Labor movement history and development

Labor Movement

The enactment of Taft-Hartley followed a tremendous post-World War II upsurge by union workers attempting to win wage increases and improve working conditions. During 1945-46, more than five million workers had walked off their jobs in industries including auto, steel and steel fabricating, packinghouse, electrical equipment, coal, rail, maritime, communications, machine tools and transit. A conservative Republican majority was elected to Congress in 1946 that was traditionally suspicious of the labor movement and its efforts to increase its power through strikes. The very next year the Republican majority in Congress secured the enactment, over a veto by President Harry S. Truman, of the Taft-Hartley Act, embodying a number of provisions designed to curb the power of organized labor. The act qualified or amended much of the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act of 1935, the federal law that had regulated labor relations of enterprises engaged in interstate commerce up until then.

The Act outlawed the closed shop, and permitted the union shop only on a vote of a majority of the employees. The government was empowered to obtain an 80-day injunction against any strike that it deemed to be "a peril to national health or safety." The act also prohibited jurisdictional strikes and secondary boycotts. Most of the collective-bargaining provisions were retained, but with an extra provision that a union must file with the U.S. Dept. Of Labor financial reports and affidavits that union officers were not Communists and forbade unions to contribute to political campaigns.

President Truman commented that the Act, would reverse the basic direction of our national labor policy, inject the Government into private economic affairs on an unprecedented scale, and conflict with important principles of our democratic society."

Since the enactment of the Act, several attempts have been made to repeal the Act but in vain. Federal courts have upheld major provisions of the act with the exception of the clauses about political expenditures. Presidents have invoked the Taft-Hartley Act thirty-five times in attempts to halt work stoppages in labor disputes and have been successful thirty-three times. The last successful attempt was in 1971 when President Nixon used the Act to end a longshoremen's strike.

Clearly, work stoppages give labor strength in their negotiations and Taft-Hartley takes this leverage away. The question is should a worker have the ability to stop work as part of their collective bargaining rights at the expense of the public good. And, how much is the public good actually represented by the interests of the organization the company is striking against vs. its own selfish interests?

Ultimatately wokers should have the right to choose when they will work and under what conditions. The Taft-Harley Act is aply labeled the "slave-labor" bill. As economist Murray Rothbard explains,