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(1944) [MARC] Author: Gunnar Myrdal
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Chapter i8. Pre-War Labor Market 405
turn and for decades did not get strong enough to command respect from
the public authorities and the employers. This view becomes strengthened
when we witness how the employers^ resistance is vanishing as the unions
are becoming stronger.
The readiness shown by many American unions to use violence and
other extra-legal measures themselves is also a sign of weakness. In dis-
cussing labor tactics with American union members, the observer often
becomes shocked to find how natural it appears to them to take the law
into their own hands when they get into a labor conflict. This characteristic
can, of course, be partly explained as a sort of retaliation. The whole
atmosphere around labor strife and collective bargaining in America is
tainted by a tradition of illegality, and the employers must be blamed for
a good part of this. But again, more fundamentally, this trait is an indica-
tion of weakness on the part of trade unionism. Strong and well-established
unions do not need to fear illegal methods and still less to resort to such
methods themselves. The insistence on the part of some American unions
on the rule of the “union shop”*^ according to which the worker must
become a member in good standing of a union in order to keep his job, is
also more understandable as an indication of organizational weakness. A
strong union movement does not need to be provided with such pressures.**
All those other excellent reasons with which some American unions,
particularly among those organized along craft lines, provide the labor-
baiters—^job monopolism and nepotism, exploitative entrance fees, “closed
unions,” petty jurisdictional fights, boss rule, even corruption and racketeer-
ing—also are nothing more than signs of organizational weakness. They
imply that the common worker has been hindered from coming into his
The “union shop,” technically defined, is one in which the worker, after he is hired
by the employer, must join the union to retain the job. The “union shop” is fairly wide-
spread and is the goal of most American unions. The “closed shop,” technically defined, is
one in which the worker is selected by the union, and not by the employer, from its own
membership. The closed shop has now practically disappeared, and is the goal of only a
few reactionary unions. The “closed union” is a union which tries to limit its membership
so as to keep a monopoly of the jobs for its members. The closed union usually occurs in
conjunction with the closed shop. The closed union is characteristic of a large number of
A.F, of L. unions, but it is not the goal of many other unions. The union shop, the closed
shop, and the closed union are all signs of the weakness of the American labor movement.
For the early stages of organization, however, the union shop has much to commend it.
**
One important corollary of this, incidentally, is that employers no less than workers
have an interest in getting the trade union movement securely established in America. This
is true far outside the field of the problems discussed in the text. Neither building contrac-
tors nor government agencies will, for instance, ever be able to stamp out the monopolistic
wage policies and the practices hampering prefabricated building materials and other labor
saving techniques in the building industry. But a hundred per cent strong labor movement,
where the majority of workers are suffering economically from the monopolistic practires
of building workers, might accomplish it.

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