Labor relations and human relations

Any study of labor relations presented in this fall of 1947 appears in the long shadow cast upon the future by the uncer tainties of the Taft-Hartley Act. For the law manifestly changes once more the general framework, so to speak, within which the still formative relationships between management and unions are developing in this country. The change pre sents itself, moreover, not as a gradual, mutually acceptable evolution of normal dealings between the parties, but as still another drastic transformation in the environment within which those dealings must now be adjusted.

Indeed, the opposition directed against the Labor-Manage ment Act of 1947 by the unions recalls the deep resentments evoked among employers by the National Labor Relations Act only 12 years ago. The two laws belong together as re lated episodes in the chain of events that reveal labor rela tions in the United States still a crisis-conditioned, unformed institution, in which neither direction nor constitution can yet be charted. Depression, war, the upheaval of turbulent organizing campaigns, as well as the jolting impact of deep reaching legal reform all have played significant parts in the developments of the past decade. Against the background of the strong traditions of voluntarism in American labor rela tions the important influence of law upon these developments stands forth particularly impressive.