The
Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 better known as the
Taft–Hartley Act, (80 H.R. 3020, ) is a
United States federal law that restricts the activities and power of
labor unions. The
act, still effective, was sponsored by Senator
Robert A. Taft and Representative
Fred A. Hartley, Jr., and became law by overcoming U.S. President
Harry S. Truman's
veto on June 23, 1947; labor leaders called it the "slave-labor bill" while President Truman argued that it was a "dangerous intrusion on free speech," and that it would "conflict with important principles of our democratic society." Nevertheless, Truman would subsequently use it twelve times during his presidency. The Taft–Hartley Act amended the
National Labor Relations Act (NLRA; informally the Wagner Act), which Congress passed in 1935. The principal author of the Taft–Hartley Act was Gerard D. Reilly, former Solicitor of the Labor Department under
Frances Perkins.