Taft-Hartley Act And Right To Work: A Case Study

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TAFT-HARTLEY ACT AND RIGHT TO WORK… 1 Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act protects employees from being forced to join unions, or into paying union fees as conditions of employment. In addition, the act also affords individual states the option to enact right to work laws which protect workers from such compulsory mandates (National Right to Work Committee, 2013, FAQ, p.1). The national Labor Relations Act of 1935 (aka, the Wagoner Act) was the nation’s preeminent labor-oriented legislation aimed at balancing inequities of bargaining power between powerful corporations and a copious and vulnerable workforce adversely affected by the economic downturn of the…show more content…
However, the post-war era of the 1940s brought economic prosperity and a need to modify existing labor laws once again. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 was the instrument proposed, significantly amending the Wagoner Act. Referred to by its opponents as the slave labor act, the Taft-Hartley Act met stiff opposition and was even vetoed by President Harry S. Truman prior to finally being passed into law on June 23, 1947 (United States History/Taft- Hartley Act, 2013, p.1). TAFT-HARTLEY ACT AND RIGHT TO WORK… 2 The Taft-Hartley Act provided the following changes: * Allows president to appoint investigative labor boards * Declares closed shops illegal * Forbids jurisdictional strikes and secondary boycotts * Forbids unions from contributing to political campaigns Kovach (1977) continues his support for the act stating, “Proponents of the right-to-work legislation believe that it affirms the basic rights of a person to work for a living whether or not he or she belongs to a union” (Labor Law Journal, p.310). Currently, twenty-two states have enacted right-to-work laws; however, the overall benefit continues to be the subject of

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