The Wagner Dream And The Rise Of Conservatism

In the journal article “ ‘A Wagner Act for Public Employees’: Labor’s Deferred Dream and the Rise of Conservatism”, author Joseph McCartin examined the failed pursuit of a new version of the Wagner Act in the 1970s. This new version, which was supported by pro-unionists and Democrats, would guarantee the rights of all workers in the public sector, to be able to organize, and do collective bargains with employers. This was not supported by conservatives or anti-unionists, who made it their mission to prevent any new pro-union legislation from being passed. This failed attempt led to a decline in the coalition of democrats and workers, and led to a shift towards conservatism. The author used paper collections, archival newsletters, subcommittee

In the early 1970s, the author said one particular business magazine, known as the Journal of Commerce, said that if the unions’ new plan were to pass in Congress, “unions would take over the nation’s cities, and government would find themselves unable to control their own workers” (McCartin, 131). This did not work at first, because despite comments, President Richard Nixon signed the extension bill of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Later on, there was the use of a newsletter called the Nationale Right to Work Newsletter, which tried to say that support for these acts would lead to a new version of the spoils system and would lead government employees purchasing their own jobs. Two others included The Capital News and The Chattanooga News. Both warned of funding of these legislations through taxes and that they would lead to future strikes over employment. But as the author pointed out, by 1975, these efforts by Republicans did not change the attitudes of union supporters. Many supporters of union and labor legislation believed that workers were and should be guaranteed these rights by the

Sylvester Petro made the claim in his work The Labor Policy of the Free Society, “that public sector bargaining laws are incompatible with governmental sovereignty and that they constitute a fatal threat to popular sovereignty itself” (McCartin,141). He believed that these laws should not exist. Ralph de Toledano pointed out in his work Let Our Cities Burn, that the Clay bill, which supported more rights for unions and workers, would damage the government and that it would rid of the principle of merit in the workplace. These works were close in comparison to what many Republicans felt and believed about union rights. With these works supported and endorsed by conservatives, many people began to believe the claims made by Petro and Toledano and this gave conservatives more support in the fight against what they considered pro-union