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“Franklin Roosevelt’s 1935 Wagoner Act used, for the first time, federal powers to force every working man and woman to pay a third party, Big Labor bosses, in order to get or keep a job. It was wrong then, and it is outrageous now.”

Actually, that was the Wagner Act, not the Wagoner Act, and it was Wagner’s, obviously, not FDR’s. I know, I know, president’s have to sign something for it to become law. But I think it’s important to clarify that Congress is primarily responsible for law, not the executive. Though in this case FDR had a chokehold on the legislature, it may not be to our liking to blame conservative presidents for their liberal Congresses.

That being said, I’m not overly familiar with the Wagner Act itself, but I do know that the “right” to collective bargaining wasn’t originally what we’ve taken it now to mean. All it really meant was that employers couldn’t stop employees from joining unions if they wanted to, which by the way was already the case before the law passed. No one was sneaking into potential union member’s bedrooms in the middle of the night to beat people with sticks until they agreed to stay company men anymore. Perhaps it meant businesses couldn’t make it a condition of employment to sign a pledge not to join a union anymore. Again, I don’t know all that much about it.

What I do know is that the idea wasn’t what Big Labor and lefties everywhere wanted it to be, i.e. so long as an entity—often entirely controlled from the outside—got a bare majority to sign a piece of paper the bosses had to deal with them and only them. Employers still should have been free to contract with minority unions, including company unions, and individuals. Heck, they could, and still can in my opinion, always tell everyone to go to hell and get off their property and start over with new employees. But the unions’ freedom to blockade, beseige, trespass, and inflict all manner of violence limits this.

It was left to the courts to interpret the right to bargain collectively with a right to a closed shop, and woe befell our nation.

As a former shop steward, business agent, labor organizer and all around union thug whose ex was also a union thug, let me correct a few problems:

I believe history will show that Roosevelt and his "Brain Trust," were very much behind The Wagner Act (NLRA). It was cornerstone legislation in the "Second New Deal." Sure, it started in Congress as it must. But like most of the New Deal, it's Roosevelt's fault.
The The Wagner Act codified and permitted both union and closed shops. Courts were not involved.
Union shops, and closed shops are NOT the same thing.
The Taft-Hartly Act amended the NLRA to outlaw (among several things) closed shops. Closed shops have been illegal in the United States since 1947.
The Courts did not establish these rules. There were minor clarifications but for the most part labor rules have been established by the NLRB and by Wagner and Taft Hartley.
If anything, Supreme Court decisions have generally been more friendly to the first Amendment, and less friendly to the NLRA and its amendments, not the other way around. [see, Communication Workers of America vs. Beck, or Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, Int'l Union v. Mobil Oil Corp, for example.]
Under The Wagner Act union thugs very much could break into peoples houses in the middle of the night and force them to join a union. One of the most important provisions of Taft-Hartley was to require a regulated, (mostly) union-free, (mostly) employer-free election process. Before Taft-Hartley union organizers and employers were both permitted to subject employees to enormous pressure (employers somewhat less so) to vote one way or the other, and the process of getting a union certification under Wagner was actually easier than the proposed "card check" system, which I hope never to see.