LABOR AFTER WORLD WAR II
These two excerpts will lead you to the information you read about deindustrialization and deregulation in the 1970s. Taft-Hartley and Landrum-Griffin are two key pieces of labor-related legislation. How do they relate to the Wagner Act from the New Deal? By putting all of those pieces together, you should have a rough guide to labor from the 1930s through the 1970s.
Chapter 4: Post-war Era and Korean War Mobilization, 1945-1953
The Fair Deal included a number of benefits for working people and retirees. …
Noble but abstract goals for workers and the country quickly foundered in the harsh realities of readjustment after World War II. As happened after the "Great War", wartime agencies and controls on the economy were done away with as rapidly as possible, at a pace matched only by the demobilization of the armed forces. The prospect of millions of job-hungry veterans seeking employment before conversion to peacetime production was in full swing raised fears of massive unemployment. As was the case after World War I, however, such fears proved unfounded. Most veterans found jobs shortly after discharge.
Instead, the real labor problem of the time was a massive if peaceful wave of strikes. Unions sought to make what they considered well-deserved gains after enduring wage freezes imposed during the war. Workers were also prodded by the sharp inflation, fueled by pent-up consumer demand, that followed the lifting of wartime price restrictions. Strike followed upon strike in such important sectors as railroads, coal, steel, autos and oil.
The strike wave mobilized widespread anti-union sentiment which soon made itself felt in the federal government. Overriding a veto by President Truman, Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act which placed a number of restrictions on labor unions. These included banning the "closed shop" (under which workers had to join the union to be hired) and allowing the President to order temporary "cooling off" periods for strikes deemed to imperil the nation's safety. Beyond Taft-Hartley, the Congress ordered severe budget cuts in the Department of Labor, which once again many mistakenly saw as a hot-bed of pro-union sentiment.
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With the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, a strengthened Department of Labor played a vital role in mobilizing manpower for defense production. Acting under a presidential order making the Secretary of Labor responsible for the wartime labor supply, Tobin created a Defense Manpower Administration to supervise and coordinate manpower activities of the Department. The Department's responsibilities ran the gamut of labor problems, from assuring an adequate supply of workers and seeing that skill levels were adequate, to promoting safety and health standards and minimizing losses due to work stoppages.
Chapter 5: Eisenhower Administration, 1953-1961
By 1959 it became clear that Congress was going to impose additional controls on labor union activities, going beyond the scope of the 1958 law on pensions. The result was the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 — more commonly known as the Landrum-Griffin Act after its chief sponsors. The law set forth a "bill of rights" for union members to guarantee secret and fair elections of union officials. It required filing of reports on union funds with the Department of Labor and it banned Communists and those convicted of certain crimes from holding union office. The law also restrained unions, principally by expanding the Taft-Hartley Act's restrictions on secondary boycotts. To administer its portions of the law, the Department established a Bureau of Labor-Management Reports.
A Little More on Landrum-Griffin
TheLandrum-Griffin Actwas the direct outgrowth of the unsatisfactory internal practices of a small but strategically located minority of unions as revealed by Senate investigations. It can be said to have marked the beginning of quite detailed regulation of internal union affairs. Under Landrum-Griffin, union members are guaranteed an ambitious and wide-sweeping Bill of Rights that their unions cannot violate, officers of labor organizations must meet a variety of reporting and disclosure obligations, and the secretary of labor is charged with the investigation of relevant union misconduct.
THINK ABOUT IT…
How can this activity help us to understand the following TLOs?
WXT-7 Compare the beliefs and strategies of movements advocating changes to the U.S. economic system since industrialization, particularly the organized labor, Populist, and Progressive movements
WXT-8 Explain how and why the role of the federal government in regulating economic life and the environment has changed since the end of the 19th century
COMPLEX THINKING…
How can the story of labor in this overall time period (not just the information on organized labor) help us to understand a TLO besides WXT?
PEO-3 Analyze the causes and effects of major internal migration patterns such as urbanization, suburbanization, westward movement, and the Great Migration in the 19th and 20th centuries.
ID-7 Analyze how changes in class identity and gender roles have related to economic, social, and cultural transformations since the late 19th century