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The Taft-Hartley Act, also known as the Labor and Management Relations Act, amended the National Labor Relations Act by adding prohibited activities to labor and giving the federal government the power to issue injunctions to end strikes. It also required union leaders to sign statements swearing they were not communists and gave management the power to fire union-friendly supervisors. The act has been criticized for being unbalanced and biased towards benefiting management against strikes. There have been attempts to repeal it, but they have been unsuccessful.
The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 is more appropriately referred to as the Labor and Management Relations Act. It gets the first of these two names from the co-sponsorship of the bill by House Representative Fred A. Harley, Jr and Senator Robert Taft. The initial bill was used to more clearly define the actions unions could take in the event of a disagreement with management and also defined the actions permitted by management during a labor/management dispute. The act was not supported by everyone, and especially not by then-President Harry Truman, who effectively vetoed the bill. However, Congress overrode the veto and passed the bill.
The Senator and Representative who authored the Taft-Hartley Act were attempting to amend a law that previously governed labor and management disputes. This was the Wagner Act of 1935 or the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Essentially, the Taft-Hartley Act added a number of prohibited activities to labor and gave the federal government the power to issue injunctions to end strikes if those strikes put the American people at risk.
A provision of the Taft-Hartley Act is the prohibition of jurisdictional strikes. These are strikes undertaken by union members because they want certain types of work. Other forms of strike prohibited by the Taft-Hartley Act include wildcat strikes and secondary boycotts. Wildcat strikes are those undertaken by union members without union authorization. A secondary boycott is pressure from a union of other companies to boycott companies that continue to do business with companies with striking workers.
Another concern of the Taft-Hartley Act was that people who belonged to unions could be Communists. In the beginning, many unions appeared to support some of the beliefs of Marxism, and the post-WWII era has taken America’s fear of Communism to new heights. In an attempt to separate union movements from communism, the law required union leaders to sign statements swearing they were not communists.
One aspect of the bill that seemed to strike at the heart of the labor movement was the power of management to fire union-friendly supervisors. This tension between lower level managers and striking employees is still felt today. Supervisors are usually salaried and therefore no longer belong to trade unions. Through the Taft-Hartley Act, continued union sympathy or pro-union sentiment could be countered by threatening or taking people’s jobs.
Many of those who criticized the Taft-Hartley Act felt that it was unbalanced, a blow to unions and too biased towards benefiting management against strikes. There have been several attempts to repeal the law, often when Democratic presidents were in office. Both Presidents Carter and Clinton fought to repeal it, but to no avail.
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