>As for the history of the labor movement, people like you conveniently gloss over the extreme violence that was at the heart of it. The labor unions were closely linked with organized crime and on numerous occasions murdered replacement workers and used threats of violence to enforce picket lines
Companies have also had ties to organized crime and use intimidation to prevent workers from striking. Plus, a history of hiring "soldiers" to slaughter workers.
Much less so. Companies had law on their side. All they had to do is exercise their freedom to contract, by firing those workers that they did not want to associate with anymore.
Where they did use violence they were usually entirely legally justified, in reacting to illegal violence by unions like picket lines that were violently enforced or trespassing on company property or any other number of thuggish intimidation tactics used by unions.
It is the unionists who needed to violate the right of employers to freely associate with whoever they wanted.
That's why the unions engaged in so much illegal activity and that's why they aggressively advocated to institute laws that restricted the right of employers to freely contract. Unions depend entirely on subverting and restricting the free market. They are rent-seeking institutions and can only gain public support by lying about their history and the nature of a freely agreed to employment arrangement, using rhetoric where Marxist concepts like wage slavery, expropriation of surplus value and other inflammatory demagoguery predominate.
Companies have also had ties to organized crime and use intimidation to prevent workers from striking. Plus, a history of hiring "soldiers" to slaughter workers.