In The Shadow of Antilabor law: Organizing and Collective Bargaining 60 Years After Taft‐Hartley

Abstract

The essays and commentary in this issue mark six decades since an overwhelming majority of Congressional Republicans and Democrats joined forces to vilify and castigate the specter of "big labor" haunting the postwar economy. In June of 1947, the U.S. had a new labor policy when both houses of Congress handily overrode Harry Truman's presidential veto to pass the Taft-Hartley Act amending the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Future amendments to federal labor law have not mitigated the fundamental antilabor impact of Taft-Hartley. Despite tumultuous shifts in the U.S. and world economy and the precipitous decline in private-sector union membership, Taft-Hartley's amendments to the NLRA remain integral to the legal framework for twenty-first century labor relations. This regime of antilabor law provides the thematic backdrop for the essays and commentary in this special issue of Working USA.