Revision of the Wagner Act

Report Outline
Pressure for Change in Basic Labor Law
Trade Unionism Under the Wagner Act
Current Proposals for Revision

Pressure for Change in Basic Labor Law

Strong demands will be made upon Congress at its 1947 session for measures to curb the power built up by organized labor during the last decade under the special protections of the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act. Political action by trade unions in the 1946 congressional campaign has been designed, in the main, to ward off new anti-strike legislation and to safeguard the Wagner Act against hostile amendment. Failure by the organized workers to effect material changes in the present complexion of the House and Senate in November would be read in Congress as an endorsement by the voters of the efforts made at the last session to cut down the power of “labor monopolies.”

The long succession of strikes since the end of the war has generated a widespread, but as yet unmeasured, public demand for modification of the Wagner Act and for new legislation to supplement present collective bargaining machinery for the settlement of industrial disputes. Consideration of such legislation by the new Congress is made virtually inescapable by the scheduled expiration of the War Labor Disputes (Smith-Connally) Act six months after the official termination of the war.

Failure of Labor Legislation at 1946 Session

Enactment of new labor-disputes legislation at the 1946 session was prevented only by the inability of the President and Congress to get together on specific measures for prevention of strikes. After the breakdown of the President's Labor-Management Conference in November, 1945, Truman recommended legislation to extend the principles of the Railway Labor Act, particularly with respect to “cooling-off” periods and fact-finding boards, to all industry.