A Pro-Labor Law

August 11, 1947

The fate of the Taft-Hartley Act, which goes into effect the 22nd of this month, is an ominous illustration of the power of propaganda. The Wagner Act left the individual worker at the mercy of the union boss. The new law protects the individual worker’s rights and interests. It is precisely because the new law does curb the hitherto unbridled powers of union leaders over the rank and file that these leaders opposed its enactment with every technique of propaganda. They did not shrink from any misrepresentation, however fantastic, including the device of denouncing the measure as a “slave-labor” law.

This was not enough to shake the determination of an overwhelming majority of Congress to pass it. Yet it had its effect, not only on the astonishing language of the President’s veto, but on the rank and file of workers. A recent survey conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation found that 54 percent of the employees questioned, and 64 percent of union members, “disapproved” of the law.

But the survey also uncovered a strange paradox. Notwithstanding their declared disapproval of the new law, a majority of workers favored every individual provision of it on which they were questioned. Even a majority of union members favored every feature of it but one. Here is the result:

The new labor law makes it an unfair labor practice for a union as well as an employer to “restrain or coerce” individual workers in the exercise of their bargaining rights. It illegalizes excessive or discriminatory initiation fees. It refuses to certify a union or allow it to bring complaints to the labor board unless it has published a report of its receipts and disbursements, as well as a statement giving its name, the names, titles and salaries of its principal officers, the manner of the election, the initiation fees and dues of the union, a detailed statement of its constitution and bylaws showing the procedure followed regarding qualifications for or restrictions on membership, election of officers, calling of regular or special meetings, levying of assessments, imposition of fines, authorization for strikes, authorization for disbursement of union funds, audit of union financial transactions, expulsion of members and the grounds for it.

Every member of a union will want to know every one of these facts. It is only union bosses who find their arbitrary powers threatened, who want to continue to be highhanded, secretive, and irresponsible to the rank and file of their unions, who have anything to fear from such publicity. It is not surprising when such union bosses announce that they will “bypass” the new law.

Equally important protections for the rank and file are the provision requiring written consent of individual workers for the checkoff of union dues, the provision making it unlawful for an employer to buy off a corrupt or blackmailing union leader, and the provision to assure that so-called “welfare funds” really are used for the union members’ welfare and not merely to make labor leaders financially independent of the rank and file of their unions.

If we are thinking not of retaining unrestricted power for a small union oligarchy, but of the rights of the union rank and file and the rights of the individual workers, then the much abused Taft-Hartley Act far more deserves the title of a pro-labor law than the misconceived Wagner Act ever did.