VIII. Amending the Taft-Hartley Act's Emergency Disputes Provisions-Some Proposals and Their Background A review of the history of the proposals to amend the emergency disputes provisions of Taft-Hartley would be a review of the history of that act. Indeed the trends have been very similar: first, a demand for the repeal of the provisions (and of the act itself); second, opposing demands that title II (or the act) be modified to make it less onesided against labor, countered by proposals to toughen the provisions (or the act) to make them more effective; and finally, acceptance, with talk of changes continuing intermittently, sotto voce. The first period extended through much of the Truman administration although substantial use was made of title II by the President. The second centered about the 1952 steel strike and is brought into focus by the first two documents reproduced below, the Senate committee report on the Morse-Humphrey bill of 1953, S. 2999 and the bill, as reported. Items c, d, and e also document this period. In this connection, the decision in the steel seizure case, item VI, b, above, presents the climax of this period. After this decision, a President could ignore title II in an emergency, at his peril. The legal status of all alternatives was in doubt. Only congressional action could change this. The third period focuses about the steel strike of 1959. This settled the question of constitutionality of the emergency provisions in the decision in the United Steelworkers case. This decision was included under the documentation of the provisions themselves, item VII, d, above. But from the point of view of proposals for change, the failure in 1959 to use the emergency provisions to prevent a damaging, 116-day strike, and the controversy which arose over the circumstances under which they were finally invoked, have left students of the problem confused and uncertain. This uncertainty is reflected in the literature. The advocates of doctrinaire solutions fell relatively silent, and articles like the report included under f began to appear. Indeed, this report by the President's Advisory Committee on Labor-Management Policy is the key document for this post-1959 discussion, which has continued along these lines to date, outside of the field of transportation. There, as is shown below, the point of takeoff of the discussion of strike emergencies has shifted from Taft-Hartley to the Railway Labor Act. The final document, item j, the long article by James E. Jones, Jr., is the thinking of one staff member of the U.S. Department of Labor on amending title II of the Taft-Hartley Act. 669 VIII-a. (Source: U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. In National Emergency Disputes Act (82d Cong., 2d sess., S. Rept. No. 2073)) A BILL TO AMEND THE LABOR MANAGEMENT RELA- JULY 2 (legislative day, JUNE 27), 1952.-Ordered to be printed UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON: 1952 |