FDR, New Deals, and the Limits of Power 203unions located within the plant and organized by the bosses with no outside
labor representation allowed—and they fired labor activists and militants.
Workers, in response, conducted a series of strikes in various industries in
1933, making the class struggle even more intense. At that time, under 7a,
the success of union activism often depended on the size of the company
involved. In smaller firms, if wages were the biggest cost of production, then
collective bargaining was more effective as such companies could not afford
losing production time to strikes. So the garments unions, with fewer employ-
ees, saw their memberships rise, but larger firms in textiles and other indus-
tries just refused to recognize organized labor, and the NRA backed them up,
so strikes were commonplace [see next section on labor strikes and conflicts
in the 1930s].
The man appointed by FDR to head the NRA, Hugh Johnson, was a sup-
porter of industry, making labor’s task difficult. As Johnson explained it, “it is
not the duty of the administration to act as an agent to unionize labor, in any
industry and... it will not so act.” Roosevelt, seeking a compromise to keep
labor from becoming too “radical” and maintain industrial peace created an
agency in August 1933 to require employers to allow union elections with
secret ballots. Employers were increasingly frustrated, and sometimes furious,
at the mixed signals from the NRA and FDR. But corporations knew that
Hugh Johnson was an ally. He ruled that company unions remained legal and
he endorsed the open shop. Section 7a, he emphasized, “is not intended to
enthrone any national labor organization or to disobey any local organization.”
FDR was on board too, explaining “just as in 1917 [World War I] we are
seeking to pull in harness, horses that kick over the traces will have to be put
in a corral.” Labor was adrift. Certain labor officials were friendly to work-
ers, but had virtually no power; the bosses were still anti-union and the NRA
administrators seemed to be as well. FDR, like a yo-yo, kept changing his
own opinions, leading Lewis and others to criticize the NRA as the “National
Runaround.” Labor militancy was all but dead by 1934. As in the 1890s, early
1900s, and during the Red Scare, corporations in basic industries had defeat-
ed unionism and maintained the open shop.
Labor, and key allies like Senator Robert Wagner of New York, kept up the
fight, though. They understood that better wages for workers was the key to
creating mass purchasing power, that the problem of the depression was a
problem of consumption. Wagner’s staff wrote a bill that he introduced into