340 ChaPter^6
compared to the bosses. It could organize a union and, as a last measure,
unions could go on strike, whereas the bosses could get national policies passed
regarding every aspect of the workplace, including unionization, collective bar-
gaining, wages, and strikes. And by connecting labor to the “red scare,” it was
almost impossible for the CIO or other unions to do the very work unions
were created to do—get new members, get higher wages, go on strike.
With such conditions, Taft-Harley was easy to sell. Representative Fred
Hartley, the co-sponsor, had in fact received the AFL’s endorsement when he
ran for office, and acted as though he was a friend of unions, declaring, “as a
result of labor laws ill-conceived and disastrously executed, the American
workingman has been deprived of his dignity as an individual.” That badly
conceived and executed law, of course, was the Wagner Act, and Hartley and
Senator Taft believed labor had too much power and they wanted to dis-
mantle unions, not give them dignity. Taft and Hartley were operating in a
climate that was favorable to their anti-labor ideas. Media such as the New
York Times endorsed the law, saying, “the limitations set on former union
privileges have seemed to us to be a needed protection of the rights of man-
agement, the individual worker and the general public.” Labor saw through
the alleged efforts to “help” it. The president of the AFL, William Green,
recognized that the purpose of the act was to “destroy unions and to wreck
collective bargaining.” But labor, which never had much power even during
the war, fell victim to the Cold War’s need for “loyalty,” and the Taft-Hartley
act passed easily. It overturned much of the progress labor had made in the
New Deal. It prohibited various types of strikes and boycotts, banned “closed
shops,” forced union officials to sign anti-Communist loyalty oaths [and the
unions themselves, not the government, began to kick out “radicals” from
their organizations], and gave the government power to get injunctions against
labor to prevent workers from striking, or to return to work from strikes.
Labor unions were trying to fight for the notion that workers should be
treated better, with better wages and benefits, but ideas, not even actions, were
considered subversive if they challenged the status quo and the government,
as with Taft-Hartley, cracked down harshly.
Those seeking racial equality met a similar fate. The questions of racism
and segregation had been the dominant social issue in American life for cen-
turies, and many Blacks assumed that World War II, which was presented as
a war for “democracy” against the horrible and genocidal Nazi regime, would