The conflict between the state and the working class during the first Red Scare see's its origins in the six thousand labor strikes that struck the nation during World War I. Officials,such as Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, begin a complete crusade against any suspicious left wingers in the nation. Tensions were heightened in September of 1920 when a bomb blast killed thirty-eight people on Wall Street. Through his authority, Palmer rounded up around 6,000 suspects. He deported an entire shipload of alleged immigrant radicals from America back to Russia. A useful quote that sums of the feelings during this time is spoken by an anonymous zealot. "My motto for the Reds is S.O.S.- ship or shoot."

Various state legislatures passed the criminal syndicalism laws. Basically anti-left statutes, these laws made illegal the very suggestion of violence to secure any sort of social change. Basically, if one were to speak about committing any sort of violent act in the name of social change, he or she could be arrested. These laws even denied five New York legislatures, all legally elected, the ability to be legislators simply because they were socialist.

The anti-syndicalism laws came under a lot of fire, mainly because of the argument that it denied citizens their right to speak freely. However, because of the hysteria and group think of the time, no serious attempts were made to bring down the government's limitations on civil liberties, unlike when Schnek went against the US gov't because of the Espionage Act in WWI.

The workers of the time period saw their unions being practically demolised. The Red Scare gave conservatives the perfect opportunity to quash labor unions, and they did with the "open" shop American plan they created. This plan denounced any "closed" shop unions (businesses where you are highly encouraged to join a union) and put labor unions on the losing side for the next decade.

EDIT: sources- David M. Kennedy and Lizabeth Cohen, authors of The American Pageant

[snippets of something I wrote on the Red Scare in Detroit a couple years ago, I had to rewrite a few things here to make them work better in context of the question]

The state of Michigan passed the Fitzgerald Law on August 14, 1919. The Fitzgerald Law created harsh penalties for literature and propaganda that could encourage criminal syndicalism. The Detroit Free Press reported the reaction from this law saying,

“Periodicals and pamphlets of a radical nature, decrying the present scheme of things in government have disappeared from several places in the city where for the last 13 months they were openly on sale. The new law provides that the circulation of revolutionary matter is as much a violation as the platform preaching of the overthrow of the government."

Less than one week after the Fitzgerald Law passed, officials quickly seized and destroyed some of the Russian literature.

Legislation passed on November 17th, 1919, “designed to strengthen the hands of the federal government in dealing with radicalism.” This legislation included making a felony the “writing, printing, circulating, or uttering of language urging the forcible overthrow of the government.”

Similarly, the Anti-­‐Sedition Act of 1918 created an extension of the Espionage Act of 1917. Both of these acts only applied to times of war. However, General Palmer had plans to create a peacetime version of the act as well.

General Palmer, while trying to get the Democratic nomination for president, sent out to newspapers a circulation that outlined the dangers of foreign-­‐language press.

There were more incidents beyond the Palmer Raids involving the Russian immigrants. The newspapers leading up to July 4th, 1919 were hyping up that the Russians were getting a parade permit for Independence Day in Detroit. Nearly every day between June 27th and July 4th, there was a front-­‐page story talking about this parade. One such article described the police preparations for the parade,

“...the Detroit police department has for weeks drilled a special platoon of police for riot duty; has accumulated 200,000 rounds of ammunition, and in cooperation with United States government forces headed by G. Oliver Frick, district chief of the US immigration service, will with ruthless hand, suppress any attempts to disturb or upset the authority.”

In addition to the police preparations, the Knights of Columbus organized a militia to ensure that the ‘reds’ would not start a riot. However, the response from the parade organizers was that they would also stand against rioting at their parade and were only planning a peaceful walk. The day of the parade came, and the newspaper reported that it was simply a peaceful parade with no violence or riots. Four people were arrested for seditious speech against the police, but one of them, a Hungarian woman, was released because she was a mother of four children.