Anti-strike legislation¶
Core Argument¶
In this chapter, the author dissects the anti-strike legislation rushed through by the Truman administration, framing it as a direct assault on the American working class, and above all on the miners. The legislative provisions are laid out with clinical precision: the President may declare a national emergency whenever any facility deemed “vitally necessary to the maintenance of the national security” suffers an interruption; he may then draft strikers into the armed forces and compel them to work under army discipline; strikers against the government forfeit seniority and re-employment rights; and both management and union officials face fines for obstructing the resumption of work in government-operated plants. The author argues that this amounts to a mechanism for crushing strikes by turning workers into soldiers, while threatening union leaders with imprisonment. The Trade Disputes Act is invoked as a historical benchmark of comparable viciousness, situating the American legislation within a lineage of ruling-class strike-breaking.
The chapter notes that the CIO has responded, with 1,200 shop stewards representing half a million New York workers sounding the alarm for united labour action. But the author insists that condemnation is insufficient. The Socialist Workers Party, the American section of the Fourth International, is presented as having waged a consistent campaign for a break from the capitalist parties and the formation of an independent labour party. The Taff Vale decision in Britain is drawn upon as a historical parallel: that ruling, which limited picketing rights for British railwaymen, had the effect of forcing union leaders toward independent class politics. The author predicts the same lesson will be learned by American workers.
The polemic is directed squarely at the union leaders of the CIO, AFL, and Railway Brotherhoods, who are characterised as appendages of the capitalist parties, particularly the Democrats. The Democrats are compared to the British Liberals, pretending impartiality but acting for the employers at the decisive moment. Truman and the Democratic Party, by revealing their true role, are said to be educating the American workers. The chapter closes with a prediction: the combativeness and militancy that make American workers among the best fighters in the industrial struggle will now be turned to the political arena.