Constitution Day: About the Speaker

Bill Bon, a Kent State graduate, is General Counsel of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division of the Rail Conference of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Mr. Bon first gained labor relations experience during his time as an officer of the United Automobile Workers Local 122, at Chrysler Corporation’s former Twinsburg, Ohio Stamping Plant. Mr. Bon is active in both  internal union and legal education through his involvement with the American Bar Association and various labor unions and committees.

Claiming American constitutional liberties, the early unions, especially the railroad Brotherhoods acted to use their freedom of speech and association to create counterbalances to the unbridled power of capital in the era of laissez faire. Frustrated by a judiciary applying a common-law shaped by the feudal master-servant relationship, and intervening by injunction, the Brotherhoods engaged in political activism that resulted in laws regulating wages and hours of work, liability for workplace injuries, a structure for mandatory collective-bargaining and union recognition, and federal old age insurance. The rail Brotherhoods clashed with the old order repeatedly, laying the groundwork for the judicial revolution and legislative innovations of the New Deal. The unions, then, used their freedoms under the Constitution of the United States to seek legislation, framing those cases that moved the Supreme Court of the United States toward what has been (at least until recently) relatively settled modern contours of the commerce clause, tax power and due process. With the New Deal legacy now under attack, and labor organizations in decline in economic power and electoral influence, it remains to be seen what forms of political organization for democratic participation might come into play.