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11

decays through time. Be that as it may, the authors also find that in the period before
passage of a right-to-work law union organizing activity is not depressed but is rather
somewhat above average. The authors speculate that such laws may even be passed when
unions are becoming stronger. Not dissimilar reasoning is usually employed to explain
the national legislation. Thus, the unprecedented wave of strikes in the winter of 1945
and the first half of 1946, and evidence of widespread union racketeering, is widely
viewed as yielding a broad consensus that the NLRA had been too one sided in favor of
unions. On this view, Taft-Hartley went some way to evening the scales (Baird, 1998, p.
482).

This line of reasoning also surfaces in an interesting case study of right-to-work
campaigns in Louisiana in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1970s by Canak and Miller (1990) who
focus on the involvement of business. The authors frame their study as a test of whether
the two sides of industry are always in opposition or whether there is an historical accord
between big business and labor. They conclude that typically both large and small
businesses oppose unions but that some companies, again from both segments, mute their
opposition when they perceive that unions are capable of effective retaliation. The link
with the previous argument resides in Canak and Miller’s argument that union organizing
drives mobilized anti-labor organizations in each of the three decades examined. In the
1940s and 1970s larger companies in Louisiana played a public role in organizing and
financing right-to-work campaigns. Their opposition became sotto voce in the 1950s,
which new-found reticence the authors ascribe to pragmatic necessity: “The dominant
[post-war] position of American business ... made it possible to enjoy fast growth and
high profits. They feared business interruptions more than high wages and, therefore,
avoided public support for RTW so as not to foster conflict with their unionized workers”
(Canak and Miller, 1990, p. 264). What made the actions of business successful were
inter-union divisions and ultimately international competition
and redistricting. The
actions in question are sequentially the passage of laws restricting union strikes activity,
the passage of right to work legislation in 1954 and its repeal in 1956, and a new-right-to-
work law in 1976.



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