic rights they have today.

toss1 3y ago

This immediately reminded me of a quote, of US President John F. Kennedy: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

hammock 3y ago

Why is federal jurisdiction required for this? State-level regulation enables greater accountability to local constituents, empowering communities to shape labor policies directly. States can enact labor laws more quickly in response to local labor market conditions, and state-level regulations can be tailored to address specific economic and social contexts. States can experiment with new labor policies, fostering innovation in labor relations. Favorable labor laws in some states may attract businesses and workers, fostering healthy competition. Proximity between policymakers, workers, and employers facilitates better understanding and responsiveness

georgeecollins 3y ago
Because corporations act across states and individual states can't restrict interstate commerce.
- bdw5204 3y ago
  This is a big problem because corporations will just leave a state if they don't like its labor laws and operate out of whatever state has the laxest labor laws. States used to have their own laws limiting interest on loans, usually between 10 and 20 percent. Then in 1978 the Supreme Court ruled[0] that banks can ignore these state laws if they are based out of a different state. This eventually led to pretty much all of the banks moving their headquarters to South Dakota or Delaware which repealed their laws limiting interest rates to attract banks to those states. Today, pretty much every credit card charges an interest rate well above the old legal limits. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquette_National_Bank_of_Minneapolis_v._First_of_Omaha_Service_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquette_National_Bank_of_Min....
dctoedt 3y ago
> State-level regulation enables greater accountability to local constituents, empowering communities to shape labor policies directly. In theory, yes. In practice: 1. State legislators are heavily influenced by local trade associations and their lobbyists — and their campaign contributions. See, e.g., car dealers, liquor distributors, and landlords, to name some that come to mind immediately. 2. Federal-level regulation is needed to prevent a "race to the bottom" among states competing to be the most "business-friendly" in the hope of attracting jobs. See, e.g., South Dakota's banking laws that caused so many banks to locate their credit-card operations in that state, as well as Delaware's famously management-friendly corporate laws.
- margalabargala 3y ago
  > 1. State legislators are heavily influenced by local trade associations and their lobbyists — and their campaign contributions. See, e.g., car dealers, liquor distributors, and landlords, to name some that come to mind immediately. There's functionally no difference here from federal legislators. You might think "oh a federal congressperson runs a larger campaign so it would take more money to buy them off". Then you'd look at the scale of the donations it took some of them to vote certain ways for interest groups. Net neutrality was a recent example. Single digit thousands was all it took for some. That's not out of the reach of any business with an interest in influencing legislation.

petsfed 3y ago

Worth noting that a major factor in lowering the tempo from the Battle Blair Mountain (first confirmed use of airplane-dropped bombs and chemical weapons on American soil) to your average strike at a Starbucks is the huge concessions wrung out of the capital holding class. The Battle of Blair Mountain was precipitated by the forced evictions of miners' families from company towns, over the miners' attempts to unionize. Its hard to fathom now, but imagine that the only job available was to work in a mine, the only way to do so was to live in a company town, you worked completely at will and could be fired at any time, and your family had minutes to vacate the house the company rented to you, if you got fired (and you still owed any debt you'd racked up at the company store, which was your only source for food and supplies). There are all kinds of horrendous allegations leveled against the mine operators because of the extreme leverage they had over their workers (its not clear if it ever actually happened, but the allegation of forced prostitution of miners' wives to cover the "debts" incurred when their husbands failed to meet quota because of injury or mine collapse are pretty common). Its not clear if those allegations are true, if so, indicative of a systemic issue or just the natural consequence of putting in power people with a natural penchant for imperiousness and brutality. The coal wars are as close to a second civil war as the US has ever gotten since the first one. When you consider the working conditions the workers were trying to fix, its not difficult to say that those workers were as close to being legal slaves as it was possible to be after the first civil war without being prisoners. Of course, some mines did use prison labor, which is explicitly slavery. To further complicate that comparison most labor unions of the time explicitly barred black members, so many strikebreakers were black, and the mine operators sought them out for that reason. Coal mining remains, to this day, one of the most dangerous jobs you can work, with horrendous impacts on the workers' health long-term, provided you survive long enough to retire. It was so much worse in the past that miners fought actual battles, with machine guns and artillery, just for the seemingly basic rights they have today.