Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 has to go during this administration

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAhartley.htm

The Taft-Hartley Act (also known as the Labor-Management Relations Act) was passed over the veto of Harry S. Truman on 23rd June, 1947. When it was passed by Congress Truman denounced it as a "slave-labor bill".

The act declared the closed shop illegal and permitted the union shop only after a vote of a majority of the employees. It also forbade jurisdictional strikes and secondary boycotts. Other aspects of the legislation included the right of employers to be exempted from bargaining with unions unless they wished to.

The act forbade unions from contributing to political campaigns and required union leaders to affirm they were not supporters of the Communist Party. This aspect of the act was upheld by the Supreme Court on 8th May, 1950.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

1. There's a song about that!

Charley King, didn't have tome to see if there's a Youtube link but here is the discography........

Taft-Hartley Song - King, Charlie

Seeger, Peggy. From Where I Stand. Topical Songs from America and England, Folkways FW 8563, LP (1982), trk# B.03

[superduperfarleft]

2. And there's only one person during this election that I heard mention this.

That was Ralph Nader, DU's favorite punching bag.

I agree with you 100%, but I'd be surprised if it happens.

[NYVet]

3. It has good parts and bad parts.

The act declared the closed shop illegal and permitted the union shop only after a vote of a majority of the employees.

I agree with this portion. Why should someone be forced to join an organization in exchange for a job in the private sector?

The act forbade unions from contributing to political campaigns and required union leaders to affirm they were not supporters of the Communist Party. This aspect of the act was upheld by the Supreme Court on 8th May, 1950.

Corporations are forbidden from donating to political campaigns, so why not unions? Surely you would be against your money being donated to support someone you disagreed with?

[bean fidhleir]

4. No, it only has bad parts.

When it's a union shop, the decision should be to join the union or work somewhere else - the same choice (or non-choice) they have with EVERY other issue, including management interference with their private lives.

And do you really believe that you're not being forced, every day, to have your money donated to causes you don't believe in? Corporations and their wealthy owners get a return rate on their donations ranging from 100% to several thousand percent, and it comes out of our taxes.

Taft-Hartley was written by business, and has ZERO benefits for working people.

[NNN0LHI]

5. Thank you for saying that so well

Save me a lot of two finger typing.

Don

[NYVet]

7. I am speaking about the union coming in after I am employed.

I have worked in both union and non union shops, the benefits have been equal in both shops. The only difference I have noticed is that my paycheck is lower while working in the union shop.

And I should have worded my last statement a little better. I do NOT want a group of individuals deciding that my union dues should go to support a politician that I do not agree with.
If a union is going to donate money to a politician, it should take a vote and according to the vote, donate to any politician that a member selects on a % basis, no matter what the affiliation.

For example.

Union has 100 members, and they are going to donate 1000 dollars in a political cycle.
55 people vote for Politician A
28 people vote for Politician B
10 people vote for Politician C
7 people vote for Politician D

The union should contribute
55 % of the money to Politician A
28 % of the money to Politician B
10 % of the money to Politician C
7 % of the money to Politician D

[bean fidhleir]

8. You ignore your involuntary political contributions. Why?

If you want to live in the US, you have little choice but to give money to the oil companies, the phone company, the auto manufacturers, et lengthy cetera. Sure, nominally you can go without, and a few people can do it for real if they happen to be lucky, but for the vast majority of people there are no realistic choices.

And the people running those companies make sure that the politicians get paid off. And they do all the choosing about whom and how much - you don't get a vote. So why should those companies get away with it but unions not?

[superduperfarleft]

9. I hear these kind of complaints about unions all the time.

If you don't like how your union is being run, get involved, and try to point it in a direction that you think is better.

That's the entire point of unions, for workers to have control over their own situation. If you just sit back and complain, how do you expect the union to respond to your concerns?

[RoyGBiv]

10. If that's true ...

I have worked in both union and non union shops, the benefits have been equal in both shops.

... the reason this is true is because union shops exist that have full or near-full membership of employees. But, I doubt it's true. I've done comparisons, and I've never found it to be the case if you go one layer below what the HR benefit summary says. The details tell a different story.

It's not hard to see this in action if you pay attention to the right industries, that is, those where unions still exist.

I worked for a time in an industry where unions still pull a lot of weight, but my particular company wasn't unionized. We were in direct competition with another company that is unionized. During orientation and forever thereafter at regular intervals, we were given the propaganda about why we shouldn't attempt to join a union, citing all sorts of "evidence" about how our benefits were better than the competition ... (then comes the fine print) even though our wages are lower.

Now, they tried to explain that away by saying they could hire more people because wages were lower, and it kept us "competitive." The reality was that, adjusted for gross revenue and customer base comparisons, our employment rates were close to equal. We employed more salespeople but fewer technicians, which is interesting because the technicians are the ones with the competitor who were the primary source of union membership. As for the benefits, that was simply a lie. On a thin sheet of paper was the "fact" we had more insurance options, a profit-sharing package, etc.

Well, the profit-sharing package didn't kick in for 10 years, and you would lose your investment in total if you did something silly like invoke FMLA ... or if the company sold your particular piece of the company or outsourced it. In these situations you remained employed and tied to the parent company but were no longer employed *by* it. I saw this happen three times in four years. It was a regular thing. Further, while we had more "options" for insurance, none of them were as broad in their coverage as the only option of the competitor.

And, as I said, wages were lower.

All that said, the number one thing to take away from this is the effort the company put in preventing employees from unionizing by attempting to compare us to a shop that was unionized. Without that unionized shop, none of these basic attempts to remain competitive in the employment market would have been considered.

[blindpig]

6. Fat chance

Judging by the utter lack of a union presence among his recently convened economic advisors it appears that the workers don't count. As usual.