The long period of labor peace to which Americans are so accustomed is the product of that rarest of phenomena: wise congressional compromise. But the balance struck by Congress in the mid-1930s has been threatened by the Department of Labor (DOL). Not content with Congress’s solutions, DOL has sought to dramatically rewrite labor law through a recent rule that would extend many labor protections far beyond the boundaries set by Congress. However, the attempt was swiftly halted by a federal judge in Georgia in Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association (GFVGA) v. DOL.

The history of labor unrest in the U.S. is complicated and occasionally violent. While labor strife in the U.S. never approached anything like the tumult in other countries, it was marked by occasional bloodshed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Clashes like the Railroad Riots (1877) and the Battle of Homestead (1892) wound up turning Pittsburgh into a warzone, leaving bodies of strikers and Pinkertons dead in American streets. These dreadful surges of violence continued well into the 1930s.

Today, labor violence is largely unknown, primarily because of congressional enactments that managed to quell labor unrest. Much of what we recognize in American labor comes from the Wagner Act of 1935. It gave us the National Labor Relations Board, collective bargaining, and secret ballots, and it set a baseline for unfair labor practices. The Wagner Act—in its various iterations—has yielded “the most...

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