Labor law and labor policy in New York State, 1920s-1930s

During the New Deal period, labor policy and labor law underwent revolutionary changes. My dissertation, focusing on New York State, examines the efforts of organized labor in making the labor policy and, in turn, the effect of labor law and labor policy on organized labor before and after the New Deal. It is important to compare state labor policy in these two periods, because during the New Deal period, for the first time, labor relations law was nationalized.; There were both similarities and important differences between organized labor in New York State and on the federal level. Unlike the Federal Administration, in which Republican President Warren G. Harding (1920--1923), Calvin Coolidge (1923--1927), and Herbert Hoover (1928--1931) all stood on the employers' side, New York State governors in the 1920s, Alfred E. Smith (1919--1920, 1923--1928), and Franklin D. Roosevelt (1929--1932), tried to protect the rights of labor. It has been suggested that the labor policy of New York State was a seedbed of the New Deal federal labor policy in the 1930s. Organized labor in New York State did not follow so-called "voluntarism," and it closely cooperated with the progressive democratic governors in achieving its goals. Like laborers in other states, however, New York State organized labor also had to suffer through employers' anti-union tactics such as the "yellow dog" contract, the company union, and the open-shop policy. The court's issuing of injunctions against labor in labor disputes was one of the biggest obstacles to the growth of organized labor.; In the 1930s, organized labor cooperated with the Democratic Party and became an important part of a New Deal coalition. Democratic Governor Herbert H. Lehman (1933--1942), in cooperation with the Federal Government, endeavored to protect the rights of labor. New York became the first state to follow the Federal New Deal policy in State code. Even though the Federal government directly intervened in labor issues and nationalized labor relations, this intervention did not result in the loss of sovereignty for state government. Therefore, organized labor in New York State experienced a relatively benign labor policy and labor law throughout the interwar period. Especially during the 1930s, organized labor could enforce its power within the New Deal Coalition. Nonetheless, at the end of the 1930s organized labor in New York State was facing many of the same problems as was organized labor on the federal level: their political force was weakened and the New Deal coalition was in peril. The Ives Committee and the amendment of the New York State Labor Relations Act according to the recommendation of the Ives Committee bills in the late 1930s and the early 1940s in New York State were therefore foreshadowings of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947.