Episode 19 of Fragile Juggernaut weighs up the results of the struggle for hegemony in the 1945-1946 strike wave over the next several years. While millions of workers participated in militant actions, their strikes were uncoordinated and politically isolated, opening the way for the political right to organize a backlash and recapture Congress in the midterm elections.
At the center of the agenda of the new Republican Congress: labor law reform, codified in the form of the notorious 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. We dive into the details and consequences of the law, restraining workers’ right to organize and, most significantly, driving a wedge between the left wing of the CIO and the rest of the federation.
Featured music: The OPA Shout (Pete Seeger); The Same Old Merry Go-Round (Oscar Brand); Taft-Hartley Blues (unidentified); The New Walls of Jericho (Richard Huey and Chorus); The Peekskill Story (The Weavers).
Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we’ve amassed along the way.
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Welcome to Heat the Ground Up, an oral history of Starbucks Workers United. In this episode, we’ll see a billionaire called before the Senate to answer for his company’s union busting. Over the course of the series, we’ll follow one of the most important labor fights in a generation through the voices and perspectives of the workers who organized it from the ground up.
This podcast is a Haymarket Originals production. Visit haymarketbooks.org to find indispensable radical books, podcasts, virtual events, and other political education resources, including Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis by Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis, which is 20% off online. Please also consider joining the Haymarket book club. It’s one of the best ways to support Haymarket, and help fund projects like this one.
Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.
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