Legislation and Unionization

In a group discussion I participated in last evening, there was some speculation on why rates of unionization in the U.S. had declined.  The consensus of the group was that unions had been given unfairly negative coverage in the press or that companies had instilled unjustified fear of unions on the part of employees.  I doubt this is the real explanation.  Companies are fairly uniform in their hostility to organized labor.  It seems likely that in other countries or at times in the past, companies would take steps to reduce or eliminate unionization.

I agree with the opinion expressed here that the decline in unionization is due to legislation passed in the U.S. The article cites differences in legislation between the U.S. and Canada to explain differences in the strength of organized labor in the two countries.  I think this is a weak argument.  The author is making the case using only two countries.  A better case could be made by looking at the timing of increases and decreases in unionization to see if they coincided with changes in legislation.

This is certainly the case in the U.S.  Looking at the graph we see a decline in unionization in the early 1920's, leveling off from the mid '20's to the mid '30's, a sharp increase from the mid '30's to the mid '40's, leveling off from the mid '40's to about 1960, and a decline since then interrupted by a slight increase in the late '70's.

The history of labor law in the U.S. can be found here.  Of particular interest are the Railway Labor Act of 1926, Norris-Laguardia in 1932, Wagner in 1935, Smith-Connally in 1943, Taft-Hartley in 1947, Landrum-Griffin in 1959 and the Federal Labor Relations Act of 1977.  The first three pieces of legislation are changes that favored organized labor, leading to the stabilization of unionization in the late twenties and early thirties, followed by an increase in unionization in the late thirties and early forties.  Unionization was then stabilized by Taft-Hartley, and has undergone a decline since Landrum-Griffin, interrupted only shortly in the late seventies by the legalization of public sector unions under the Federal Labor Relations Act of 1977.

It is beyond the scope of this post to comment on the wisdom of any of these pieces of legislation or on whether unionization is good or bad for the country as a whole.  I am only pointing out that changes in unionization rates seem to coincide with changes in legislation in the U.S.  It would be interesting to know if a more comprehensive look at legislation in other countries also showed this connection.