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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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advantage of it, and the argument for that kind of a ruling, is that employers will therefore know what it is they can't do. They won't therefore have a violation when they didn't intend to have one.

Among other things that they ruled was a matter that became desperately controversial and created great anger namely - that it was an unfair labor practice for an employer to state in writing, or in a speech, in his house organ, or in a public print, or by an address at a public meeting, or an address to his employees, or in private conversation with his employees, whether or not he approved, or recommended, his employees to join or not to join a labor union, or a particular labor union.

This created the greatest amount of animosity. It was hard to explain to an ordinary citizen like Franklin Roosevelt what was the matter with having an employer say what he thought. People felt, “They don't have to do as he tells. It doesn't necessarily carry weight with them. They've got a right to join the union if they want to, but what's the matter with anybody saying what he thinks.”

Well, there was a very fine line of theoretical reasoning that the employer, being in a strategic





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