Did unions in the United States have the right to recognition in the 1930s?

Unions did not have rights to recognition in the United States, although the Clayton Act of 1914 had recognized the right of workers to join unions. In 1926, the Railway Labor Act allowed workers to join unions free of interference from employers, and imposed collective bargaining by putting employers under a duty to negotiate with the union. The government could intervene to suspend strikes and disputes during a collective agreement had to be settled by agreement or by arbitration. The Act only applied to the railway industry, but represented a departure from previous law and set the stage for the National Labor Relations Act in 1935.

During the Depression, unions in the United States became very militant. The American Federation of Labour, which had traditionally represented mostly craft unions, accepted memberships from industrial unions. The Committee for Industrial Organizing (CIO) was formed to pursue new union memberships especially in the large new industries of auto, meatpacking, and steel production.

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