Union Perspectives

If we can get union people elected to political office, we will expect them to work on getting rid of the Taft-Hartly Act, which John L. Lewis, of the United Mine Workers, said this is the first ugly savage thrust of fascism in America. The Taft-Hartley Act, also known as the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, limited the power of labor unions in the United States. The act was passed by Congress over President Harry S. Truman's veto. Quick run down on this Act. Its main purpose was to weaken unions’ influence, which had grown during the Depression and World War II, and to create a more favorable legal environment for businesses and industry. The Act outlawed closed shops, jurisdictional strikes, and secondary boycotts. It restricted union political contributions and health and welfare funds. It required union officials to file non-communist affidavits. It allowed states to enact "right-to-work" laws. It defined unfair labor practices. It protected employees from uni...

Workers need to understand that fear is a potent weapon in the hands of the powerful elites. In his book, Death of the Liberal Class, Christopher Hedges writes, the fear of communism, like the fear of Islamic terrorism was used to suspend civil liberties, including freedom of speech, habeas corpus. In the name of anti-communism, the capitalist class, terrified, of the numerous labor strikes after WWII, rammed through the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 along with a Congressional override of President Harry Truman’s veto. It was the most destructive legislative blow to workers until NAFTA. It was fear that in 2001 after the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers, Bush administration were allowed to push through the Patriot Act, engaged in extraordinary rendition, and establish offshore prisons where we engaged in torture, which was against our code of conduct. Fear has led us to embrace the endless wars in the Middle East. It is the cowardice of the liberal class leaves the group prone to manipulati...

The strike or temporary walkout: why workers fear doing it and how to alleviate their fear. One way to picket a fast food or any low wage place is to recruit people from like-minded businesses. This way it is hard for owners to retaliate against workers asking for a $15 an hour minimum wage. So, workers at Burger King can picket a McDonald, and then the workers of McDonalds picket at Burger King. Another thing is to find out what other organizations would support increasing minimum wage to a $15 an hour and trade off might be just the exposure of their membership, such as faith-based work centers. You can leverage your manpower to help each other to see that there is no retaliation. This is not a new strategy. These are time-tested tactics used by the Knights of Labor in the 1880 and the International Workers of the World. The tactics were used to gain freedom of assembly and speech. These tactics will get around the outlawing of solidarity of workers that the National Labor Relations...

Most all labor laws that were passed to enhance labor are now a deterrent to labor, such as the National Labor Relations Act, National Labor Relations Board, no strike contracts, successorship laws, and arbitration. These were the laws that were supposed to help labor, which have now been gutted. Then there were the anti-labor laws and amendments, such as Taft-Hartley Act, which labor referred to the Slave Labor Act, and MacKay Doctrine (MacKay Radio Decision),. Most all labor laws passed for labor or against labor was about the worker being able to strike. In 1947, 230 bills were introduced in Congress and state legislatures all to gut labor and to curb union power. Congress passed the Landrum-Griffin Act in 1959 prohibited hot cargo agreements, where union workers would not handle nonunion goods for solidarity strikes, which benefitted industry-wide strikes, which far exceed a strike on just one company. The law unions’ fear most is the provision that authorizes law suits against un...