T

Taft-Hartley also banned the closed

shop, authorized states to have right-to-

work laws, gave the US President the

power to direct the Attorney-General to

petition for an eighty-day injunction

against a strike or lockout which consti-

tuted a national emergency, attacked com-

munist infiltration of US labor unions by

requiring union officials to swear anti-

communist affidavits before they could

use the National Labor Relations Board,

and banning unions and corporations

from political expenditures. Many of these

new prohibitions could be enforced under

the criminal law. For years, the labour

movement attacked Taft-Hartley for creat-

ing ‘slave labor’ as organizing labour

became more difficult.