Hiba Hafiz on the Red-Scare Relic That Holds Back Smart Labor Policy
The Red-Scare Relic That Holds Back Smart Labor Policy
When the National Labor Relations Act was passed in 1935, it was one of the most radical pieces of legislation in American history. It established an agency, the National Labor Relations Board, that encouraged workers to unionize in order to lift Depression-era wages and thus give Americans more money to spend, in the hope of stimulating the economy.
The board had a secret weapon: its Division of Economic Research. The division included labor economists and social scientists who gathered evidence to defend the new labor law from constitutional challenges in hostile courts.
With success came heightened scrutiny. In Congress, the Smith Committee looked for ways during the Red Scare era to weaken the National Labor Relations Act, including purging the board of “radical views.” The committee went after its chief economist, David Saposs, calling him a Communist with a “strangely exaggerated social consciousness.” Congress cut the division’s funding, effectively ending its work, and in 1947 it barred the board from hiring experts in economic analysis.
This misguided ban should be lifted. An agency with the critical task of restoring equal bargaining power between employers and employees — at a time of high economic inequality, anemic union membership rates, and widespread labor market concentration — is having to do so without any dedicated economic expertise.
Read more at The New York Times