Hans Sennholz on the National Labor Relations Act of 1935

The Wagner Act, or National Labor Relations Act, was passed in reaction to the Supreme Court's voiding of NRA and its labor codes.  It aimed at crushing all employer resistance to labor unions.  Anything an employer might do in self-defense became an "unfair labor practice" punishable by the Board.  The law not only obliged employers to deal and bargain with the unions designated as the employees' representatives, later Board decisions also made it unlawful to resist the demands of labor union leaders.

Following the election of 1936, the labor unions began to make ample use of their new powers.  Through threats, boycotts, strikes, seizures of plants, and outright violence committed in legal sanctity, they forced millions of workers into membership.  Consequently, labor productivity declined and wages were forced upward.  Labor strife and disturbance ran wild.  Ugly sitdown strikes idled hundreds of plants.  In the ensuing months economic activity began to decline and unemployment again rose above the ten million mark.

~ Hans F. Sennholz, "The Great Depression: Will We Repeat It?," The Freeman, April 1975

(Article was reprinted in The Spirit of Freedom: Essays in American History, edited by Burton W. Folsom, Jr.  This quote appears on p. 168.)