Given the misuse (some examples of which will be illustrated later in this essay) and its effective crippling of the American Laborer, One might ask how did this law come to pass. In order to understand the Taft-Hartley Act, one must first be familiar with the Wagner Act of 1935. The Wagner Act was, at the time of its passage, the most important labor law American had ever passed. It gave much needed leverage to labor organizations and was quickly dubbed "labor's bill of rights." I

• Legalized the passage of so-called “right to work” legislation.

• Eliminated employer neutrality by allowing employers to campaign against unionization drives. This allows employers to use veiled threats as coercion.

• Discouraging employees from joining Labor unions through discrimination in hiring or “Yellow Dog” Contracts.

• Prohibited secondary boycotts (boycotts directed to encourage neutral employers to pressure the disputed employer. This stripped labor of yet another one of its most effective tools. After the strike boycotts had been organized labor's most potent tools for negotiating dispute settlement.

• The redefinition of the word “employee” to exclude supervisors and independent contractors. This allowed management to not only decrease field of potential union members, but also to use supervisors as a “front line” in anti-union efforts.

t covered all firms and employees in activities affecting interstate commerce (with notable exceptions being government employees, agricultural workers, and Rail worker already subject to the Railway Labor Act. It ensured workers of the right to both organize and join labor unions, as well as to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to strike if they deemed it necessary. It also set up the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a federal agency to administer the act.

Perhaps the most recent abuse of organized labor by the government was President George Bush the sequels invocation of the act against the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in California. This represents one of the most substantial examples in history of the current alliance of the U.S. government and transnational corporations. The invocation of the act forced the Shoremen to reach a se

Some topics in this essay:
Labor Policy, Organized Labor, Board NLRB, Slave Labor”, Wagner Act, Warehouse Union, Closed Shop, Union California, Hartley Act, Labor Act, organized labor, labor unions, wagner act, taft-hartley act, labor movement, longshore warehouse union, collective bargaining, closed shop, act 1947, warehouse union, international longshore warehouse, invocation act,