19471776 Club
Senate joins House to override Truman; Taft-Hartley becomes law over his veto
Enough Democrats broke with the president to give the Republican 80th Congress its win; the new law bans closed shops, curbs strikes, and demands union officers swear they are not communists.
The wave of nearly two million workers who walked off the job in 1945 and 1946 had left Congress in no mood for accommodation with organized labor. On June 23, 1947, the Senate joined the House in overriding President Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act, the most sweeping revision to American labor law since the New Deal. The law banned closed shops, restricted secondary boycotts and wildcat strikes, allowed states to pass right-to-work laws, and required union officers to sign non-communist affidavits. Truman had called the bill a "dangerous intrusion on free speech," but enough Democrats broke with him to hand the Republican-controlled 80th Congress its override…
