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**OCTOBER 12, 2020**

Kuttner on TAP

Republican Courts and Labor Rights

****

One feature of economic life so pervasive that it almost escapes notice
is the dictatorial power of bosses compared to workers. You almost have
to be of a certain age to appreciate that it was not ever thus.

There was a time when the state and the courts intervened to level the
playing field, to give workers something close to equal bargaining
power. This stance was both the fruit of labor power-the militant
organizing of the 1930s-and served to reinforce labor power through
the influence of strong unions and effective laws.

The laws included the 1935 Wagner Act, which put the state on the side
of collective bargaining, and the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, which
created minimum wages and maximum hours, and many more. This legacy also
included the government-brokered role of unions as co-equal social
partners during World War II.

This system had a half-life of maybe a generation, before capitalists
took the gloves off. Today, grotesquely unequal bargaining power is once
again the norm, as corporations bust unions with impunity, conservative
courts eviscerate worker rights legislated by Congress, and corporations
convert real jobs to gigs.

The latter occurs not because the technology requires it, but because in
a climate of unequal bargaining power where the state has switched
sides, corporations can get away with it. Anybody who wants to
understand the grotesque income inequality of this era needs to
appreciate this history.

Happily, the Economic Policy Institute (on whose board I serve) has just
launched a project on Unequal Power .
It is the indispensable frame of analysis for political and economic
comprehension and action.

The project has commissioned two dozen reports from historians,
economists, political scientists, philosophers, and legal scholars. The
first paper, by Samuel Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of
Michigan who was once law clerk to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, explains just
how conservative courts have taken us back to the pre-New Deal era in
undermining worker rights legislated by Congress
.

With worse to follow if far-right Republicans tighten their grip on the
courts. You need to read this. It will be on the midterm.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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