The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1948-09-02
First Yeur Of
Continued From Page One)

in small, local businesses, and agri-
cultural labor to whom the pro-
lection of the Wagner Act was
never extended, have felt the pen
alties of Taft-Hartley.
Enforcement of a bad law, not
protection of the freedom to or
ganize, nor the achievement of
fair, stable, industrial relations has
been the keynote of NLRB prac-
tice for the past year.
One of the bug-a-boos of the
Taft Hartleyites is union security.
The closed shop-which in the gar
ment industry, the printing trades,
in construction work, and in the
ports-had won acceptance from
most employers as helpful to the
industry itself was outlawed. The
union shop is legal only after the
unions time and the taxpayers
money has been spent to prove that
95 per cent of Americas nearly &c.
O00, 900 organized workers want the
union shop.
The typographical union, which
is particularly dependent upon en-
forcement of union security provi-
sions that had become standard in
the printing industry, has been sin
gled out for persecution by the MI
RIB. Publishers who previously had
found no difficulty in working with
in the scope Of union rules hired
Gerald Reilly, one of .Taft-Hart-
ley's craftsmen, to advise them on
how to make the union like gang
of cut-throats.
Injuncti0ns Return !
The injunction clause of the 1947
act has been used to virtually out
law strikes of coal miners and sea-
men on the plea that strikes in
their industries would lead to ma
tional catastrophes. No account is
taken of the fact that these two
groups of workers have to deal
with particularly rapacious employ
ers, or of the fact that some of
their current problems are created
by the Taft Hartley law itself.
The other type of injunction pro-
vided for by the law-the unfair
labor practice injunction-can be
used against any union which does
not toe the Taft Hartley mark. En-
ployers know that the injunction
threat always works for them. They
can reject entirely reasonable un-
ion demands confident that, if the
union tries to insist upon them, the
Attorney General or the NLRB
General Counsel will go to court
against the union.
Under the Taft Hartley law the
so-called secondary" boycott has
been outlawed as labor weapon. |
This means that no group of work
ers can ask workers not employed
by their own boss to aid them thru
action.
Labor. Still Strong
This is by no means a complete
of labor's grievances
against the aft-Hartley law, and
the men who sponsored it. Despite
these serious infringements upon
the rights of organized workers,
despite the many more not men
toned here, the Taft-Hartleyites
have not succeeded in their pur-
pose.
True, only about go per cent as
many requests for NLRB bargain
ing agent elections were filed dur
ing the first year of Taft Hartley
as were filed during the last year
of the Wagner Act. Certainly, with
the NLRB expanding employers
''free speech" to include all but the
most obvious coercion of workers,
the "no union" vote in such cleo
tions has increased from 22 per
cent to 20 per cent. Unions have
won only about 70 per cent of these
elections as compared with the
Wagner Act record of rs per cent.
But these union votes, and the
votes i'm the union shop authoriza-
ton elections, prove that the Taft
have failed in their eff
fort to sabotage unionism. Strong
union pressure a few month ago
was still able to break what ap-
peared to be united employer ie-
sistance to wage demands. Even |
with the Taft Hartley law on the
books and the Dixiecrats on ram
page, organizing drives are still
bringing more and more workers
n the south as well as in other
sections into the labor movement.
Political Action Answer
Every branch of organized labor
oday has its own political action
eague-stiucturaily separate from
he unions themselves-to redress
he attack upon union political ac-
ivities which the courts have re-
used 20 turn back.
The Tat -Hartleyites know that
hey ha fen't succeeded in break
ng the power of organized labor.
they have had to think up some
more schemes: prohibition of indus
ry-wide collective bargaining, laws
gainst picketing, and amendments