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Permanent Replacements: Organized Labor’S Fall, Employment Law’S (Incomplete) Rise, And The Way Forward, Alexander T. Macdonald

Alexander T MacDonald

In the second half of the twentieth century, organized labor effectively collapsed as a source of workplace rights. To fill the gap, federal, state, and local lawmakers patched together a hodge-podge of statutes, regulations, and court-made doctrines, which we now broadly refer to as “employment law.” I this article, I examine the implications of this transition.

First, I track unions’ slow decline, examining not only their shrinking presence in the workforce, but also their waning political strength and their loss of public favor. I then follow the rise of “employment law,” which in labor’s absence grew to become the primary …