The reality is that within a dozen years after passage of the NLRA in 1935 the right to strike was interfered with, impeded, or diminished in the following three ways:
- In the very first collective bargaining agreements between CIO unions in auto and steel on the hand, and General Motors and U.S. Steel on the other, union negotiators agreed to prohibit strikes during the life of these contracts.6 Such surrender or “waiver” of the right to strike during the life of the contract has become one of the two standard pro-management provisions of collective bargaining agreements (along with a management prerogatives clause that permits management unilaterally to close the plant).
- In 1938 the Supreme Court decided a case called Mackay Radio. The Court distinguished two kinds of strikes: strikes prompted by the employer’s unfair labor practices; and ordinary economic strikes. The Court held that economic strikers could be “permanently replaced,” that is, that their jobs could be given to other workers to keep even after the strike ended.
- In 1947, in Section 8(b)(4) of the Taft-Hartley Act, Congress prohibited secondary strikes and boycotts solicited by unions or their agents.