Say good-bye to Messrs. Taft and Hartley: Why the 1947 “slave-labor” bill has to go
Say good-bye to Messrs. Taft and Hartley
Why the 1947 “slave-labor” bill has to go
by Ron Ennis, Lehigh Valley Postal Workers
Editor, Lehigh Valley Labor Council
Ask any union activist what is the chief cause for the decline in union membership and you’re bound to hear a variety of answers. Whether it’s the decline in the manufacturing sector, the rise in conservative ideology or the lack of labor history taught in the public schools, each response has merit.
However, there is one obscure explanation that predates and, perhaps, supersedes all other reasons for labor’s current predicament: the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947. Regarded by union leaders as one of the worst pieces of labor legislation in American history, its 60-year impact on the labor movement is little understood and, consequently, grossly underestimated.
The enactment of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935 and the Supreme Court’s decision to validate its constitutionality infuriated the business community, which immediately sought to launch a counterattack at the opportune time.
That moment came in the 1946 mid-term elections. President Franklin Roosevelt had died the previous year and corporate-financed Republicans, joined by southern Democrats, saw an opportunity to undo many of FDR’s New Deal achievements. With a vigorous and well-funded campaign the GOP, chanting “Had enough?” seized the Senate 51 to 45, and the House 246 to 188.
For the first time in 16 years, the conservatives were now in control of Congress and they set their sights immediately on reducing, if not eliminating, the roughly one-quarter of the workforce that was unionized. The intent of the Taft-Hartley Act, sponsored by Senator Robert Taft (R-Ohio) and Rep. Fred Hartley (R-NJ), was to gut the NLRA.
The Act was a large and complex proposal written with the approval of the National Association of Manufacturers, labor’s historic antagonist for nearly half a century. Unfortunately, few union leaders understood at the time of the bill’s introduction that FDR’s protective labor legislation, the NLRA, had made union members more dependent on and more vulnerable than ever to the power of government and what was given on the one hand by the law could just as easily be taken away. This painful lesson would soon be learned.
When President Harry Truman received the bill in late June, he denounced it as a “slave-labor bill” and vetoed it. But the GOP-controlled Congress had the votes to override Truman’s veto, and did so promptly, with more votes in favor the second time around. In fact, more Democrats joined Republicans in voting for the bill and the override than voted against it.
Truman’s Council of Economic Advisors predicted that the law would “inject the Government into almost innumerable details in the internal affairs of labor organizations of all sizes and in the collective bargaining process.” Sixty years later, those predictions have held up.
Outlawed the closed shop, which required that persons join the union before being eligible for employment with a unionized employer.
Effect: This provision opened the floodgates for right to work (for less) legislation. Currently, 22 states, mostly in the south and Midwest, have open shop or right to work (for less) laws.
Gave the President the authority to seek injunctions against unions in essential industries.
Effect: In the first year after the passage of Taft-Hartley, Truman requested seven court actions to stop strikes and four 80-day injunctions were granted. This government intrusion into the free association of workers profoundly reduced the number and severity of strikes, which declined immediately and never again approached the high water mark of the 1945-46 level. As recently as 2002, the “national emergency” clause was invoked by President George Bush in connection with the employer lockout of the Longshoremen’s Union during negotiations with West Coast shipping.
Mandated that union officers had to file affidavits that they were not members of the Communist Party.
Effect: This rekindeled an era of red-baiting that conservatives and business leaders had used for decades – and still do – to silence labor’s more progressive voices. Corporate leaders were never subjected to the same loyalty oaths. Until this clause was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1965, it created harmful divisions within the labor movement.
Forced national and local labor organizations to file yearly financial statements with the Department of Labor.
Effect: These reports have become more burdensome under the Bush administration. Interestingly, though not surprisingly, private companies are not obligated to reveal any of their finances.
Federal government was given the right to define “employee” as excluding supervisiors and independent contractors and they were no longer afforded protection of the NLRA.
Effect: Since the law’s implementation, floor supervisors are now corporate storm troopers in anti-union organizing campaigns. Furthermore, the pool of workers eligible to be unionized has diminished, most recently seen in the Supreme Court case NLRB v. Kentucky River Community Care. This has denied labor’s right to decide who their potential members are and to use that decision in their campaigns, contracts and negotiations.
Mandated a 60-day cooling off period before a union could resort to a strike.
Effect: Another state intrusion into how a free and democratic union conducts its business with the employer. This has caused the near extinction of the wildcat strike.
Outlawed the secondary boycott, which encouraged neutral employers to pressure a corporation with which the union has a dispute.
Effect: Another usurpation of government power by prohibiting the speech and actions of union members. This was a powerful labor-organizing tool prior to 1947.
Gave management the right to petition for a union certification election.
Effect: This undermined the ability of workers and their unions to control the timing of an election and underscores the right of an association of free individuals to determine their own election process.
Banned government workers from striking and if they did “shall be discharged immediately from employment… shall forfeit (their) civil service status, … and shall not be eligible for re-employment for three years by the U.S. or any such agency.”
Effect: This harsh penalty has no equal in corporate discipline. It opened the door for stronger measures against government employees. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan barred for life fired air-traffic controllers from ever sitting in a control tower.
While the Taft-Hartley Act stripped labor of some its most potent weapons, it sent an even stronger message to management: the government was giving the green light to bust unions and deny workers their rights to organize.