Rewarded by Friends and Punished by Enemies: The CIO and the Taft-Hartley Act

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 78-113
Author(s):  
Adam Dean ◽  
Jonathan Obert
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Congressional Voting ◽  
Action Committee ◽  
Wagner Act

The Wagner Act, passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress in 1935, provided unprecedented federal protections for American labor unions. The Taft-Hartley Act, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress just twelve years later, effectively rolled back significant parts of Wagner. Previous research on Taft-Hartley identifies three factors that led to this anti-labor backlash. First, the American public was repulsed by the large strike wave that followed the end of World War II. Second, southern Democrats were concerned that powerful labor unions would organize African Americans and upset the South's racial hierarchy. Third, the Republican Party was increasingly embracing a conservative, probusiness ideology. This article contributes a new angle to this old debate by exploring the role of the CIO, its 1943 decision to create the country's first political action committee (PAC), and the consequences of its informal alliance with the Democratic Party. Using original data on CIO density and congressional voting on the Taft-Hartley Act, we demonstrate that CIO strength polarized the parties: higher levels of CIO density led Democrats to vote in favor of organized labor but led Republicans to vote in an increasingly anti-labor manner.

A Tale of  Two PACs

2020 ◽  
pp. 222-248
Author(s):  
Emily J. Charnock
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Business Community ◽  
Partisan Polarization ◽  
Action Committee ◽  
Democratic Action ◽  
Conservative Coalition ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
The Right

This chapter traces the diffusion of the PAC concept from the left to the right of the political spectrum in the late 1950s, with the formation of conservative electoral groups such as the Americans for Constitutional Action (ACA) to counter liberal ones like the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). By the early 1960s the business community had cast off its earlier resistance to overt electioneering, with the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) forming the Business-Industry Political Action Committee (BIPAC) to channel campaign resources to favored congressional candidates. Though they initially sought to bolster the conservative coalition, these groups soon embraced a dynamic partisan strategy focused on the Republican Party, seeking to shift it rightward much as labor and liberal groups sought to push the Democratic Party to the left. This reactive process culminated in the presidential election of 1964, a contest to which the roots of modern partisan “polarization” are often traced.

Congressional Voting on Labor Issues: The Role of PACS

ILR Review ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory M. Saltzman
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Roll Call Voting ◽  
Congressional Voting ◽  
Action Committee ◽  
Labor Issues ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Significant Direct Effect

This study measures the impact of labor and corporate political action committee (PAC) contributions on the voting of members of the House of Representatives on labor issues during 1979–80. It also analyzes the allocation of labor PAC contributions among House candidates. PAC contributions were found to have a significant direct effect on roll-call voting, even controlling for the Representative's political party and characteristics of the constituency. Since PAC money also affects roll-call voting indirectly (by influencing which party wins elections), the overall impact of PAC money on Congressional voting is probably substantial. The author also finds that labor PACs have focused more on influencing the outcome of elections than on currying favor with powerful members of the House who are likely to be re-elected anyway.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie M. Fousekis
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Child Care ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Political Action ◽  
War On Poverty ◽  
Child Care Centers ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
World War ◽  
The World

This concluding chapter argues that California's low-income working mothers and educators saved public child care as it vanished across the nation, leaving a one-of-a-kind program between World War II and the War on Poverty. While California's child care centers provided women with a valuable service, they also produced a few generations of active democratic subjects, women who realized a need beyond their own and took political action. Indeed, whether for a year or two, women who participated in the movement learned how to express their political rights. Some of the women were leftists or members of labor unions but for most, joining parents' councils or the statewide association was their first foray into the world of politics.

The Rise of Political Action Committees

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily J. Charnock
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Action Committees ◽  
Congress Of Industrial Organizations ◽  
Conservative Coalition ◽  
American Party

This book explores the origins of political action committees (PACs) in the mid-twentieth century and their impact on the American party system. It argues that PACs were envisaged, from the outset, as tools for effecting ideological change in the two main parties, thus helping to foster the partisan polarization we see today. It shows how the very first PAC, created by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1943, explicitly set out to liberalize the Democratic Party by channeling campaign resources to liberal Democrats while trying to defeat conservative Southern Democrats. This organizational model and strategy of “dynamic partisanship” subsequently diffused through the interest group world—imitated first by other labor and liberal allies in the 1940s and 1950s, then adopted and inverted by business and conservative groups in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Previously committed to the “conservative coalition” of Southern Democrats and northern Republicans, the latter groups came to embrace a more partisan approach and created new PACs to help refashion the Republican Party into a conservative counterweight. The book locates this PAC mobilization in the larger story of interest group electioneering, which went from a rare and highly controversial practice at the beginning of the twentieth century to a ubiquitous phenomenon today. It also offers a fuller picture of PACs as not only financial vehicles but electoral innovators that pioneered strategies and tactics that have come to pervade modern US campaigns and helped transform the American party system.

When Business Is Not “Businesslike”

2020 ◽  
pp. 197-221
Author(s):  
Emily J. Charnock
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Business Groups ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
Business Community ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
World War ◽  
Initial Resistance ◽  
Conservative Coalition

This chapter explores the initial resistance to the PAC concept within the business community and among conservatives more generally in the 1940s and 1950s. Though major business groups like the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and United States Chamber of Commerce had not entirely ignored elections to this point, they concentrated their energies following World War II on lobbying and publicity campaigns promoting “free enterprise,” while criticizing labor and liberal PACs as coercive, collectivist, and antidemocratic. They also placed faith in the “conservative coalition” of Republicans and Southern Democrats to protect their interests, reflecting their strong belief that both parties should and could promote business aims. As fears grew that labor had successfully “infiltrated” the Democratic Party, however, conservative activists urged business groups to be “businesslike” and respond to labor electioneering in kind. Business leaders thus began to contemplate a partisan electoral counterstrategy centered on the Republican Party.

Introducing P.A.C.

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-167
Author(s):  
Emily J. Charnock
Keyword(s):  
Critical Point ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Action ◽  
General Election ◽  
Primary Elections ◽  
Political Action Committee ◽  
Congress Of Industrial Organizations ◽  
Industrial Organizations ◽  
Action Committee

This chapter examines the creation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations’ (CIO’s) political action committee or P.A.C. in 1943, following the collapse of Labor’s Non-Partisan League and passage of a new law restricting union money in elections. This was a critical point in the CIO’s embrace of a “dynamic partisan” electoral strategy. Through interventions in primary elections and the targeted provision of general election support to sympathetic Democratic candidates, P.A.C. sought to reshape the Democratic Party along more pro-labor and liberal lines. As this chapter reveals, P.A.C. leaders hoped to elect supportive lawmakers in the 1944 and 1946 elections, seeking out candidates who were strongly committed to labor’s goals. Despite public pronouncements of nonpartisanship, however, they chose not to look for allies on both sides of the aisle, instead favoring liberal Democrats over liberal Republicans—hoping to impress Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal vision onto the Democratic Party as a whole.

From Popular Front to Liberalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Bell
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Economic Equality ◽  
The West ◽  
Liberal Politics ◽  
The 1950S

This chapter situates the consumer boom and suburbanization of California after World War II in the context of the changing dynamics of liberal politics on the West Coast. The rise of the Democratic Party to power in California took place at a time in which a range of interest groups demanding greater racial, sexual, and economic equality began to gain political traction and found that the existing avenues of party political action were inadequate for their needs. The California Democratic Party in the 1950s acted as a meeting ground for a range of cross-class interests searching for political meaning in a suburbanized, consumerist political marketplace. Creating the Democratic Party anew in the 1950s, at a time of a sharp right turn in state Republican politics, set the tone of political debate for the next generation.

Labor Union Strength and the Equality of Political Representation

2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 1075-1091 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Flavin
Keyword(s):  
Labor Unions ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Labor Union ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
American Society

Amid growing evidence of ‘unequal democracy’ in the United States, labor unions can play a potentially important role by ensuring that low-income citizens’ opinions receive more equal consideration when elected officials make policy decisions. To investigate this possibility, this article evaluates the relationship between labor union strength and representational equality across states and finds evidence that states with higher levels of union membership weigh citizens’ opinions more equally in the policy-making process. In contrast, there is no relationship between the volume of labor union contributions to political campaigns in a state and the equality of its political representation. These findings suggest that labor unions promote greater political equality primarily by mobilizing their working-class members to political action and, more broadly, underscore the important role that organized labor continues to play in shaping the distribution of political power across American society.

Southern Disillusionment with the Democratic Party: Cultural Conformity and “the Great Melding” of Racial and Economic Conservatism in Alabama during World War II

2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
GLENN FELDMAN
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Southern United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Conformity

This essay explores growing disillusionment with the national Democratic Party in the southern United States, disillusionment that led to third-party movements such as the Dixiecrats and George Wallacism, and eventually southern allegiance to the modern Republican Party. The essay focusses on Alabama during the first half of the 1940s, where a “Great Melding” between economic conservatism and racial conservatism came to maturity. The melding resulted in a cross-class and pan-white alliance in a state that had experienced periodic plain-white challenges to business and planter elite dominance. It also resulted in the use by economic conservatives of white supremacy and allied conservative norms on gender, class, religion, and militaristic hyper-patriotism to suppress future working-class insurgency, and set the stage for a more formal southern disassociation from the Democratic Party and eventual conversion to Republicanism.

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