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Book Review

Canada and the United States

Ruth G. O'Brien. Workers' Paradox: The Republican Origins of New Deal Labor Policy, 1886–1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1998. Pp. xii, 313. Cloth $39.95, paper $17.95.

In this meticulously researched book, Ruth O'Brien untangles the complicated skein of politics, legal theory, judicial decisions, and economics that produced the statutory cornerstone of modern American labor law, the Wagner Act (1935). O'Brien argues convincingly that the Wagner Act was the culmination of a long history of federal labor policy that reflected widespread distrust of labor unions and sought to constrict union autonomy through governmental regulation that was intended to assure that unions acted in the "public interest." 1

According to O'Brien, the Wagner Act reflected a paradox in American liberalism insofar as the statute used the coercive power of the state to promote individualism by assuring the freedom of workers to select their representatives in negotiations with management. In permitting the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to decide who would represent workers in any bargaining situation, the Wagner Act denied unions any stable or permanent role in representing workers. The statute's preference for "responsible unionism" therefore thwarted the American Federation of Labor's longstanding vision of voluntarism, which eschewed state involvement in union relations with management. Organized labor nevertheless supported the Wagner Act because it provided more protection against anti-union activities by management and the courts than had any previous law, and because unions hoped that they could manipulate the statute to their advantage. . . .

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