The Taft-Hartley Act (1947) was created in the period following World War II which a significant amount of them had just returned from the war and were hoping to improve their pay and their working conditions. Due to price controls in place during the war very low inflation been seen for some time. Of course the unprecedented deflation of the Great Depression had also contributed to stagnant wages. With peacetime, workers began to hope the time had come for them to show solidarity, collectively bargain and demand a bigger slice of the postwar economic growth, and share in its prosperity.
While the Taft-Hartley act was created to address an imbalance of power which big business lobbied had given the unions excessive power. The then congressional response was to place crushing regulations, financial penalties, and regulatory requirements on union operations. Furthermore, they significantly limited the tactics which unions had successfully employed in the past to win many of the concessions they previously had won.
The President Theodore Roosevelt, objected to this bill. In a letter accompanying his veto of it, he stated:
“I share with the Congress the conviction that legislation dealing with the relations between management and labor is necessary. I heartily condemn abuses on the part of unions and employers, and I have no patience with stubborn insistence on private advantage to the detriment of the public interest.
“But this bill is far from a solution of those problems.”
Despite the Veto, congress voted to override it on June 23, 1947 . Frustration from the frequent labor actions and strikes drew the ire of many industrial concerns who then brought pressure to bear on congress and further raised concerns that US productivity was in jeopardy and that might put the entire economy in peril.
In summary, The Taft-Hartley Act in total, rolled back the