Journal Facts

Journal
Journal of Individual Employment Rights
ISSN
1055-7512 (print) 1541-3799 (electronic)
Volume
6
Issue
2
Date
1/1/1997

Article Facts

Title
The Spiral of the American Labor Movement
DOI
10.2190/0K01-4QRU-RGF4-6V93
Author
N. W. Harter
Pages
141-149
Online Date
05/09/2002

Article Links

The Spiral of the American Labor Movement

N. W. Harter

DOI: 10.2190/0K01-4QRU-RGF4-6V93

Abstract

Individual employment rights emerge from a legal context dependent on political and cultural change. An understanding of these rights is served by an understanding of their evolution. Historian Eric Voegelin attempted to trace changes in American labor policy from the dawn of the industrial revolution, from a dominant "frontier ethos" toward the prevailing "New Deal ethos." In so doing, he suggested the direction that American policy has since taken toward governmental regulation, centralized bureaucracy, and the increasing role of experts and intellectuals. The purpose of this brief essay is to describe the trajectory of American labor policy in order to explain existing rights and predict those trends that will shape the individual employment rights of tomorrow.

Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.