The Strange Case Against Fourteen-B

Can the right-to-work clause in Taft-Hartley be saved? Yes, says the author, if certain Democrats will just summon the nerve to say No, for once, to the President

Astoundingly, when Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz went before a House Education and Labor subcommittee to demand repeal of the famous “right to work” clause of the Taft- Hartley Act that is known as 14(b) he based his argument on the “right” of unions and management to decide the conditions of work for themselves on good old freedom of contract. What Mr. Wirtz—and, in back of him, George Meany of AFL-CIO—was saying was surely enough to draw horse laughs from a convocation of wooden Indians, but, so dulled is our sense of logic these days, nobody seemed to catch the gorgeous humor of the occasion. Freedom of contract, forsooth!

JC

About the Author

John Chamberlain

John Chamberlain (1903–1995) was an American writer.

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Can the right-to-work clause in Taft-Hartley be saved? Yes, says the author, if certain Democrats will just summon the nerve to say No, for once, to the President

Astoundingly, when Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz went before a House Education and Labor subcommittee to demand repeal of the famous “right to work” clause of the Taft- Hartley Act that is known as 14(b) he based his argument on the “right” of unions and management to decide the conditions of work for themselves on good old freedom of contract. What Mr. Wirtz—and, in back of him, George Meany of AFL-CIO—was saying was surely enough to draw horse laughs from a convocation of wooden Indians, but, so dulled is our sense of logic these days, nobody seemed to catch the gorgeous humor of the occasion. Freedom of contract, forsooth!