When the
war ended in 1945, the promise not to strike ended as well, and pent-up
demand for higher
wages exploded. Strikes erupted in many industries, with the number of work stoppages reaching a peak in 1946. The public reacted strongly to these disruptions and to what many viewed as excessive power of unions allowed by the Wagner Act. In 1947, Congress passed the Labor Management Relations Act, better known as the Taft-Hartley Act, over President Harry Truman's veto. The law prescribed standards of conduct for unions as well as for employers. It banned "closed shops," which required workers to join unions before starting work; it permitted employers to sue unions for damages inflicted during strikes; it required unions to abide by a 60-day "cooling-off" period before striking; and it created other special rules for handling strikes that endangered the nation's health or safety. Taft-Hartley also required unions to disclose their finances. In light of this swing against labor, the AFL and CIO moved away from their feuding and finally merged in 1955, forming the AFL-CIO. George Meany, who was president of the AFL, became president of the new organization.
Unions gained a new measure of power in 1962, when President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order giving federal employees the right to organize and to bargain collectively (but not to strike). States passed similar legislation, and a few even allowed state government workers to strike. Public employee unions grew rapidly at the federal, state, and local levels. Police, teachers, and other government employees organized strikes in many states and cities during the 1970s, when high inflation threatened significant erosion of wages.
Union membership among blacks, Mexican-Americans, and women increased in the 1960s and 1970s. Labor leaders helped these groups, who often held the lowest-wage jobs, to obtain higher wages. Cesar E. Chavez, a Mexican-American labor leader, for example, worked to organize farm laborers, many of them Mexican-Americans, in California, creating what is now the United Farm Workers of America.
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Next Article: The 1980s and 1990s: The End of Paternalism in Labor
This article is adapted from the book "Outline of the U.S. Economy" by Conte and Carr and has been adapted with permission from the U.S. Department of State.
