Permanent Replacements and the End of Labor's “Only True Weaponâ€

This article analyzes the origins and impact of one of the most powerful antiunion weapons used by American employers during the past four decades: the right to use and threaten to use permanent replacement workers during economic strikes. It examines the policy debate over replacements in the 1930s and 1940s, the increasing use of permanent replacements in the 1970s and 1980s, the growth of a powerful and sophisticated “strike management industry,†and the unsuccessful efforts of organized labor and its political allies to amend the National Labor Relations Act to outlaw permanent replacements. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the relationship between the “striker replacement doctrine†and declining strike levels in the postwar decades.