National Affairs: TAFT-HARTLEY: How It Works & Has Worked

INVOKING Taft-Hartley in the dock and steel strikes, President Eisenhower last week set in motion a device which, despite continuing criticism, has had better than fair success over the past twelve years. The law’s aim is to ensure production for an 80-day “cooling-off period” in strikes or threatened strikes found to imperil the “national health or safety,” thereby giving management and labor a chance to resume negotiations toward a new contract. How it works:

The President appoints a fact-finding board to assess the effects of the strike, and the prospects, if any, for solution. If the facts indicate that no solution is in sight, the President orders the Attorney General to go into a U.S. court for a “cease-and-desist” injunction to stop the strike. The Attorney General may seek contempt-of-court action if either side violates the injunction.

During the first 60 days of the 80-day injunction, while production is restored, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service works at the bargaining table, trying to bring the opposing sides into agreement. After 75 days, the National Labor Relations Board conducts a secret election, giving workers a chance to accept management’s last offer (union members have never yet overruled their leaders, but the mere fact of the election exerts a pressure toward settlement).

Although the Taft-Hartley law was passed over President Truman’s veto, Truman nonetheless used the cooling-off machinery ten times in six years. Before last week, Eisenhower had used it only five times in seven years. These 15 major strike threats and strikes included four on the docks, four on atomic-energy installations, three in the coal mines and one each in the steel, copper, telephone and meatpacking industries. The second fact-finding board, appointed March 15, 1948, investigated a meat-packing strike, became one of four to see its strike settled before an injunction had to be issued. Of the eleven cases in which injunctions came down, five were settled during the 80 days, two were settled eight days later without a post-injunction walkout. Of the four other cases that ran past cool-off, all on the strife-torn waterfront, two were solved after brief strikes. Only two slid on past the cool-off into the deepfreeze of a long strike.