Labor Crimes

Legal Framework

In the United States before the 1930s, the law generally discouraged labor unions and took the side of employers. In the early 1800s, union organizing per se was sometimes seen as a crime and was prosecuted under criminal conspiracy statutes. Later courts ruled that unions could have justifiable objectives and were therefore not illegal in themselves. Subsequent cases focused on union tactics, such as pressuring non-members to support strikes.

By the 1880s, employers commonly used civil actions to thwart unions, seeking court injunctions to forbid union activities. Although the courts had recognized that unions did have legitimate objectives in advancing the interests of workers, they often ruled against union actions intended to achieve those objectives. Union activities had to be consistent with the courts' view of the “public welfare”; they could not use coercion to force workers to join unions, and could not use coercion to prevent [Page 490]other workers (scabs) from taking jobs of workers who were out on strike. In 1890, Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, aimed mainly at restricting anti-competitive activities of giant business conglomerates (trusts) such as Standard Oil. The Sherman Act outlawed “conspiracies in restraint of trade” and monopolization, though it was lax in defining what these terms meant. As a result, the law was often applied not to business trusts but to labor unions, on the theory that they were conspiracies in restraint of trade. The first major application of the Sherman Act to labor unions was in the violent Pullman railroad strike of 1893.

In response to the Pullman strike, Congress in 1898 passed the Erdman Act, which applied only to workers operating interstate trains. The law prohibited employers from firing employees, or threatening to fire them, solely because they were union members. It provided that the chairman of the U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission (a federal agency originally set up mainly to regulate railroads) could intervene to mediate labor disputes. It also encouraged arbitration as an alternative to strikes. However, employers found it easy to evade the law, often by flatly refusing to negotiate with labor unions, and the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately struck it down.

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