LABOR: The New Law

The Taft-Hartley Act—officially the Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947 —is the first fundamental change in labor-relations ground rules in nearly twelve years. By expert analysis, these are some of the things it will do or not do:

It will not halt strikes. The emergency procedure will only affect nationwide strikes that threaten the national safety.

But the new law should curb such strikes. Union leaders will not be able summarily to call workers out, since the workers must first vote by secret ballot on whether to accept the employer’s final offer.

Since unions will be liable to suit for contract violation, wildcat strikes will become unpopular. Jurisdictional strikes and boycotts will be sharply curtailed by the NLRB’s authority to get injunctions.

Employers will be able to speak freely to their employees on labor policies, demand elections if they think the union no longer represents the majority of their workers. Unions will be required to act responsibly, will be held more closely to their contracts.

The power of union leaders to discriminate against individuals will be curbed. Unions will be prevented from arbitrarily excluding men from jobs; employers will have greater freedom in hiring & firing as a result of the outlawing of closed shops. Union shops will still be legal.

Established unions will have some troubles. The new voting rules, by giving craft and professional workers the right to separate organizations, may tend to break up some C.I.O.-type industrywide unions into smaller craft unions like A.FX.’s.

The NLRB will have to be expanded. Its procedures will be more complex.

One loophole looked as big as a mine shaft; refusal to work because of “abnormally dangerous” conditions was not considered a strike. On June 30, John L. Lewis might find something dangerous in every mine in the U.S.

To the lawyer’s eye, there seemed to be many another loophole and many an arguable provision in the Taft-Hartley Act, as there was in the Wagner Act. Final interpretation will only come, as it did with the Wagner Act, after years of litigation in the nation’s courts.