Church Statements
NCWC Social Action Statement Regarding Taft-Hartley, June 13, 1947
National Catholic Welfare Council's Social Action Statement regarding Taft-Hartley, June 13, 1947
"Now that collective bargaining and trade unionism occupy an accepted place in American life, it is the part of political and economic statemanship to develop an organized system of employer-labor partnership by industries and in the general economic life of the country. Otherwise collective bargaining may degenerate into class conflict instead of being a spring-board towards cooperation for the good of the entire economy.
The Taft-Hartley Bill does little or nothing to encourage labor-management cooperation. On the contrary, it approaches the complicated problem of industrial relations from a narrow and excessively legalistic point of view. It runs the risk of disorganizing and disrupting industrial relations by hastily and completely recasting the whole range of federal labor legislation just at the time when industrial stability is most desperately needed and, ironically enough, just at the time when collective bargaining shows definite signs of moving towards collective cooperation for the common good. Instead of encouraging labor and management to work together in harmony for the general economic welfare, the bill puts a number of legal restrictions on collective bargaining and particularly on the activities of trade unions--restrictions which will almost inevitably lead to industrial strife and unrest. The bill is an open invitation to management to have recourse to the courts and to the Labor Board at almost every turn and thus to sidetrack or evade the normal processes of constructive collective bargaining. It will also result in strikes of all sorts during the long period in which the administration and the legality of the bill are being clarified. It will create the sort of confusion which prevailed in American industry during the period in which the National Labor Relations Act was being tested in the courts. There is no sufficient reason to risk such wholesale confusion at the present time."