President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs the National Labor Relations Act on July 5, 1935. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins (right) looks on. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Sixteen million workers were represented by unions in 2024,” Jim Miller writes in the San Diego Union-Tribune . “However, there were millions more who would have joined a union but couldn’t.”

Miller goes on to lament the failure of “pro-union” legislation in Congress, as well as the Trump administration’s attacks on unions in general and  government employee unions in particular. But, unfortunately, his op-ed goes of the rails with that very first sentence.

There’s nothing to stop you from joining a union, whether you’re employed in a unionized workplace or not. There’s no law against it, and although some unions have their own exclusionary rules — the American Federation of Teachers (Miller’s organization) only offers “associate” membership for students, workers whose employers don’t contract with AFT, etc. —  if a particular union won’t accept your membership application, chances are good that another (for example, Industrial Workers of the World) will.

You’re also never required to join a union. Don’t want to be a union member? Don’t take a job in a union workplace. “Problem” solved.

As to getting your employer to enter into a labor contract with the union of your choice, that’s a different matter.

Under the National Labor Relations Act, the government controls the process. A certain number of workers have to  request an election. If a majority of employees vote yes, all of the employees HAVE to join the union, or find somewhere else to work, and the employer HAS to “negotiate in good faith” toward a contract.

The NLRA wasn’t written to benefit union workers. They were doing just fine already. The NLRA benefits two groups:

First, union bosses. If you can require 100 people to pay dues because 51 of  them said yes, the money rolls in … and under the NLRA, you only have to worry that the workers will go on strike (and draw down the union’s relief funds) between contracts.

Second, employers. The NLRA forbids “wildcat” strikes (that is, striking while a contract is in effect), as well as boycotts and “sympathy strikes” (Workplace A going on strike and workers at Workplace B refusing, in solidarity, to unload trucks from Workplace A).

Union bosses got a more reliable source of revenue; employers got workplaces that wouldn’t shut down over labor disputes other than at contract expirations.

Workers? Well, they got screwed.

From the late 19th century until the 1930s, union membership and  workplace unionization increased organically and unions fought hard for their members.

Once the NLRA went into effect, the numbers went up, plateaued, then began shrinking. And no wonder. Why would union officials fight hard for workers if that might result in strikes costing them dues revenues? Better to invest their time into “organizing” new workplaces with new dues-payers.

The Taft-Hartley “right to work” amendments only made things worse, allowing states to forbid both employers and unions from entering into “exclusive” labor contracts.

Can unions make a comeback? Sure — but only if the NLRA, including Taft-Hartley, is repealed and government gets its nose out of labor matters.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“The AUTOPEN,” US president Donald Trump wrote on his “Truth Social” platform on June 2 (referring to Joe Biden), “should have stopped Iran a long time ago from ‘enriching.’ Under our potential Agreement — WE WILL NOT ALLOW ANY ENRICHMENT OF URANIUM!”

Trump’s absolutely right, but only in three ways that don’t reflect the pomposity of his post:

Firstly, the Iranian regime has made clear that there is no “potential agreement” under which it will give up its ability and prerogative to enrich uranium.

Secondly, the US regime never has been, and is not now, in any position to “allow” or “not allow” the Iranian regime to enrich uranium. Nor could it put itself in any such position short of winning a major war against a much bigger and more powerful opponent  than it faced — and lost to — in Afghanistan.

And thirdly, there’s already an agreement. Not a “potential” agreement, an actual one.

It’s called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, aka the “Iran nuclear deal,” and although Trump claims to have “withdrawn” the US from it since 2018, he hasn’t.

The JCPOA is codified as a United Nations Security Council Resolution and is binding on all member states.  The only ways for Trump to “withdraw” the US from it are to “withdraw” the US from its UN membership entirely, or get the Security Council to repeal it (that’s not gonna happen). The US regime hasn’t left the JCPOA. The US is just in continuous violation of the JCPOA. There’s a difference.

Iran began enriching uranium to higher levels of purity — slowly moving toward “weapons grade” — after the US started violating that agreement and pressuring its allies to do likewise.

The Iranians have also been clear and consistent: They’ll be happy to stop enriching to those higher levels of purity, and mix the more highly enriched uranium into less pure uranium, when and if the US starts holding up its end of the agreement, which happens to be binding international law.

The JCPOA represented the culmination of a decade of negotiations consisting of US demands, Iranian acceptances, more US demands, more Iranian acceptances, rinse and repeat ad nauseam, until the US finally took “yes” for an answer.

After which, under Trump, the US defaulted on its own obligations while demanding even MORE from the Iranians. All this, it should be mentioned, in the absence of evidence that the Iranians were interested in developing, or attempting to develop, a nuclear weapon in the first place.

To which the Iranian response was, understandably, “OK, we’ll start enriching to higher levels than we were attempting even before we agreed to the deal — but we’ll stop if you’ll start holding up YOUR end.”

Trump’s powerless to “allow” or “not allow” the Iranians to do anything. Rage-posting on Truth Social won’t change that. He should instead offer them a “new” deal that’s just a freshly printed copy of the JCPOA, then declare “victory” when they accept. His supporters are probably gullible enough to consider that a Trump masterstroke.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On April 14,  Mohsen Mahdawi arrived at a government immigration office in Vermont for a citizenship interview. After 10 years as a “legal” US resident with a “green card,” he wanted to officially become an “American.” Instead, he found himself handcuffed, hooded, and whisked away to a cage pending deportation. He was finally released on bail two weeks later.

On April 15, Kasper Eriksen arrived at a government immigration office in Tennessee. Eriksen, also a “green card” holder, with a family and pregnant wife in Mississippi, also thought he was attending a citizenship interview. He was also arrested and caged pending deportation. As of this writing, he has yet to receive bail.

On April 30, Ming Li Hui, better known to her friends and neighbors in Kennett, Missouri as “Carol,” found herself summarily ordered to report to an immigration office in St. Louis. Carol arrived in the US as a refugee from Hong Kong in 2004. Twenty years later, she’s gainfully employed, a convert to Catholicism, and has a family including three children. The US government locked her up pending deportation back to Communist China.

One of her local friends, Vanessa Cowart, interviewed by the New York Times, puts it bluntly: “I voted for Donald Trump, and so did practically everyone here. But no one voted to deport moms. We were all under the impression we were just getting rid of the gangs, the people who came here in droves. This is Carol.”

Why are ordinary people, living ordinary lives, some even seeking to become American citizens, finding themselves in cages and facing deportation?

Let’s not kid ourselves: It was going to come to this eventually. Authoritarian police states never stop looking for victims and scapegoats. They eventually collapse, thankfully, but until they do it’s open season on enemies, real and imagined.

But why so soon? Because Donald Trump’s promise to deport millions of immigrants has, so far, proven itself an epic fail. At the moment, the US government is deporting people at half the pace of the Obama regime.

In late May, Axios reports, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem called the Trump regime’s top immigration thugs in for a dressing down. They’re unhappy with the slow rate of immigrant abductions and want it tripled to 3,000 per day.

And there’s your answer: It’s easier to reach an artificial “quota” by kidnapping immigrants who show up to appointments on demand than it is to track down a handful of real criminals in their lairs, or nab foreign-born workers quietly making their livings (and making our lives better) while avoiding contact with “law enforcement.”

In the opening salvos of his first administration’s nativist push, Donald Trump groused about immigrants from “sh*thole countries.”

Now he’s discovering that the only way to stop immigration to the US is to turn it into one of those sh*thole countries that no one wants to live in.

He’s doing his best to accomplish that, and even his supporters are starting to notice.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY