History of Enforcement of Anti-Union Laws

[Boojatta]

Perhaps I am wrong and should be corrected, but my understanding is that unionization used to be illegal on the grounds that it was anti-competitive.

I'm curious as to how anti-unionization laws were enforced.

For example, consider a company that had many employees who were skilled (and therefore possibly difficult to replace) who had worked for a number of years at the company and who therefore had knowledge that would not have been easy to put into words that would be fully absorbed by newcomers (so that, for another reason, the employees were not easy to replace).

Question #1:
How did government enforcement agencies distinguish between quitting and going on strike?

Question #2:
Was there legislation that prevented more than some percentage of employees from quitting in any given time period? That would seem to be a violation of the right to freedom of association.

Question #3:
Was it not sufficient for the judicial system to refuse to enforce contracts between unions and their members? To actually forbid the establishment of unofficial unions would seem to have required a violation of privacy rights and a violation of rights to freedom of association.

[Omaha Steve]

1. Time to crack the books?

This was before my time. Here is one with a lot of the union hardships you are asking about. The AFL-CIO also has some good materials.

http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-1492-Present/dp/0060528370

http://unionshop.aflcio.org/shop/category.cfm?SID=1&Category_ID=3

[Boojatta]

2. Kick