§ 1.1.5 BLACKLISTING.

JurisdictionArizona

§ 1.1.5 Blacklisting.80 Unions boycotted and employers blacklisted. Companies circulated lists of workers suspected of being unionists or union sympathizers, or undesirable for any other reasons, some of which were simply personal. Blacklisted workers were often either required to find work in industries outside of the blacklist circles or reduced to pauperism. The Supreme Court of Washington, in passing on blacklisting issues, said:

Is, then, the right of employment in a laboring man property? That it is, we think cannot be questioned . . . Can it be said, with any degree of sense or justice, that the property which a man has in his labor, which is the foundation of all property and which is the only capital of so large a majority of the citizens of our country, is not property; or, at least, not that character of property which can demand the boon of protection from the government? We think not. To destroy this property, or to prevent one from contracting it or exchanging it for the necessities of life, is not only an invasion of a private right, but is an injury to the public, for it tends to produce pauperism and crime.81

Outlawing blacklisting was a major goal of Labor in the Arizona Constitutional Convention. "Of the so-called labor measures before the convention this forenoon that relating to the prohibition of the blacklist occupied the most attention."82 The first anti-blacklisting measure introduced by Mr. Cunniff was rejected. Perhaps playing off on Republican contempt of boycotts by Labor, Mr. Cunniff described the blacklist as a "sort of reverse boycott." The second blacklisting proposal was approved by the Convention on December 2, 1910, by a vote of 46 to 3. Even Mr. C.M. Roberts, chair of the Committee on Private Banks and Corporations...

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