Remembering Labor's Constitutional Rights

[Omaha Steve]

July 10, 2025

The Constitution, properly interpreted, protects workers. But the Trump administration isn’t going to enforce those protections unless labor fights for them.

Jennifer Abruzzo and Jay Swanson


Members of the International Association of Machinists walking the picket line on Friday, May 23, 2025. In Thornhill v. Alabama, the Court held that picketing is an “indispensable” right.(Jim Michaud / Connecticut Post via Getty Images)

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/supreme-court-labor-constitutional-rights/

Over the past half century, the Supreme Court has continually twisted the Constitution into a document that is implacably hostile to workers. In 2020, a conservative majority on the court used the Fifth Amendment to strike down a California law that made it easier for union organizers to talk to farm workers. Two years before that, the court used the First Amendment to hobble public sector unions by attacking their source of funding. And just two months ago, the court issued a ruling that raised significant concerns that it may use Article II of the Constitution to end the independent functioning of the National Labor Relations Board.

These perverse interpretations of our founding charter, as amended—along with other important factors—have succeeded in frustrating the will of the majority of Americans who want to join a union. Fifty-nine percent of workers, as reported in 2022, would like to see increased unionization in their workplace, and even more support unions as a general matter. But thanks in part to the constitutional hurdles placed in their way by the conservative court and a cadre of well-funded anti-union lawyers, only about 11 percent of workers have succeeded in winning union representation.

As a result, the United States has an incredibly low density of unionized workers compared to peer nations. As Paul Krugman points out, this results in “ordinary workers lagging far behind economic growth.” Low union density depresses compensation. The vast majority of private-sector workers do not benefit from the 13.5 percent more in wages that union-represented workers earn on average compared to a peer in a nonunionized workplace in the same sector with a similar education, occupation, and experience. In the public sector, declining unionization results in reduced wages and job security, making it harder for government workers to provide all of us with the public service we have come to rely on.

The interpretation of the Constitution that undercuts workers’ ability to organize and act collectively is wrong because it impairs their ability to participate equally in social, economic, and political life. But additionally, it’s wrong as a matter of law. It gets the Constitution totally backward.

FULL story at link above.