Taft–Hartley Act
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The Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, better known as the Taft–Hartley Act, is a
United States federal law The law of the United States comprises many levels of codified and uncodified forms of law, of which the most important is the nation's Constitution, which prescribes the foundation of the federal government of the United States, as well as va ...
that restricts the activities and power of
labor unions A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...
. It was enacted by the
80th United States Congress The 80th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, DC from January 3, 1947, ...
over the
veto A veto is a legal power to unilaterally stop an official action. In the most typical case, a president or monarch vetoes a bill to stop it from becoming law. In many countries, veto powers are established in the country's constitution. Veto ...
of President
Harry S. Truman Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...
, becoming law on June 23, 1947. Taft–Hartley was introduced in the aftermath of a major strike wave in 1945 and 1946. Though it was enacted by the
Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
-controlled 80th Congress, the law received significant support from congressional Democrats, many of whom joined with their Republican colleagues in voting to override Truman's veto. The act continued to generate opposition after Truman left office, but it remains in effect. The Taft–Hartley Act amended the 1935
National Labor Relations Act The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act, is a foundational statute of United States labor law that guarantees the right of private sector employees to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining, and ...
(NLRA), prohibiting unions from engaging in several
unfair labor practice An unfair labor practice (ULP) in United States labor law refers to certain actions taken by employers or unions that violate the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (49 Stat. 449) (also known as the NLRA and the Wagner Act after NY Senator R ...
s. Among the practices prohibited by the Taft–Hartley act are
jurisdictional strike In United States labor law, a jurisdictional strike is a concerted refusal to work undertaken by a union to assert its members' right to particular job assignments and to protest the assignment of disputed work to members of another union or to uno ...
s,
wildcat strikes A wildcat strike action, often referred to as a wildcat strike, is a strike action undertaken by unionised workers without union leadership's authorisation, support, or approval; this is sometimes termed an unofficial industrial action. The legalit ...
, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing,
closed shop A pre-entry closed shop (or simply closed shop) is a form of union security agreement under which the employer agrees to hire union members only, and employees must remain members of the union at all times to remain employed. This is different fro ...
s, and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns. The amendments also allowed states to enact
right-to-work law In the context of labor law in the United States, the term "right-to-work laws" refers to state laws that prohibit union security agreements between employers and labor unions which require employees who are not union members to contribute to ...
s banning
union shop In labor law, a union shop, also known as a post-entry closed shop, is a form of a union security clause. Under this, the employer agrees to either only hire labor union members or to require that any new employees who are not already union memb ...
s. Enacted during the early stages of the
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, the law required union officers to sign non-communist affidavits with the government.


Background

In 1945 and 1946, an unprecedented wave of major strikes affected the United States; by February 1946 nearly 2 million workers were engaged in strikes or other labor disputes. Organized labor had largely refrained from striking during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, but with the end of the war, labor leaders were eager to share in the gains from a postwar economic resurgence. The 1946 mid-term elections left Republicans in control of Congress for the first time since the early 1930s. Many of the newly elected congressmen were strongly conservative and sought to overturn or roll back
New Deal The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...
legislation such as the
National Labor Relations Act of 1935 The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act, is a foundational statute of United States labor law that guarantees the right of private sector employees to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining, and ...
, which had established the right of workers to join unions, bargain collectively, and engage in strikes. Republican Senator
Robert A. Taft Robert Alphonso Taft Sr. (September 8, 1889 – July 31, 1953) was an American politician, lawyer, and scion of the Republican Party's Taft family. Taft represented Ohio in the United States Senate, briefly served as Senate Majority Leade ...
and Republican Congressman
Fred A. Hartley Jr. Frederick Allan Hartley Jr. (February 22, 1902 – May 11, 1969) was an American Republican politician from New Jersey. Hartley served ten terms in the United States House of Representatives where he represented the New Jersey's 8th and New Jer ...
each introduced measures to curtail the power of unions and prevent strikes. Taft's bill passed the Senate by a 68-to-24 majority, but some of its original provisions were removed by moderates like Republican Senator
Wayne Morse Wayne Lyman Morse (October 20, 1900 – July 22, 1974) was an American attorney and United States Senator from Oregon. Morse is well known for opposing his party's leadership and for his opposition to the Vietnam War on constitutional grounds. ...
. Meanwhile, the stronger Hartley bill garnered a 308-to-107 majority in the House of Representatives. The Taft–Hartley bill that emerged from a
conference committee A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly. A committee is not itself considered to be a form of assembly. Usually, the assembly sends matters into a committee as a way to explore them more ...
incorporated aspects from both the House and Senate bills. The bill was promoted by large business lobbies including the
National Association of Manufacturers The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) is an advocacy group headquartered in Washington, D.C., with additional offices across the United States. It is the nation's largest manufacturing industrial trade association, representing 14,000 s ...
. After spending several days considering how to respond to the bill, President Truman vetoed Taft–Hartley with a strong message to Congress, calling the act a "dangerous intrusion on
free speech Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The rights, right to freedom of expression has been ...
." Labor leaders, meanwhile, derided the act as a "slave-labor bill." Despite Truman's all-out effort to prevent a veto override, Congress overrode his veto with considerable Democratic support, including 106 out of 177 Democrats in the House, and 20 out of 42 Democrats in the Senate.


Effects of the act

As stated in Section 1 (), the purpose of the NLRA is:
promote the full flow of commerce, to prescribe the legitimate rights of both employees and employers in their relations affecting commerce, to provide orderly and peaceful procedures for preventing the interference by either with the legitimate rights of the other, to protect the rights of individual employees in their relations with labor organizations whose activities affect commerce, to define and proscribe practices on the part of labor and management which affect commerce and are inimical to the general welfare, and to protect the rights of the public in connection with labor disputes affecting commerce.
The amendments enacted in Taft–Hartley added a list of prohibited actions, or
unfair labor practice An unfair labor practice (ULP) in United States labor law refers to certain actions taken by employers or unions that violate the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (49 Stat. 449) (also known as the NLRA and the Wagner Act after NY Senator R ...
s, on the part of unions to the NLRA, which had previously only prohibited unfair labor practices committed by employers. The Taft–Hartley Act prohibited
jurisdictional strike In United States labor law, a jurisdictional strike is a concerted refusal to work undertaken by a union to assert its members' right to particular job assignments and to protest the assignment of disputed work to members of another union or to uno ...
s,
wildcat strikes A wildcat strike action, often referred to as a wildcat strike, is a strike action undertaken by unionised workers without union leadership's authorisation, support, or approval; this is sometimes termed an unofficial industrial action. The legalit ...
, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing,
closed shop A pre-entry closed shop (or simply closed shop) is a form of union security agreement under which the employer agrees to hire union members only, and employees must remain members of the union at all times to remain employed. This is different fro ...
s, and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns. It also required union officers to sign non-communist affidavits with the government.
Union shop In labor law, a union shop, also known as a post-entry closed shop, is a form of a union security clause. Under this, the employer agrees to either only hire labor union members or to require that any new employees who are not already union memb ...
s were heavily restricted, and states were allowed to pass
right-to-work law In the context of labor law in the United States, the term "right-to-work laws" refers to state laws that prohibit union security agreements between employers and labor unions which require employees who are not union members to contribute to ...
s that ban agency fees. Furthermore, the executive branch of the federal government could obtain legal strikebreaking
injunction An injunction is a legal and equitable remedy in the form of a special court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts. ("The court of appeals ... has exclusive jurisdiction to enjoin, set aside, suspend (in whole or in pa ...
s if an impending or current strike imperiled the national health or safety.


Jurisdictional strikes

In jurisdictional strikes, outlawed by Taft–Hartley, a union strikes in order to assign particular work to the employees it represents. Secondary boycotts and common situs picketing, also outlawed by the act, are actions in which unions picket, strike, or refuse to handle the goods of a business with which they have no primary dispute but which is associated with a targeted business. A later statute, the
Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act The Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (also "LMRDA" or the Landrum–Griffin Act), is a US labor law that regulates labor unions' internal affairs and their officials' relationships with employers. Background After enactment ...
, passed in 1959, tightened these restrictions on secondary boycotts still further.


Campaign expenditures

According to
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scholar
Floyd Abrams Floyd Abrams (born in July 9, 1936) is an American attorney at Cahill Gordon & Reindel. He is an expert on constitutional law and has argued in 13 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. Abrams represented ''The New York Times'' ...
, the Act "was the first law barring unions and corporations from making independent expenditures in support of or nopposition to federal candidates".Debating 'Citizens United'
''
The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...
'' (2011-01-13)


Closed shops

The law outlawed closed shops which were contractual agreements that required an employer to hire only
labor union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...
members. Union shops, still permitted, require new recruits to join the union within a certain amount of time. The National Labor Relations Board and the courts have added other restrictions on the power of unions to enforce union security clauses and have required them to make extensive financial disclosures to all members as part of their
duty of fair representation The duty of fair representation is incumbent upon Canadian and U.S. labor unions that are the exclusive bargaining representative of workers in a particular group. It is the obligation to represent all employees fairly, in good faith, and without ...
. On the other hand, Congress repealed the provisions requiring a vote by workers to authorize a union shop a few years after the passage of the Act when it became apparent that workers were approving them in virtually every case.


Union security clauses

The amendments also authorized individual states to outlaw union security clauses (such as the union shop) entirely in their jurisdictions by passing
right-to-work law In the context of labor law in the United States, the term "right-to-work laws" refers to state laws that prohibit union security agreements between employers and labor unions which require employees who are not union members to contribute to ...
s. A right-to-work law, under Section 14B of Taft–Hartley, prevents unions from negotiating contracts or legally binding documents requiring companies to fire workers who refuse to join the union. Currently all of the states in the
Deep South The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion in the Southern United States. The term was first used to describe the states most dependent on plantations and slavery prior to the American Civil War. Following the war ...
and a number of states in the Midwest, Great Plains, and
Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in ...
regions have right-to-work laws (with six states—
Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = "Alabama (state song), Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County, Al ...
,
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,
Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage ...
,
Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
,
Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
, and
Oklahoma Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...
—going one step further and enshrining right-to-work laws in their states' constitutions).


Strikes

The amendments required unions and employers to give 80 days' notice to each other and to certain state and federal mediation bodies before they may undertake strikes or other forms of economic action in pursuit of a new
collective bargaining agreement A collective agreement, collective labour agreement (CLA) or collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is a written contract negotiated through collective bargaining for employees by one or more trade unions with the management of a company (or with an ...
; it did not, on the other hand, impose any "cooling-off period" after a contract expired. The Act also authorized the President to intervene in strikes or potential strikes that create a national emergency, a reaction to the national coal miners' strikes called by the
United Mine Workers of America The United Mine Workers of America (UMW or UMWA) is a North American Labor history of the United States, labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing worke ...
in the 1940s. Presidents have used that power less and less frequently in each succeeding decade. President
George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
invoked the law in connection with the employer
lockout Lockout may refer to: * Lockout (industry), a type of work stoppage **Dublin Lockout, a major industrial dispute between approximately 20,000 workers and 300 employers 1913 - 1914 * Lockout (sports), lockout in sports leagues **MLB lockout, lock ...
of the
International Longshore and Warehouse Union The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) is a labor union which primarily represents dock workers on the West Coast of the United States, Hawaii, and in British Columbia, Canada. The union was established in 1937 after the 1934 Wes ...
during negotiations with West Coast shipping and stevedoring companies in 2002. The Act also prohibited federal employees from striking.


Anti-communism

The amendments required union leaders to file affidavits with the
United States Department of Labor The United States Department of Labor (DOL) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is responsible for the administration of federal laws governing occupational safety and health, wage and hour standards, unemploym ...
declaring that they were not supporters of the
Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A ...
and had no relationship with any organization seeking the "overthrow of the United States government by force or by any illegal or unconstitutional means" as a condition to participating in NLRB proceedings. Just over a year after Taft–Hartley passed, 81,000 union officers from nearly 120 unions had filed the required affidavits. This provision was at first upheld in the 1950 Supreme Court decision ''
American Communications Ass'n v. Douds ''American Communications Association v. Douds'', 339 U.S. 382 (1950), is a 5-to-1 ruling by the United States Supreme Court which held that the Taft–Hartley Act's imposition of an anti- communist oath on labor union leaders does not violate th ...
'', but in 1965, the Supreme Court held that this provision was an
unconstitutional Constitutionality is said to be the condition of acting in accordance with an applicable constitution; "Webster On Line" the status of a law, a procedure, or an act's accordance with the laws or set forth in the applicable constitution. When l ...
bill of attainder A bill of attainder (also known as an act of attainder or writ of attainder or bill of penalties) is an act of a legislature declaring a person, or a group of people, guilty of some crime, and punishing them, often without a trial. As with attai ...
.


Treatment of supervisors

The amendments expressly excluded supervisors from coverage under the act, and allowed employers to terminate supervisors engaging in union activities or those not supporting the employer's stance. The amendments maintained coverage under the act for professional employees, but provided for special procedures before they may be included in the same bargaining unit as non-professional employees.


Right of employer to oppose unions

The Act revised the Wagner Act's requirement of employer neutrality, to allow employers to deliver anti-union messages in the workplace.Anna McCarthy, ''The Citizen Machine: Governing by Television in 1950s America'', New York: The New Press, 2010, p. 54. . These changes confirmed an earlier
Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
ruling that employers have a constitutional right to express their opposition to unions, so long as they did not threaten employees with reprisals for their union activities nor offer any incentives to employees as an alternative to unionizing. The amendments also gave employers the right to file a petition asking the Board to determine if a union represents a majority of its employees, and allow employees to petition either to decertify their union, or to invalidate the union security provisions of any existing collective bargaining agreement.


National Labor Relations Board

The amendments gave the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board discretionary power to seek injunctions against either employers or unions that violated the Act. The law made pursuit of such injunctions mandatory, rather than discretionary, in the case of secondary boycotts by unions. The amendments also established the General Counsel’s autonomy within the administrative framework of the NLRB. Congress also gave employers the right to sue unions for damages caused by a secondary boycott, but gave the General Counsel exclusive power to seek injunctive relief against such activities.


Federal jurisdiction

The act provided for federal court jurisdiction to enforce
collective bargaining agreements Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between employers and a group of employees aimed at agreements to regulate working salaries, working conditions, benefits, and other aspects of workers' compensation and rights for workers. The i ...
. Although Congress passed this section to empower federal courts to hold unions liable in damages for strikes violating a no-strike clause, this part of the act has instead served as the springboard for creation of a "federal common law" of collective bargaining agreements, which favored
arbitration Arbitration is a form of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) that resolves disputes outside the judiciary courts. The dispute will be decided by one or more persons (the 'arbitrators', 'arbiters' or 'arbitral tribunal'), which renders the ' ...
over litigation or strikes as the preferred means of resolving labor disputes.


Other

The Congress that passed the Taft–Hartley Amendments considered repealing the Norris–La Guardia Act to the extent necessary to permit courts to issue injunctions against strikes violating a no-strike clause, but chose not to do so. The Supreme Court nonetheless held several decades later that the act implicitly gave the courts the power to enjoin such strikes over subjects that would be subject to final and binding arbitration under a collective bargaining agreement. Finally, the act imposed a number of procedural and substantive standards that unions and employers must meet before they may use employer funds to provide pensions and other employee benefit to unionized employees. Congress has since passed more extensive protections for workers and employee benefit plans as part of the
Employee Retirement Income Security Act The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) (, codified in part at ) is a U.S. federal tax and labor law that establishes minimum standards for pension plans in private industry. It contains rules on the federal income tax eff ...
("ERISA").


Aftermath

Union leaders in the
Congress of Industrial Organizations The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. Originally created in 1935 as a committee within the American Federation of ...
(CIO) vigorously campaigned for Truman in the 1948 election based upon a (never fulfilled) promise to repeal Taft–Hartley. Truman won, but a union-backed effort in Ohio to defeat Taft in 1950 failed in what one author described as "a shattering demonstration of labor's political weaknesses". Despite his opposition to the law, Truman relied upon it in twelve instances during his presidency.


See also

*
Labor unions in the United States Labor unions in the United States are organizations that represent workers in many industries recognized under US labor law since the 1935 enactment of the National Labor Relations Act. Their activity today centers on collective bargaining over w ...
* Norris–La Guardia Act *
Wagner Act The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act, is a foundational statute of United States labor law that guarantees the right of private sector employees to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining, and ...
*
Jurisdictional strike In United States labor law, a jurisdictional strike is a concerted refusal to work undertaken by a union to assert its members' right to particular job assignments and to protest the assignment of disputed work to members of another union or to uno ...
*
Secondary boycott Secondary may refer to: Science and nature * Secondary emission, of particles ** Secondary electrons, electrons generated as ionization products * The secondary winding, or the electrical or electronic circuit connected to the secondary winding ...
* ''
Chauffeurs, Teamsters, and Helpers Local No. 391 v. Terry ''Chauffeurs, Teamsters, and Helpers Local No. 391 v. Terry'', 494 U.S. 558 (1990), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that an action by an employee for a breach of a labor union's duty of fair representation entitled him t ...
'', 494 U.S. 558 (1990) 5 to 2 on §185 of LMRA 1947, holding that a plaintiff is entitled to trial by jury if the trade union denies representation


Notes


Works cited

* *


References

* Faragher, J.M.; Buhle, M.J.; Czitrom, D.; and Armitage, S.H. ''Out of Many: A History of the American People''. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006. * McCann, Irving G. ''Why the Taft-Hartley Law?'' New York: Committee for Constitutional Government, 1950. * Millis, Harry A. and Brown, Emily Clark. ''From the Wagner Act to Taft-Hartley: A Study of National Labor Policy and Labor Relations''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950.


Further reading

* Caballero, Raymond. ''McCarthyism vs. Clinton Jencks.'' Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019.


External links


Labor Management Relations ActPDFdetails
as amended in the
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br>Statute Compilations collection
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Taft-Hartley Act 80th United States Congress 1947 in American law 1947 in economics 1947 in labor relations Anti-communism in the United States Trade union legislation United States federal labor legislation