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Glite Dictionary
yellow-dog contract

yellow-dog contract

1 9.9
An agreement where a worker promises not to join a union
  • noun
  • /ˈjɛloʊ dɔg ˈkɒntrækt/
  • Archaic
: contrato de perro amarillo
  • Owners also forced workers to sign yellow dog contracts which banned them from joining unions.

Owners also forced workers to sign yellow dog contracts which banned them from joining unions.

Examples

  • During the early 20th century, many workers were coerced into signing yellow-dog contracts to secure their jobs.

  • Employers once required new hires to sign a yellow-dog contract that prohibited them from joining any trade union.

  • The union organizers fought against the unfairness of yellow-dog contracts, which kept employees from joining their ranks.

Antonyms

union
144 3.3

Relating to a workers' group or its members

Surface Forms

yellow-dog contract singular
yellow-dog contracts plural

Morphology

yellow-dog + contract

Although 'contract' transparently signals a written agreement, the modifier 'yellow-dog' is not compositional from 'yellow' + 'dog' and does not indicate the anti-union meaning. This is a historically specific idiom whose sense ('promise not to join a trade union') cannot be derived by a B1 learner who only knows the constituent words.

Etymology

Yellow-dog contract comes from an old insult: a yellow-dog meant a coward. Employers made workers sign a yellow-dog contract to promise 'not to join a trade union', so the name paints the worker as weak for staying out of the union, and such agreements are now 'illegal'.