Prohibitions On Tactics In Negotiating Your Wage

Pro-capitalists often depict wages as being determined by free negotiations between employers and employees. They ignore conventions and norms surrounding such negotiations. And laws regulate and prohibit various tactics, especially some that require collective action in solidarity with other workers.

In explaining these restrictions, I concentrate on vignettes in the United States of America. A theory of dual labor markets applies here. In the formal sector, you can expect benefits, paid vacations, defined limitations on working hours, and weekends off. In the other sector, not so much. I have seen talk about the precarity. It is clear that we need more labor unions in the USA. The United Auto Workers has been promising lately.

The rise of labor unions in the USA occurred against massive reactionary violence on the part of the minions of oligarchs, including the state. For example, President McKinley sent the Army to Idaho in 1899 to round up striking workers and others - they did not care who - and put them in the 'bullpen'. This was basically a concentration camp. The robber barons could also call on their own private police force. I refer especially to the Pinkerton Detective Agency.

I skip ahead to the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also known as the Wagner act. This law legalized labor unions, collective bargaining, and strikes. It prohibited company unions. And it established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The Taft-Hartley Act was passed in 1947, over Truman's veto. It permitted states to pass so-called 'Right to Work' laws. It prohibited sympathy strikes and general strikes. Union leaders would like to sign contracts in which all jobs in certain grades or categories are union jobs. Employees hired for those jobs can be non-union, but they must pay union fees. A non-union worker might as well join the union to have their voice heard. The misnamed 'right to work' laws prohibit such free contracts. A sympathy strike is called by a union in solidarity with other workers. For example, pilots might go on strike when flight attendants are striking. You could imagine the workers in a city all going on strike in support of a political issue. But this is prohibited in the USA.

The above presents an overview of some elements of history in the USA in the setting in which workers 'freely' negotiate their wage. I focus on the prospect of labor organizing. A more comprehensive history would include the perception of those running the Federal Reserve that they should raise interest rates when wages rise and the general hostility to labor, particularly in the Republican party, since Reagan was president. Strangely enough, Reagan was the only president of a labor union (the Screen Actors Guild) ever to be elected president.