The Taft-Hartley Act (formally the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947) is a United States federal law that amended the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (Wagner Act) to establish new restrictions on labor unions, expand the rights of employers and individual workers in relation to unions, and authorize federal intervention in strikes deemed to threaten national health or safety. Enacted by the 80th Congress over President Harry S. Truman's veto on 23 June 1947, the law remains a foundational and contested element of American labor relations law. Its characterization—as a necessary corrective to union excess or as an anti-labor measure curtailing workers' collective power—is a matter of ongoing debate. Pro-labor and pro-management viewpoints diverge substantially on its legacy and effects.
The Taft-Hartley Act remains in force as of 2025, substantially shaping the legal environment of American labor relations. Its major provisions include: the prohibition of certain union unfair labor practices (secondary boycotts, jurisdictional strikes, featherbedding, and closed shops); the authorization of state right-to-work laws under Section 14(b); the requirement that union officials file non-Communist affidavits (a provision later repealed in 1959 by the Landrum-Griffin Act); the authorization of an 80-day federal injunction against strikes threatening national health or safety; and the prohibition of union contributions to federal political campaigns.
Scholars and practitioners continue to debate the law's effects on union density, strike activity, and the balance of power between labor and capital. The decades following the act's passage saw a long-term decline in private-sector union membership in the United States, though the causal relationship between Taft-Hartley's provisions and that decline is itself contested. The right-to-work authorization under Section 14(b) has been exercised by a majority of states and remains among the most litigated and politically active provisions of the law. The economic effects of right-to-work laws remain a subject of active scholarly disagreement.
The law's emergency strike provisions have been invoked on dozens of occasions by successive presidents, including during major disputes in the steel, maritime, and coal industries.
Labor and progressive viewpoint: Many labor unions, progressive scholars, and Democratic politicians have characterized Taft-Hartley as a politically motivated rollback of workers' rights, enacted during a period of postwar conservative reaction. From this perspective, the law tilted the legal playing field toward employers, weakened union solidarity through bans on secondary boycotts and the closed shop, and enabled the spread of right-to-work laws that undermine union finances and bargaining power. President Truman's veto message, which called the act a “slave labor bill,” has become a touchstone for this viewpoint. taft-hartley-act-viewpoint-pro-labor-viewpoint
Employer and conservative viewpoint: Supporters of Taft-Hartley, including the act's sponsors Senator Robert A. Taft (R-OH) and Representative Fred Hartley (R-NJ), argued that the Wagner Act had created an unequal legal regime that empowered union officials at the expense of individual workers and the public. From this perspective, Taft-Hartley restored balance by curtailing coercive union practices, protecting workers who did not wish to join unions, and giving the government tools to prevent strikes harmful to the national interest. taft-hartley-act-viewpoint-pro-management-viewpoint
Libertarian and free-market viewpoint: Some economists and legal scholars have argued that both the Wagner Act and Taft-Hartley represent interventions in labor markets that distort wages and employment. From this perspective, the appropriate remedy is not recalibration between labor and management but a broader reduction of government involvement in labor relations. taft-hartley-act-viewpoint-free-market-viewpoint
Labor law reform viewpoint: A significant strand of labor scholarship argues that Taft-Hartley's framework is structurally inadequate for contemporary labor relations regardless of its partisan valence—that its enforcement mechanisms are too slow, its penalties too weak, and its core architecture too outdated to govern a modern service-and-gig economy. taft-hartley-act-viewpoint-labor-law-reform-viewpoint
Anti-Communist affidavit requirement: The original act's requirement that union officers sign affidavits swearing they were not members of the Communist Party was challenged on First Amendment and equal protection grounds and generated substantial controversy during the early Cold War period before being repealed. taft-hartley-act-controversy-anticommunist-affidavit-controversy
Truman's veto and congressional override: The political circumstances surrounding the law's passage—including Truman's veto, the subsequent override, and allegations of industry lobbying—generated documented disputes about legislative procedure and executive-legislative relations that have been examined by historians of the period. taft-hartley-act-controversy-veto-override-controversy
Section 14(b) and right-to-work legislation: The use of Section 14(b) by states to enact right-to-work laws has been the subject of sustained legal, political, and economic controversy, with unions repeatedly seeking its repeal and employers' associations defending its preservation. taft-hartley-act-controversy-section-14b-controversy
1. Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, Pub. L. 80-101, 61 Stat. 136 (1947). 2. Harry S. Truman, “Veto of the Taft-Hartley Labor Bill,” 20 June 1947, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 1947 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1963), 288-297. 3. Christopher L. Tomlins, The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880-1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 252-316. 4. R. Alton Lee, Truman and Taft-Hartley: A Question of Mandate (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1966). 5. James B. Atleson, Values and Assumptions in American Labor Law (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1983). 6. Melvyn Dubofsky, The State and Labor in Modern America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 196-210. 7. Barry T. Hirsch, “Sluggish Institutions in a Dynamic World: Can Unions and Industrial Competition Coexist?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 22, no. 1 (2008): 153-176. 8. Paul C. Weiler, Governing the Workplace: The Future of Labor and Employment Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 106-141.