richard lightner

Mar 30, 20236 min read

CRUSHING LABOR

Taft Hartley Act

The reason for the Taft-Hartley Act was the resurgence and power of labor unions not that they had been led or organized by communists. The whole concern about communist infiltration being a Soviet plot was a ruse to cut the power of the industrial worker in America.

Intellectual and activist writer Chris Hedges, as well as long-time activist and consumer advocate Ralph Nader, have pointed out in the last few years that the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 emasculated labor unions and is one of the causes of inertia in any left-wing resistance against the power elite.

I similarly noticed that lacking of union activism after 1947 in 1988, and so wrote my Master’s thesis arguing that the Taft Hartley Act caused the conservatism in American labor unions as it forbade militants of the 1930s from serving as officers in unions. I was told that most historians would disagree; that is problematic. However, there is a lot more to the story than that. I have selected a few books and articles expressing different points of view and things about the subject.

Labor resurrected its organizing in the 1930s during the Great Depression with sit-down strikes and more. Through President Roosevelt they were able to get Congress to pass the Wagner Act which allowed workers to organize into unions. The caveat was that now labor was dependent on the government for its legitimacy. But that’s another story.

Following World War II much of the American public was furious at unions which went on strike during the war. And, so, were in no mood to see more strikes after the war. However, 1946 saw a “great strike wave.” This enabled those reactionaries who had opposed the Wagner Act to get traction and propose limits on the actions of unions. (Thomas R. Brooks. Toil and Trouble: a history of American Labor. 1971. 223; (Ronald W. Schatz. The Electrical Workers: a history of labor at General Electric and Westinghouse, 1923-1960. 1983. 178)

However, the Taft-Hartley Act is described as punitive by Brooks. “The AFL attacked the new measure as a slave-labor bill.” United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis agreed. (Ronald W. Schatz. The Electrical Workers: a history of labor at General Electric and Westinghouse, 1923-1960. 1983. 179) The President of the United States can break a strike if he finds a strike detrimental to the interests of the country.

Nevertheless, Brooks, and others, believe that the impact on “major unions was minimal.” The negative consequences are for the smaller unions and those wishing to organize unions. The employers are allowed to comment on union organizing in such a way as to combat it. (Thomas R. Brooks. Toil and Trouble: a history of American Labor. 1971. 225-226)

In addition, the Act allowed for states to “pass legislation that could override provisions of the national law. [state’s rights] . . . The common feature of this legislation is the strong anti-union bias. The union-shop and maintenance-of-membership clauses in union contracts, as well as closed shop (forbidden by Taft-Hartley) are outlawed.” (Thomas R. Brooks. Toil and Trouble: a history of American Labor. 1971. 226)

The legal process of filing an unfair labor practice lasts so long as to be ineffective. (Thomas R. Brooks. Toil and Trouble: a history of American Labor. 1971. 226)

There was also the infighting among the unions over whether or not to allow communists in the unions and be officers. Anyone being a member of an organization espousing the overthrow of the American government could not be an officer in a labor union and, the union could not receive protection from the National Labor Relations Board. Communists were key organizers for unions in the 1930s especially in creating the CIO. It did not help that before World War II the Communists in America made understood their allegiance to the word of Josef Stalin. (Thomas R. Brooks. Toil and Trouble: a history of American Labor. 1971. 227)

“AFL and CIO leaders were panicked and enraged by the law’s restrictions on union power.” (John E. Haynes. Red Scare or Red Menace?: American communism and anti-communism in the cold war era. 132)

However, unions resisted expelling their best organizers, Communists. On the other hand, communists in the unions meant the unions were vulnerable. (Zeinert, Karen. McCarthy and the Fear of Communism in American History. 77)

The passage of the Taft-Hartley Act allowed anti-communist CIO leadership to purge their unions. And, former supporters of communist membership in unions switched and became anti-communist. All this thought to benefit unions in the long run. (John E. Haynes. Red Scare or Red Menace?: American communism and anti-communism in the cold war era. 125)

Philip Murray had tolerated communists in the unions from the 1930s but the post World War II period he was pressured to change his point of view. In addition, many leftists did not trust the communists. Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers and Joseph Curran of the National Maritime Union broke with the communists in 1947. The Maritime Union drove out their formerly popular communist members. (John E. Haynes. Red Scare or Red Menace?: American communism and anti-communism in the cold war era. 131)

The Taft-Hartley Act played well for the anti-communist union leadership. (Ronald W. Schatz. The Electrical Workers: a history of labor at General Electric and Westinghouse, 1923-1960. 1983. 179)

Chris Hedges writes that the Taft-Hartley Act was “the single most destructive piece of legislation to the union movement, was a product of anticommunist hysteria.” Union membership has dropped from about 50% of American workers to 12% now.

“The Taft-Hartley Act . . . prohibited jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, and secondary boycotts-union strikes against employers who continue to do business with a firm that is undergoing a strike.” Also, prohibited were closed shops, and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns. All union officers were forced to sign noncommunist affidavits or lose their positions. . . . states were allowed to pass right -to-work laws that outlawed union shops. . . . The act effectively demobilized the labor movement. It severely curtailed the ability to organize and strike and purged the last vestiges of militant labor leaders fro the ranks of unions.”

Labor leaders argued that Republican Party victories in 1948 would mean harsher laws against them. (John E. Haynes. Red Scare or Red Menace?: American communism and anti-communism in the cold war era. 132)

However, the consequences of the Taft-Hartley Act are much more nuanced. For instance, Susan Dudley Gold writes in her young adult book, Taft-Hartley Act, on page 108, that section 14(h) was the most significant part of the Taft-Hartley Act because that provision allowed states to adopt right to work laws.

Other Points Of View And Things of the affect of the Taft-Hartley Act

That it was basically the beliefs of the National Association of Manufacturers. These beliefs “corrected” earlier labor legislation the business community thought too favorable to the unions. The changes were of the Wagner Act which allowed unions to form in the first place. The Taft-Hartley Act abolished the closed shop; prevent discrimination against an employee who had conflicts with previous unions; ending boycotts; charging excessive union initiation fees; and, “attempting to cause an employer to pay for work not actually performed.” (Joseph G. Rayback. A History of American Labor. 398)

Employers could sue unions for breaches of “contract, illegal boycotts, and strikes.” The “attorney general of the United States could “secure an injunction prohibiting” a strike.(Joseph G. Rayback. A History of American Labor. 399)

Not surprisingly, labor union leaders were furious. Philip Murray said the law was “conceived in sin.” William Green claimed the bill was vindictive. However, the egregious part of the legislation was the “anti-communist affidavits which, they claimed, made labor leaders into second-class citizens; to the clauses permitting use of injunctions and requiring strike polls at the end of cooling-off periods which, they charged would hamper collective bargaining; to the sections prohibiting a closed shop and employer discrimination against employees who were dropped from unions for reasons other than non-payment of dues which, they claimed, would make it difficult to maintain union discipline; and finally to Section 14(b) which permitted states to outlaw union shops even though the Taft-Hartley Act approved of them, which they alleged, was an open invitation to engage in union busting by law.” (Joseph G. Rayback. A History of American Labor. 400)

The famed Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Clinton Jencks was targeted by the FBI for his work on the film Salt of the Earth. The charge was that he lied on the non-communist affidavit even though he was a “relatively minor functionary.” (336)

The non-communist affidavits were designed to weed Communists out of the labor movement. Otherwise unions could not use the “services of the National Labor Relations Board.” (336) Interestingly, the concern was “about belief in and support for Communism” not just being a communist. This violated the first amendment. “Many noncommunist labor leaders-John L. Lewis and CIO president Philip Murray among them - refused to sign the affidavits. They saw them as both an attack on free speech and a special burden on labor.” Anti-communist unionists used the Taft-Hartley Act to expel leftists from power. (337)

Some companies used their supposed fear of Russian domination as a “ploy to disguise their intransigence over wages and working conditions. They wrapped themselves in the flag and claimed that national security was at stake. . . Unable to rely on the NLRB, the noncomplying unions had to adopt more militant tactics . . . As a result, strikes became both more common and more bitter.” (337)

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Different Points of View over the future of Atomic weapons.

During the Afghan War, President Donald Trump (GAG!) authorized a General to use the Mother of all Bombs, a bomb just shy of the power of an atomic bomb, on his own. Notice that this had no positive affect for the US in the outcome of the war. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/world/asia/moab-mother-of-all-bombs-afghanistan.html)

There is a plethora of information about the development and use of the atomic bomb during World War II. Much of the world was astounded that the US used such a bomb on civilians. Others said, drop more.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 9, 1945, “served as the symbolic coronation of American global power.” Nevertheless, the use of the atomic bomb in World War II brought international condemnation. At the Tokyo War Crimes Trials of 1946-1948, Justice Pal of India cited the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as war crimes. U.S. President Harry S. Truman responded by publicly saying that the atomic bombs were dropped “in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands of young Americans.” However, President Truman in correspondence with John Foster Dulles that his reasons for dropping the atomic bombs were the attack on Pearl Harbor and the murder of our prisoners of war. “The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them.” (Martin Sherwin. “Hiroshima and Modern Memory.” The Nation. October 10, 1981)

“In the summer and fall of 1945, US atomic policy left us troubled and perplexed. Roosevelt, we thought, had been committed to a policy of international understanding and conciliation. . . . Truman’s policy, however, appeared to have the opposite aim: to keep a monopoly of the atomic bomb in U.S. and British hands, and to use it as a strong trump card in tough political bargaining with the Soviet Union.” (Sherwin, Martin. A World Destroyed: the Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance. 1975. xi)

And, well before the bombings FDR and Churchill “rejected steps that might have led to the international control of atomic energy.” (Martin Sherwin. “Hiroshima and Modern Memory.” The Nation. October 10, 1981)

According to nuclear physicist Hans Bethe who worked on the Manhattan Project, “Many of us had been influenced directly or indirectly by Niels Bohr, the great Danish physicist. He argued that only international control of nuclear weapons could save the world from a nuclear arms race, and that such a race would imperil, not enhance the security of the United States and Great Britain. Many other scientists, especially at the University of Chicago Metallurgic Laboratory, at the initiative of Leo Szilard, had come independently to the same conclusion.

Martin Sherwin, George Mason University History professor who specialized in the history of nuclear weapons, wrote that, this interpretation by physicists and historian is wrong. Roosevelt decided, with Churchill, “that the bomb should remain and Anglo-American monopoly.” (Sherwin, Martin. A World Destroyed: the Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance. 1975. xii)

However, this is not mentioned in Hiroshima in America: fifty years of denial, by Robert Jay Lifton and Gregg Mitchell.

KOREA

There are numerous arguments about whether or not the atomic bomb should have been used in Korea, Vietnam, or other existential circumstances.

In late 1950, following their invasion of Korea, Chinese forces surrounded U.S. Marines. “Distraught himself, the chief executive (Truman), told a press conference on November 30 that nuclear bombsight be used against the enemy and seemed to indicate that the decision would be MacArthur’s.” (William Manchester. American Caesar. 608, 610; Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 30)

The U.S. developed the ability fire an “atomic shot from a cannon.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 34)

“In mid-May Ike (President Dwight Eisenhower) told the [American] National Security Council that using nukes in Korea would be cheaper than conventional weaponry, and a few days later the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended launching nuclear attacks against China.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 34)

This is interesting since Eisenhower’s reaction to Hiroshima was, we didn’t have to use that awful thing on them. (Lifton, Robert Jay and Mitchell, Greg. Hiroshima in America: fifty years of denial. 1995. 213)

Operation Hudson Harbor - flying lone B-29 bombers over North Korea to simulate a dropping of an atomic bomb. North Korean leaders must have had “steel nerves” as this simulation was eerily similar to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Operation Hudson Harbor concluded that the use of atomic weapons would not be “useful” as it was difficult to identify “large masses of enemy troops.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 157-159)

The United Nations/United States forces faced defeat in Korea but Truman looked strong because he “threatened to use the atom bomb against China.” However, this “made peace talks virtually impossible.” (Stone, I.F. The Hidden History of the Korean War. 213)

Major General Emmett (“Rosy”) O’Donnell, commander of the Far East Air Force’s Bomber Command . . . [stated that] “We have never been permitted to bomb what are the real strategic targets, the enemy’s real sources of supply.” He said that the strategic bombing commanded been “designed to deliver the atomic offensive to the heart of the enemy” and indicated very clearly that he thought the bomb should have been used against the Chinese.”” (Stone, I.F. The Hidden History of the Korean War. 245)

RICHARD NIXON

Richard Barnet, former State Department aide, activist and scholar, who founded the Institute for Policy Studies (Wikipedia) warned “of the danger that the United States government might resort to the use of nuclear weapons. Barnet then cites Vice President Richard Nixon speaking to the Executive Club of Chicago on March 17, 1955 as saying,

“The weapons which were used during the Korean War and World War II are obsolete. Our artillery and our tactical Air Force in the Pacific are now equipped with atomic explosives which can and will be used on military targets with precision and effectiveness.

“It is foolish to talk about the possibility that the weapons which might be used in the event war breaks out in the Pacific would be limited to the conventional Korean and World War II types of explosives. Our forces could not fight an effective war in the Pacific with those types of explosives if they wanted to. Tactical atomic explosives are now conventional and will be used against the military targets of any aggressive force.”

Of course, we are not aggressors by threatening China or invading Vietnam.

VIET NAM

1964 American Republican Presidential candidate Senator Goldwater of Arizona was a reserve Air Force General and “suggested that the United States could isolate the Vietcong in South Vietnam any bombing the supply routes connecting China and North Vietnam.” He also proposed using nuclear weapons “to clear the jungles where the Vietcong were presumably hiding. The public reaction to those notions was one of horrified alarm.” (Thomas Powers, The War at Home. 2) It turns out that the United States bombed Southeast Asia the equivalent of many atomic bombs through out the war.

“Although Goldwater was finally persuaded to stop talking about nuclear weapons.”

Although Goldwater’s advocacy of atomic weapons scared people his idea to win the war did not. Johnson portrayed himself as “responsible” as opposed to Goldwater who he implied would get us all killed. (Thomas Powers, The War at Home. 9)

Noted military writer Hanson Baldwin believed that the US should use its overwhelming technological power to counter communism even if that meant nuclear weapons. Of course, only for “defensive purposes.” “If we cannot do this, he says, we had better “call it quits.” (Noam Chomsky, At War with Asia. 52)

General Curtis LeMay advocated the use of nuclear weapons to end the conflict with communism once and for all. “We ought to nuke the chinks. . . . We are swatting flies when we should be going after the manure pile.” (Thomas Powers. The War at Home. 40; Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. Lyndon B. Johnson: the Exercise of Power. 538)

So, there is pretty much agreement that the use of the atom bomb was on the table. The horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki completely ignored.

In 1954 the United States “assuming the Chinese Communists intervene would engage in a “highly selective atomic offensive.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 46) However, if the “Chinese Communists do not intervene” then the use of atomic weapons would occur if it would aid the US in the war. (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 47)

McNaughton drafted a “Proposed Course of Action” to McNamara. In his long list of actions McNaughton noted risks. One was the “escalation to the use of nuclear weapons.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 442-445, passim)

Presidential assistant for national security, Walt. W. Rostow, wrote a memorandum on May 6, 1967, analyzing U.S. bombing strategy in Viet Nam. One of his conclusions was “we do not want a nuclear confrontation over Viet Nam.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 585, 588)

CRUSHING LABOR

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