REPEAL OF TAFT-HARTLEY 14(b)

WHEREAS, the free trade union movement is the basic private institution in our American economic and political system which is based on the fundamentals of our constitutional principles that deal with governing peoples; and

WHEREAS, no citizen of our nation can divorce himself from the decisions made by majority consent; and

WHEREAS, any employees who are recognized by majority consent to represent themselves through a trade union for bargaining with an employer usually desire that all such like situated employees of the same employer should not be allowed to divorce themselves from the responsibilities of participation in the sole collective bargaining unit with said employer; and

WHEREAS, Section 14(b) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA-Taft- Hartley amendments) permits individual states to determine if any individual employee shall have the right to declare himself supreme to the desires of the majority, therefore divorcing himself from his "citizenship" responsibilities while otherwise being provided all of the benefits of that employer-related citizenship group that have been the result of the democratic decisions negotiated by majority consent of the employees in his bargaining unit; and

WHEREAS, teachers and other educators, of all Americans should view with objective perspective the historical decisions of our founding fathers, therefore recognizing the abhorrence expressed by our founders with the concept that any individual should be permitted to stand separate and apart of his own volition from the duties and responsibilities which the American society established even as this society provided him his only opportunity to secure his liberty; and

WHEREAS, the repeal of Section 14(b) has in this session of the Congress already passed the House of Representatives (HR 77), is now pending before the Senate, and would by its passage reestablish for free trade unions in this nation the basic concepts of our republic and our democratic process in the working life of our people; and

WHEREAS, said repeal will remove one of our only actions of a prior Congress in which individual states may interfere with the equality of economic opportunity, the equality of trade union democracy, and commerce between our states, all of which are interferences with the rights and privileges otherwise reserved by our Constitution to the Federal Govern­ment rather than to the states; interferences which promote discrimination against working people of all trades, occupations and professions, and interferences basically aimed at keeping wages low while literally promoting economic and political poverty among peoples in nineteen of our fifty states:

RESOLVED, that this convention of the American Federation of Teachers urge the repeal of Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Law at this session of the Congress.