This Day in Labor History: August 16, 1937
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On August 16, 1937, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote to National Federation of Federal Employees head Luther Steward of his ambivalence over public sector unionism. Conservatives have often cited that as outright opposition by FDR to public sector unionism, but they are blowing this single statement this way out of proportion. Let’s find some context for what is going on here.
The sheer existence of public sector unionism has never been without controversy. Basically, do government workers have the same right as other workers? Largely, the answer has been more no than yes, especially when we are talking about strikes. The Boston police strike of 1919 was the first major attempt to organize a large-scale public sector union and the forces of order in Massachusetts went totally ballistic, firing them all and putting a quick end to such actions. Based on his anti-union credentials, Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge got the VP nomination from the Republican Party in 1920 and then rode that into the presidency when Warren Harding died in 1923. To say the least, his opinion on public sector unions did not change in his six years in the Oval Office.
But that did not mean that public sector workers did not believe they should have such rights. The National Federation of Federal Employees was founded in 1917 as an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor. Now, Theodore Roosevelt had issued an executive order effectively prohibiting public sector unions in 1902 and William Howard Taft issued another in 1909. What these really did was bar federal employees from communicating with Congress without approval from their superiors. But what that really meant was no collective bargaining or other such activity. In 1912, the Lloyd-LaFollette Act overturned these orders and allowed employees to contact Congress, both for labor reasons and to report corruption.
As the Roosevelt administration pushed for labor law in the New Deal, people began asking questions about public sector unions. In a July 9 press conference, Roosevelt noted that Congress sets the wages for public sector workers and that federal workers had responsibilities to the general public. This was mostly pretty vague. He did however note in the press conference that federal workers are “free to join any union they want.” In response to this, NFFE head Luther Steward invited FDR to address the union’s annual convention. He did not, but he did articulate his thoughts a bit more clearly in a letter to him, sent on August 16.
It is worth noting here though–FDR did not oppose unions for government workers per se, as he had stated in the press conference. In fact, he said that it made sense to have organizing representing federal workers. What he opposed was strikes. He was nervous about collective bargaining for public sector workers as well. This was hardly an uncommon position at the time and in fact most government employees still lack the legal right to strike today. You can read the entire thing here:
It is also worth noting that this is the only time FDR ever addressed the issue, either as president or as governor of New York. According to the FDR Library, there is a not a single other mention of the issue in his papers. So this was hardly a seriously thought out and articulated position. Moreover, the Roosevelt administration supported a union of Tennessee Valley Authority workers with the government and those were federal workers.
For nearly a century, unionbusting conservatives have taken this brief mention of the issue and blown it way out of proportion without context. Scott Walker was a big fan of this when he engaged in massive unionbusting during his horrible administration as governor of Wisconsin. The Wall Street Journal likes to trot this out from time to time too. The trouble of course is not that it is incorrect. FDR was absolutely not supportive of public union strikes. It’s that the issue lacks all context. Roosevelt was living in a time when union rights themselves were still debated. He did a ton to support the expansion of private sector unions. He was moving toward union rights quite rapidly. Scott Walker on the other hand was an underhanded scumbag who lied about his campaign promises on this issue and went way out of his way to become the biggest antiunion hack of all time. I maintain the only good thing about politics in 2016 was the absolute humiliation of Walker, who has become a complete irrelevancy ever since.
The continued expansion of union rights did eventually reach the public sector. John F. Kennedy issued an executive order granting public sector bargaining rights in 1962. There’s no reason to believe that Roosevelt wouldn’t have done the same thing had he been alive at that time. In 1970, postal workers launched a decade of public sector union militancy with their illegal but extremely successful strike. That decade ended in 1981, when Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers who engaged in a reckless and selfish strike that was the opposite of solidarity with other unions but did come out of a militant union democracy.
The rights of public sector workers continue to be eroded today, as the Janus decision in 2018 demonstrates. But still, the unions continue on and the teachers strikes of 2018, many of which were illegal demonstrates the continued power public worker unionism has, regardless of what half-truths Scott Walker and the Wall Street Journal and George Will want to tell.
Today, the NFFE is affiliated the International Association of Machinists.
This is the 531th post in this series. Previous posts are archived here.