At a glance
The Taft-Hartley Act, adopted by a Republican-controlled Congress in 1947, outlawed the closed shop, which requires workers to be union members before they can be hired. Taft-Hartley allowed for union shop clauses, where employees must join the union within 30 days. Under an agency shop agreement, employees are required to pay union dues, but they aren’t required to join the union. An open shop is a union workplace in a right-to-work state.
Some 7,500 labor supporters waved signs and shouted “Veto!” as they marched into the Indiana Statehouse to protest a right-to-work bill, the first approved in an industrial state.
The year was 1957, and a Republican-controlled legislature had just approved the bill and sent it to Gov. Harold W. Handley, who said he didn’t like the legislation but would allow it to become law without his signature. When the protesters learned he wouldn’t deliver the veto, they pushed past police officers guarding Handley’s office.
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