Richard Wolff on the Taft-Hartley Act - YouTube

In 1947 a law was passed called the Taft-Hartley bill, after Senator Taft and

congressperson Hartley. And this was a remarkable piece of legislation. It went

after the Communists, it went after the Socialists, and it went after the labor

unions. It basically told labor unions that they couldn't anymore elect

democratically their own leaders. For example, it forbade a communist from

running for office, winning a majority of the votes and serving as the leader of a

union, which communists had been doing for 20 or more years in the United

States without an incident. It became illegal. Wow. But it went much further. It

had a remarkable clause which has remained law to this day as I'm speaking.

And the clause goes like this: if at a workplace (a factory, an office, a store)

there's a union, and let's say half the workers in this place have voted for the

Union and joined the Union and have a union there. And let's say that that

Union negotiates with the employer and gets a contract, let's say a wage

increase of 10 cents an hour. Under the Taft-Hartley law, then and to this moment,

that Union must give anything it wins with the employer to all the

workers there whether they're in the Union or not. Whether they joined the

union or not. Whether they pay union dues or not. Whether when the Union (if it

thought it had to) called the strike and had workers go out and tell the

public about their situation, to help pressure the employer to meet them

halfway and give them a wage increase, the workers who went on strike, and

therefore didn't get paid, had to give to all the other workers who didn't go on

strike, who didn't lose a day's pay the same benefits they won. The Taft-Hartley

law in effect created an incentive for workers NOT to join a union, not to pay

the union dues because they would get whatever the Union won whether they did

so or not. That's fundamentally unfair, and you know it, and I know it and the

people then knew it. It was a hammer blow against the labor movement. Wow. This was

an attempt to destroy the Communists and the unions and the coalition between

them, because of course, if a communist couldn't be elected that removed them

from leadership of unions. And if more and more people decided not to pay union

dues, not to be part of the union, it weakened whatever unions could do. So it

was a crazy but effective way to abuse the law in the interest of a purge. But

it had the effect of weakening the labor movement. It was the opening gun, and

there are many more laws that came afterwards, to a direct assault on the

labor movement, which has worked very well reducing labor membership from

about 35% of all workers at the end of World War two to about 10% today. A

staggering cutback. Anyone in America today, and there are a few, who talks

about an economy with big business on the one hand and big labor on the other

is either ignorant or lying in your face. Big business has gotten bigger and

richer. Big labor, it's gone. There is no big labor. Hasn't been for years. We are

an economy dominated by one side of what used to be a rough balance, and boy does

it show.