1 gen 1922 anni - Coronado Coal Company v. United Miner Woekrs of America limits unions' power

Descrizione:

American Plan: Strategy by American business in the 1920s to keep workplaces free of unions, which included refusing to negotiate with trade unions and requiring workers to sign contracts pledging not to join a union.

welfare capitalism: A system of labor relations that stressed management’s responsibility for employees’ well-being.

Much like African Americans, organized labor saw progress during the war years and encountered hostile, though less deadly, resistance afterward. Following the strike wave of 1919, business leaders and their political allies fought back against organized labor, which entered a decade of decline. Across the country, employers adopted what they called the American Plan of employment — refusing to negotiate with unions and denying workers the right to organize by forcing them to sign contracts pledging not to join a union. Facing a strike of Boston’s police force, Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge illustrated this defiant approach by declaring, “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime.” A majority of the public supported the governor, and Republicans rewarded Coolidge by nominating him for the vice-presidency in 1920.

A decision by the Supreme Court contributed to organized labor’s decline. In Coronado Coal Company v. United Mine Workers of America (1922), the Court ruled that a striking union could be penalized for illegal restraint of trade. The Coronado ruling, along with the aggressive antiunion campaigns under the American Plan, drove down membership in labor unions from 5.1 million in 1920 to 3.6 million in 1929 — just 10 percent of the nonagricultural workforce.

With unions in retreat, the 1920s marked the heyday of welfare capitalism, a system of labor relations that stressed a company’s responsibility for its employees’ well-being. Ideally, this arrangement would build a loyal workforce and head off unrest. Automaker Henry Ford, among other large industrial employers, had implemented such a system prior to World War I. Ford famously paid a generous wage of $5 a day and also offered a profit-sharing plan to employees who met the standards of its Sociological Department, which investigated workers to ensure their private lives met the company’s moral standards. At a time when government unemployment compensation and Social Security did not exist, General Electric and U.S. Steel provided health insurance and old-age pensions. Other employers built athletic facilities and selectively offered paid vacations. In practice, however, the benefits of welfare capitalism proved limited. Such plans covered only about 5 percent of the industrial workforce, and they depended on employer generosity and rising profits. When faced with new financial pressures in the late 1920s, even Henry Ford cut back his $5 day, and corporate belt-tightening across the country spelled the end of this experiment.

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