The Bosses' Union: How Employers Organized to Fight Labor before the New Deal with Vilja Hulden

Hagley History Hangout

In this episode Roger Horowitz interviews Vilja Hulden (University of Colorado-Boulder) about her new book, The Bosses' Union: How Employers Organized to Fight Labor before the New Deal. Her book explores how business organizations, especially the National Association of Manufacturers, sought to weaken labor unions in the first quarter of the 20th century. Inventing the term closed shop, employers mounted what they called an open-shop campaign to undermine union demands that workers at unionized workplaces join the union and thereby depict labor as tyrannical and anti-democratic. These efforts continued through the 1910s and especially following the First World War. Over time employer organizations developed more nuanced strategies and publicity methods than in the early days of the century, but their inveterate opposition to organized labor persisted underneath. Hulden especially shows how the attacks on the closed shop formed the centerpiece of NAM’s anti-union strategy throughout. The book is available for a free download on the University of Illinois site. The link to the book page is https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p086922. For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library, visit us online at hagley.org.