ABSTRACT
The New Deal National Labor Relations Act established federal protection for workers’ election of union representation for the purpose of collective bargaining with employers. The Act was the foundation for a new labor-based liberal Democracy that combined organized workers’ voices at work and in politics. At the same time, provisions of the law reflected the limits of the historical configuration of political power at the time and they projected a model of labor-management relations into the future. The progress of the new political order depended on the actual organization of workers, not the least in those regions where state leaders were hostile to the liberal Democratic project. This chapter examines the case of the New Deal in Texas. Texas was the southern state that industrialized most rapidly and where more workers had unionized by the 1960s. These facts confirmed the labor experts’ thesis that economic development creates labor and management interests in liberal democracy. But this chapter explains why this thesis was wrong and why, despite economic growth, managerial political power in the context of racialized labor markets and the international border was the key determinant of the failures of liberal Democracy in this southern state.
