Question

How did the anticommunist crusade affect organized labor in the postwar period? Answer in two paragraphs with 5 sentences min.

Answer 1

The labor history of the United States describes the history of organized labor, US labor law, and more general history of working people, in the United States.

With this communist fear in the US, there were loyalty oaths and patriotic questioning throughout the country. States required loyalty oaths of teachers, pharmacists, and members of other professions. Those who failed to testify about their political beliefs and inform of possible communists often lost their jobs. The Cold War fueled economic growth and job opportunities, but started a deep look at loyalty and disloyalty that extended to the workplace.  

The nature and power of organized labor is the outcome of historical tensions among counter-acting forces involving workplace rights, wages, working hours, political expression, labor laws, and other working conditions.The history of organized labor has been a specialty of scholars since the 1890s, and has produced a large amount of scholarly literature focused on the structure of organized unions.Much scholarship has attempted to bring the social history perspectives into the study of organized labor.