Nation: How Taft-Hartley Works

During World War II, most of the country's unions agreed to an unofficial ban on strikes, but after V-J day a series of walkouts shook the coal, steel and railroad industries. Antilabor feeling helped elect a Republican Congress. In 1947 Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft and New Jersey Representative Fred A. Hartley Jr., both conservative Republicans, sponsored bills to amend drastically the Wagner Act of 1935, at that time the basic federal labor-relations law. While the Wagner Act had enumerated unfair labor practices by employers, the new bills were intended to do the...

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