In the Center for a Stateless Society’s latest study, “Labor Struggle: A Free Market Model,” C4SS Research Associate Kevin Carson examines the role of state labor regulation in halting the progress of unionism and explores the gains made for labor by direct action and worker solidarity in the face of combined state and corporate power.
“The predominance of the conventional strike as we know it, as the primary weapon of labor struggle,” writes Carson, “is in fact a byproduct of the labor relations regime created under the Wagner Act. … In the system of labor relations extant before Wagner, strikes were only one part of the total range of available tactics. Unionism, and the methods it normally employed, was less about strikes or excluding non-union workers from the workplace than about what workers did inside the workplace to strengthen their bargaining power against the boss.”
Read more at c4ss.org
