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9 Lab. Stud. J. 190 (1984-1985)
Constant Vigilance: The Heritage of the AFL's Response to Right to Work Legislation, 1943-1949

handle is hein.journals/labstuj9 and id is 192 raw text is: Constant Vigilance: The Heritage of the AFL's Response to Right to Work Legislation, 1943-1949 Gilbert J. Gall At the 1954 AFL convention, general counsel J. Albert Woll pledged the federation's constant vigilance against the growing Right to Work movement. In response to eight resolutions from affiliates on the subject of Right to Work legislation, Woll informed the delegates that there was simply no more serious threat to organized labor than state union secu- rity restrictions. For the most part, his and others' remarks on the subject denounced the traditional enemies of labor as instigators and promoters of such legislation. In spite of that, a closer examination of the AFL's own institutional response to the spread of anti-union-security measures re- veals that the need for such vigilance resulted in part from the national hierarchy's flawed strategy in dealing with the matter. From 1943, when AFL leaders first attempted to grapple with the prob- lem, to 1947, when the Taft-Hartley Act's section 14(b) explicitly granted states almost total jurisdiction over restrictions on union security, the federation's national officers swiftly recognized that the Right to Work movement was in truth a national campaign. Nevertheless, federa- tion officials had difficulty in responding to a threat that was at once both local and national, political and legal. In certain directions the AFL's Gilbert Gall is a graduate assistant in the Department of History, Wayne State Univer- sity. An earlier version of this article was presented at the Southern Labor Studies Confer- ence. The author thanks Diane L. Hammon, Roberta Till-Retz, George Green, and Stan- ton Smith for their comments and suggestions. 1. American Federation of Labor, Report of the Proceedings of the Seventy-third Annual Conven- tion (Washington, D.C., 1954), pp. 191-192, 380, 399-419, 520.

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