Forty years ago this fall, American labor beat back the strongest employer political offensive since the enactment of the Taft-Hartley law eleven years earlier. In the 1958 mid-term elections, six states including California and Ohio considered "right-to-work" referenda that would have outlawed the union shop under Taft-Hartley's notorious section 14-b. But in a campaign resembling the recent one against the "Paycheck Protection" proposal in California, in 1958 union people and their allies turned the tide, defeating right-to-work in five of the six states, sweeping into office a new generation of pro-labor U.S. Senators, and setting the stage for the Democratic recapture of the White House from the Republicans in 1960.

Business and Republicans Set out to "Curb Labor"

Taft-Hartley's section 14-b permitted states to enact "right-to-work" laws, within one decade after most Southern and a number of Plains states had outlawed the union shop. In 1956 and 1957, organized business and its Republican Party allies launched efforts to enact right-to-work in northern and Midwestern states where unions were strongest. In 1957, the Indiana state legislature passed right-to-work, and a similar bill almost passed in Connecticut.

In early 1958, business coalitions gathered money and signatures to place referenda on the Fall 1958 ballots in California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Ohio, and Washington. The grassroots-sounding "Ohioans for the Right to Work," was actually organized by the Chamber of Commerce, General Electric, Timken Roller Bearing, Armco Steel and other corporations. But some early polls showed majority support for the referenda. Business Week boasted that unions were on the defensive in this latest major push to "curb labor."

"Industrial Majority Rule"

The recently merged AFL-CIO and its new political arm, the Committee on Political Education (COPE) responded with massive registration and fund-raising drives, and a defense of the union shop as "nothing more than industrial majority rule," thereby linking it to core American values.

In Colorado, the AFL-CIO noticed that surveys showed that many of those expressing sympathy for "right-to-work" did not know what the term meant. The Federation organized a citizens committee against right-to-work to communicate to the state's voters, and in the words of Colorado AFL-CIO President George Cavendish, chose a calm educational approach, "rather than running around screaming and having cartoons showing labor in chains and that sort of thing."

In Ohio, the state AFL and CIO, though not yet merged, formed a special organization, "United Organized Labor of Ohio," to fight the right-to work proposal. It registered 200,000 new voters, the majority as Democrats, including 40,000 Black voters registered in a special Operation Registration drive coordinated with the Ohio NAACP.

COPE made a particular effort to educate union members on how right-to-work would weaken their organizations, and as a result COPE raised more voluntary contributions from union members in 1958, a "mid-term" election, than it had in the Presidential election year of 1956.

A Sweeping Victory

In November, right-to-work was decisively defeated in four of the six state referenda, and narrowly defeated in another. In addition, according to political scientist Alan Draper's history of COPE, "Democratic Party candidates reaped the harvest of COPE's work."

In Colorado, the vote was 319,000 to 200,000, or 61% to 39%, rejecting right-to-work. In Washington, a strongly unionized state with a well-organized COPE, the vote was similar: 600,000 to 340,000, against right-to-work. In Idaho, a state with less than one-quarter of the work force unionized, right-to-work was defeated 121,000 to 118,000, or 51% to 49%.

Ohio rejected right-to-work by a landslide 2 million to 1.1 million, or 63% to 37%. Republican Senator John Bricker, who had not lost a statewide election in 22 years, went down to defeat, as did incumbent Republican Governor William O'Neill, and the Democrats captured the state legislature.

In California, right-to-work lost by 3 million to 2 million, or 60% to 40%. An increase of 300,000 registered voters resulted in a record turnout, and William Knowland, the former Senate Minority leader who resigned from Congress to run for Governor and, according to Draper, "made the alleged power of unions the dominant theme of his campaign," went down to defeat.

Only in Kansas did right-to-work forces win, by a vote of 400,000 to 300,000. Kansas had only 130,000 union members. Perhaps more important, the pro right-to-work campaign was well financed by Boeing, Cessna, and other corporations in the state, and over a three-year period it mobilized business people, produced displays at all 50 Kansas county fairs, produced three films, and blitzed the media in the final week of the 1958 campaign.

Reaping the Harvest

Victorious COPE-endorsed candidates included new U.S. Senators Philip Hart of Michigan, Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, Vance Hartke of Indiana, and Edmund Muskie of Maine, all of whom had distinguished and pro-labor records in the years to come. Mobilizing members, working with allies, and educating on the issues, labor in 1958 stopped "right-to-work" from spreading and elected its own champions to State houses and Congress. James L. McDevitt, COPE Director at the time, exulted: "More than anything else, this campaign proved that when labor is aroused and forgets its differences it in turn can arouse the people."

Jon Bloom is editor of the New York Labor History Association News Service.