Taft_Hartley

Taft Hartley Of all the blows to the Labor movement in the United States few have had the lasting impact and damage to the rights of working men as the Taft Hartley Act of 1947. Its passage represented a huge step backward for the movement that has never been fully recovered. No matter what the acts original intentions, which at best were to balance the power between Labor Unions and Capital, and at worse was an attempt to crush the labor movement altogether, The act has done much more harm then good prompting such activist as Ralph Nader to state that its repeal would be “one important step in restoring workers’ right to organize into unions to achieve a living wage in the Wal-Marts, McDonald's and other workplaces, and in revitalizing American democracy.” Given the misuse (some examples of which will be illustrated later in this essay) and its effective crippling of the American Laborer, One might ask how did this law come to pass. In order to understand the Taft-Hartley Act, one must first be familiar with the Wagner Act of 1935. The Wagner Act was, at the time of its passage, the most important labor law American had ever passed. labor, act, union, unions, workers, taft-hartley, employers, government, rights, right, organized, one, much, movement, employees, wagner, under, strike, management, bill, work, while, weakening, tools, through, strikes, settlement, set, reach, president, passage, organize, national, less