taft-hartley

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5 26

ROBT R KIM KELLY

ROBBER BARRON 1877 rr

1919 STEEL, SEATTLE 1934 DOCK WEST AND EAST TEXTILE

TAFT HARTLEY 1947

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Management_Relations_Act_of_1947

The Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 29 U.S.C. § 401-531 better known as the Taft–Hartley Act, (80 H.R. 3020, Pub.L. 80–101, 61 Stat. 136, enacted June 23, 1947) is a United States federal law that restricts the activities and power of labor unions. Theact, still effective, was sponsored by Senator Robert A. Taft and Representative Fred A. Hartley, Jr., and became law by overcoming U.S. President Harry S. Truman's veto on June 23, 1947;^[1] labor leaders called it the "slave-labor bill"^[2] while President Truman argued that it was a "dangerous intrusion on free speech,"^[3] and that it would "conflict with important principles of our democratic society." ^[4] Nevertheless, Truman would subsequently use it twelve times during his presidency.^[5] The Taft–Hartley Act amended the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA; informally the Wagner Act), which Congress passed in 1935. The principal author of the Taft–Hartley Act was Gerard D. Reilly, former Solicitor of the Labor Department underFrances Perkins.

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Background

Effects of the act

As stated in Section 1 (29 U.S.C. § 141), the purpose of the NLRA is:

[T]o 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 practices, 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 strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing, closed shops, and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns. It also required union officers to sign non-communist affidavits with the government. Union shops were heavily restricted, and states were allowed to pass right-to-work laws that outlawed closed union shops. Furthermore, the executive branch of the federal government could obtain legal strikebreaking injunctions if an impending or current strike imperiled the national health or safety.^[citation ^needed]

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.^[citation ^needed]A later statute, the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, passed in 1959, tightened these restrictions on secondary boycotts still further.

Campaign expenditures

According to First Amendment scholar Floyd Abrams, the Act "was the first law barring unions and corporations from making independent expenditures in support of or [in] opposition to federal candidates".^[3]

Closed shops

Main article: Closed shop

The outlawed closed shops were contractual agreements that required an employer to hire onlylabor union 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.^[citation ^needed] 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.^[citation ^needed]

Union security clauses

Main article: Union shop

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 laws. 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.^[citation ^needed] Currently all of the states in the Deep South and a number of states in the Midwest, Great Plains, and Rocky Mountains regions have right-to-work laws (with five states—Arizona, Arkansas, Florida,Mississippi, and Oklahoma—going one step further and enshrining right-to-work laws in their states' constitutions).^[citation ^needed]

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; 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 in the 1940s. Presidents have used that power less and less frequently in each succeeding decade. President George W. Bushinvoked the law in connection with the employer lockout of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union during negotiations with West Coast shipping and stevedoring companies in 2002.^[9]

The Act also prohibited federal employees from striking.^[10]

Anti-communism

Main article: McCarthyism

The amendments required union leaders to file affidavits with the United States Department of Labor declaring that they were not supporters of the Communist Party 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.^[11] In 1965, The Supreme Court held that this provision was an unconstitutional bill of attainder.^[12]

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.^[13] 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.^[citation ^needed]

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.^[8] These changes confirmed an earlier Supreme Court 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

Main article: 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.^[citation ^needed]The law made pursuit of such injunctions mandatory, rather than discretionary, in the case ofsecondary boycotts by unions.^[citation ^needed] 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.^[citation ^needed]

Federal jurisdiction

The act provided for federal court jurisdiction to enforce collective bargaining agreements. 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 arbitrationover litigation or strikes as the preferred means of resolving labor disputes.^[citation ^needed]

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("ERISA").

Opposition to the Act

After spending several days considering how to respond to the bill, Truman vetoed Taft–Hartley with a strong message to Congress. Truman had expressed no opinion on the bill prior to his veto message. The committees considering the bill had requested suggestions from the Truman administration, but did not receive any.^[14] With the administration taking no stand on the bill, it passed both houses with strong bipartisan support. A clear majority of House Democrats voted for the bill, while Democrats in the Senate split evenly, 21–21.^[15]

Despite Truman's all-out effort to stop the 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.^[16][11]

Union leaders in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) vigorously campaigned for Truman in the 1948 election based upon a (never fulfilled) promise to repeal Taft–Hartley.^[17] 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".^[18] Organized labor nearly succeeded in pushing Congress to amend the law to increase the protections for strikers and targets of employer retaliation during the Carter and Clinton administrations, but failed on both occasions because of Republican opposition and lukewarm support for these changes from the Democratic President in office at the time.^[19]

Labor unions in the United States
Norris–La Guardia Act
Wagner Act
Jurisdictional strike
Secondary boycott
Chauffeurs, Teamsters, and Helpers Local No. 391 v. Terry, 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

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President Bush’s request for a Taft-Hartley injunction to open up the West Coast docks is not simply a brazen use of governmental power on behalf of employers in a collective-bargaining dispute. It is part of an ongoing battle by global shipping and terminal operation companies, backed by the world’s biggest retailers and manufacturers, to weaken longshore unions.

Historically, dockworkers have been the most willing of all labor groups to act in international solidarity, and they hold a strategically critical position at the heart of global production networks that are increasingly vulnerable to disruption. “This is a fabricated, well-planned, union-busting program, using the American people to pay the price and having the hammer of the U.S. government deliver the blow,” says Ray Familathe of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU).

The government’s injunction is not likely to resolve the dispute, which is centered in the union’s insistence on having jurisdiction over jobs that are created as technological change takes place. Indeed, if the White House and the maritime companies aggressively push their agenda to weaken the union, the dispute could escalate into an international labor conflict with widespread political and economic consequences.

In recent years, shipping and stevedoring companies have attacked dockworkers in England and Australia, and their attempts to introduce nonunion operations on the East Coast spurred a conflict that led to criminal charges, eventually dismissed, against five leaders of the International Longshoremen’s Association in Charleston, South Carolina. In other countries, such as Mexico, privatization of the docks has weakened or eliminated unions (giving shippers a cheap option for some cargo diverted during the lockout).

The ostensible issue on the West Coast is the company’s ability to introduce new technology, including computerization and bar-codes. But it is really about the power of workers to have a voice at their jobs and their fair share of gains in productivity. Since 1960, when the ILWU agreed to accept containerized cargo, the union has accepted new technology as long as it has jurisdiction over new jobs created, guaranteeing future workers the rights, power and wages that the union provides.

The Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) has tried to move new work out of the union’s jurisdiction, but it has lost every one of 30 arbitration disputes about the boundaries of union jobs over the past two decades. Now management is willing to buy off existing workers with the promise of lifetime jobs, but it wants the freedom to define new work as nonunion. “What they’re proposing is technological suicide for us,” says Richard Mead, president of ILWU Local 10. “There’s no future for us in the contract they propose. Suddenly every job is not your job. It belongs to somebody else.”

Early last summer top administration officials, including Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, made it clear that the administration would not tolerate any labor disruption when the contract between the ILWU and the PMA expired at the end of July. They threatened not only to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act, but also to run the ports with Navy personnel, breaking up the coast-wide bargaining unit that has existed since 1934 and restricting the union’s right to strike. That stance clearly reinforced PMA’s hard line in negotiations.

On September 29, claiming that ILWU was engaged in a slowdown, the PMA locked out 10,500 workers at 29 ports. The union insisted it was simply enforcing contractual safety rules. The safety issue had grown more urgent since seven dockworkers (including five ILWU members) were killed on the West Coast this year.

Meanwhile, the West Coast Waterfront Coalition—a group including corporate giants like Wal-Mart, Toyota, Gap and 3M, as well as many shipping and logistics companies, along with the PMA—demanded that Bush invoke the Taft-Hartley injunction to end the lockout, which the PMA itself had imposed. The ILWU insisted that the PMA end the lockout and repeatedly offered to extend the contract. Shortly before Bush officially called for an injunction, the White House gave business lobbyists—but not the union—a briefing. Officials claimed to be seeking a way of avoiding the politically explosive Taft-Hartley action. The union agreed to the White House request for a 30-day contract extension, which could have given Bush the opportunity to maneuver past the midterm elections and then ask for an injunction, but the PMA refused. Despite their professed opposition, in court PMA lawyers did not challenge the order ending their lockout.

Although the White House was uncomfortable with the timing, the overall strategy had been in place for many months. “There was an employer-orchestrated sense of crisis for Bush to act like PATCO,” says Peter Olney, director of the University of California Institute for Labor and Employment, referring to Reagan’s destruction of the air traffic controllers union in 1981.

The workers needed no order to go back. They’d already been willing. But the Taft-Hartley injunction means that they cannot strike for 80 days, which will take the industry past the busy fall shipping season into the slow months early in the year, when a strike will have less effect. Union members and officials also now can be fined or jailed if the court finds them in violation of the contract or the injunction, which included a stipulation that they work at a “reasonable” pace. Union President James Spinosa insisted that the union would follow the safety code—“in a question of tonnage vs. safety, safety first”—but predicted that management would accuse workers of a slowdown and take the union to court.