"By invoking Taft-Hartley against the longshore workers, Bush is effectively declaring war on the working class here and the Iraqi people simultaneously."
- Jack Heyman, business agent for ILWU Local 10, cited in Counterpunch (2002). I agree with Shane Mage on the Labor Management Relations (Taft-Hartley) Act 1947, as on many other essentials (I personally do not think Ernest Mandel really understood the long-term political-economic impact of this Act, although he understood its civil rights implications). Congress voted 331-83 for Taft-Hartley, with Democrats voting 106-71 in favour. The Senate passed the measure by a 68-25 margin, with 20 Democrats voting to override the veto, and 22 voting to uphold it. So a majority of Democrats in Congress in fact voted with Republicans in approving a policy which the labor movement characterized at the time as a "slave labor bill." President Truman did nothing to galvanize support for upholding his veto powers. Taft-Hartley amended the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act 1935, a New Deal policy initiated by Senator. Robert F. Wagner of New York. The Wagner Act recognised the right to organize and bargain collectively for higher wages and better working conditions, set up a National Labor Relations Board, promoted independent, democratic unions, regulated union-certification, enforced fair labor practices, and provided arbitration of labor-management disputes. In 1965, at which time the US Democratic Party controlled both Congress and the presidency, a repeal bill was in fact passed by Congress, but it was then blocked in the Senate. What exactly was the reason why the bill failed to be endorsed by the Senate ? You have to get rid of dreary dogmatism in order to be able to understand this. Ralph Nader, who doesn't talk about some legal implications, has mentioned Taft-Hartley on every Labor Day since 2000, see e.g.: http://www.thevoicenews.com/News/2002/0802/Features/F01_Nader-Taft-Hartley.h tml or http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0901-08.htm See also: http://lpa.igc.org/lpv41/lpp41_spkr03rn.html http://www.muhajabah.com/muslims4kucinich/archives/006437.php I personally don't think that the way that activists sought to rescind the Taft-Hartley Act was politically advisable. In my experience, it's one thing to have a laudable political objective, but quite another to devise a suitable strategy and tactic to actually achieve it. I think in reality nothing did so much damage to the cause in the USA as stupid leftist attitudes to the legal system. In 2002, "The White House has conducted an internal historical review of the use of Taft-Hartley and found it often doesn't produce the kind of long-term settlement both parties are seeking, according to people familiar with the deliberations. Rather, after imposing an 80-day cooling-off period, that study found that a stifled labor dispute often came roaring back. The unusual caution exhibited by the White House recently also stems from the fact that no president has attempted to invoke Taft-Hartley in more than 20 years. The last one-President Carter-failed to win the 1978 injunction he sought against coal miners. Taft-Hartley has "got an aura" about it, one senior aide said, and it isn't one Mr. Bush wishes to dwell in just five weeks before Election Day, when a perceived heavy-handed move by the White House could energize the Democratic Party's labor base. (...) According to labor-law experts, the bottom line on Taft-Hartley, created shortly after World War II to prevent laborers from striking during national emergencies, is mixed. A 1998 study by the Congressional Research Service that is circulating in Washington, D.C., found 35 instances of the Taft-Hartley emergency provision being invoked since 1947, with only a few denied by courts. Most resulted in a settlement before or during the cooling-off period. An injunction "can sometimes make them more willing to settle," said John Dunlop, a Harvard University professor emeritus and former Labor Secretary under the Ford administration. But it also shows about 10 occasions that devolved into strikes after the cooling-off period expired. Most involved longshore workers, though from the East Coast-based International Longshoremen's Association, which isn't affiliated with the union representing the West Coast dockworkers. The ILA was hit with seven Taft-Hartley injunctions between 1954 and 1971." http://www.teamster.org/02news/hn_021004_5.htm "The mass consequences of a capitalist collapse would be far more catastrophic now than in the past simply because of the way so much of the world's population is now integrated into, and therefore in some sense crucially dependent upon, the functioning of the world market. It was for this reason that I argued for a new New Deal in The New Imperialism" - Prof. David Harvey. Jurriaan
