Labor Rights and Unions Under FDR

Labor Before FDR

Before the New Deal, American workers had few legal protections. Unions existed but operated in a hostile legal environment where courts routinely issued injunctions against strikes, employers could fire workers for organizing, and private security forces — most notoriously the Pinkerton Agency — were used to break strikes with violence. The 1920s had been particularly devastating for organized labor: union membership fell from roughly 5 million in 1920 to 3.4 million by 1929.

Workers in the early Depression had virtually no safety net. There was no federal unemployment insurance, no minimum wage, no regulation of working hours, and no prohibition on child labor in most industries. When workers tried to organize, they faced not only employer retaliation but active hostility from the state. The 1932 Norris-LaGuardia Act had limited the use of court injunctions against strikes, but enforcement was weak.

The Depression itself radicalized many workers. Communist and socialist organizers gained traction in factories, mines, and fields. Roosevelt understood that if the system didn't offer workers a legitimate path to better conditions, they would increasingly turn to movements that wanted to overthrow the system entirely.

The Wagner Act Revolution

Section 7(a) of the 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act had guaranteed workers the right to organize, but it lacked enforcement mechanisms and employers routinely ignored it. The real transformation came with the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, known as the Wagner Act after its sponsor, Senator Robert Wagner of New York.

The Wagner Act was arguably the most consequential piece of labor legislation in American history. It guaranteed workers the right to form unions, bargain collectively, and strike. It prohibited employer interference with organizing, company-dominated unions, discrimination against union members, and refusal to bargain in good faith. Critically, it created the National Labor Relations Board with actual enforcement power.

The results were dramatic. Union membership surged from 3.7 million in 1935 to 8.9 million by 1940 and 14.3 million by 1945. The Congress of Industrial Organizations, formed in 1935, organized entire industries — steel, auto, rubber, electrical — rather than individual crafts. The sit-down strikes at General Motors plants in Flint, Michigan, in 1936-37 forced the largest corporation in the world to recognize the United Auto Workers. American labor had never been so powerful, and it would not be again.

The Political Alliance

The New Deal forged an alliance between organized labor and the Democratic Party that would last for half a century. Unions provided Democrats with money, volunteers, and voters. In return, Democrats defended labor legislation and appointed pro-labor officials to the NLRB and the courts. This alliance was central to the New Deal coalition that dominated American politics from 1932 to 1968.

But the relationship had limits and contradictions. The Wagner Act did not cover agricultural workers or domestic servants — exclusions that disproportionately affected Black and Latino workers. This was not accidental: Southern Democrats, whose votes Roosevelt needed, insisted on protecting the racial hierarchy of the plantation economy. The New Deal's labor revolution was thus also a story about who was left out.