In an excellent review of labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan’s new book, Chris Maisano writes about the likely demise of the Wagner Act system of collective bargaining in the US and the possibility of replacing it with more mobile, militant forms of organization. Yet an accurate assessment of both the weaknesses and strengths of the current system is necessary if these new forms of organization are going to succeed.

The present system, which emerged out of the Great Depression, was based on the assumption that not just workers but the “public interest” as a whole were served by rising wages and stabilized labor markets. This was to be achieved by eliminating the grievances that led to mass strikes and disruptions of interstate commerce. The preferred remedy was routine collective bargaining between employers and union representatives whom workers freely chose.

Collective bargaining, which had previously been a purely private affair, was now vested with a public purpose. In return for fulfilling this public function, unions under the Wagner Act received federal support for the agency shop and union security.