Analysis: Taft-Hartley Act

Date: June 23, 1947

Author: US Congress

Genre: government document

Summary Overview

Although the US economy roared to life after the Great Depression during World War II, the immediate postwar period was marked by short-term economic decline, labor unrest, and a wave of highly publicized strikes. US support for labor interests weakened, and anti-labor politicians sought to formally limit labor power. Passed by the Republican-controlled US Congress over the veto of President Harry S. Truman, the Labor-Management Relations Act, commonly called the Taft-Hartley Act, modified portions of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act in order to limit the power of labor unions. Among the act's most significant provisions were the elimination of the closed shop (a type of labor agreement that required employers to hire only union members) and the placement of new limitations on unions' rights to strike. Called the “slave labor act” by Truman and other opponents, the act succeeded in dampening some of labor's influence, but also gave Truman a political rallying point that helped shape his Fair Deal domestic agenda.

Defining Moment

The organized labor movement began in the United States with the rise of industrialization in the 1800s. Early labor leaders sought to secure the rights for workers to organize and to bargain collectively, often to achieve aims such as fair wages, reduced working hours, or improved workplace safety. Disputes between labor and management occurred frequently, and workers' strikes and demonstrations sometimes turned violent as tensions rose. During an era when the federal government supported a policy of laissez-faire economics, it avoiding passing legislation that helped the labor cause and even intervened to break up strikes. World War I and the strength of the 1920s economy temporarily halted the rise of labor, and union membership dropped during the 1920s.

By the New Deal era, however, the federal government's interest in supporting labor-management relations had grown. As part of its overall program to boost the slumping US economy during the Depression, the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt supported the passage of the National Labor Relations Act—commonly known as the Wagner Act—in 1935. This legislation gave federal protection to the rights of workers to organize into unions and established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) as a final mediator in disputes between management and labor. The passage of the Wagner Act gave labor unions unprecedented power in US workplaces, and the percentage of unionized workers nationwide leapt from about 7 percent in the mid-1930s to over 20 percent by the mid-1940s. Labor also became an important ally of the Democratic Party as part of Roosevelt's New Deal coalition.

During World War II, the federal government restricted labor rights because of wartime needs, implementing wage freezes, limitations on striking, and increased working hours. The production focus on war needs resulted in shortages of consumer goods and price hikes, but overall, increased production and employment helped the nation shake off the doldrums of the Depression. When the war ended, however, the economic boom ended. Industrial production declined, just as millions of soldiers demobilized and returned home. Americans feared this combination would lead to widespread unemployment and economic turmoil.

These worries proved largely unfounded. However, labor leaders sought to reassert their influence to attain concessions such as pay raises that they believed were now overdue to workers. Waves of peaceful but large-scale strikes spread across the nation. At the same time, rising tensions with the Soviet Union generated fears of Communist subversion at home. Anti-labor sentiment grew among the American populace amid popular opposition to the postwar strikes and worry that labor leaders sympathized with Communist or socialist principles. In 1946, voters ended the longtime Democratic control of the US Congress and voted in Republican candidates who campaigned against the big-government and prolabor policies of the past. The stage was set for new legislative action limiting the perceived excesses of labor power.

Author Biography

The Taft-Hartley Act was sponsored by two Republicans, US Senator Robert Taft of Ohio and Representative Fred A. Hartley, Jr. of New Jersey. The son of Progressive-era president William Howard Taft, the younger Taft won election to the US Congress in 1938 and soon established himself as a leading conservative voice widely seen as a contender for the presidency. After Republicans gained control of Congress in the 1946 midterm elections, Taft became chair of the Senate's Labor and Public Welfare Committee and soon moved to introduce a bill amending the Wagner Act. At the same time, Hartley assumed leadership of the House's Education and Labor Committee and took action on his own bill to limit labor influence. He was a congressional veteran, having first won election to the House in 1928, and it was perhaps this political experience that spurred him to draft a bill harsher than Taft's; Hartley later claimed he did so in order to make the resulting compromise bill seem less drastic.

Document Analysis

Intended “to prescribe the legitimate rights of both employees and employers,” the Taft-Hartley Act modified and responded to practices established by the Wagner Act, which had greatly expanded the rights of labor. The Taft-Hartley Act also placed new limitations on unions and their leaders. The law protected the role of the federal government as a key mediator in labor relations, but asserted the rights of both the federal and state governments to check the power of unions. The legislation contained several significant provisions to meet these aims. Without exception, these provisions served the interests of management at the expense of those of labor.

On the government side, the act reconfigured the National Labor Relations Board into two separate bodies (the board itself and the General Counsel), allowed states to enact “right-to-work” laws, and gave the federal government the right to issue temporary injunctions against strikes in industries in which stoppages were deemed likely to “imperil the national health or safety.” Of these, the most damaging to labor was the allowance of right-to-work laws, which prohibit labor-management agreements that require union membership or the payment of union dues; this weakens the influence of unions where they exist, as workers more favorable to management may be brought in. Possible union influence in elections was limited by a ban on direct contributions to certain types of campaigns; this stricture was later amended.

Much of the remainder of the law details how unions may or may not operate in the workplace. Under the Taft-Hartley Act, new employees of union shops must be given thirty days in which to decide whether to become dues-paying members of the union, and nonunionized employees must be given a voice in workplace operations even if the union oversees these. Furthermore, employers were no longer necessarily required to collect union dues on behalf of the shop's organization. Other provisions dampened the ability of labor to protest workplace conditions. For example, unions were required to provide management with considerable notice of their intention of strike, which weakened the power of this action by allowing employers ample time to plan ways to mitigate the effects of a work stoppage. Certain types of strikes particularly damaging to management, such as sit-down strikes in which workers refuse to leave their work areas and so prevent the continuation of work by temporary “scab” employees, were barred altogether as being unfair labor practices. Such limitations were designed to counterweight the listing of unfair management practices that had been included in the prolabor Wagner Act.

Glossary

expeditiously: characterized by promptness; quick

inimical: adverse in tendency or effect; harmful

proviso: a clause in a statute, contract, or something similar, by which a condition is introduced; a stipulation or condition

Bibliography and Additional Reading

Arnesan, Eric, ed. “Taft-Hartley Act.” Encyclopedia of US Labor and Working-Class History. London: Routledge, 2007. Print.

“1947 Taft-Hartley Substantive Provisions.” National Labor Relations Board. NLRB, n.d. Web. 3 Feb. 2015.

Weir, Robert E. “Taft-Hartley Act.” Workers in America: A Historical Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2013. Print.