Changes
/* Overriding a Veto */
After World War II, in 1946, strikes by unions were ravaging the United States. President Truman had caved into communist Josef Stalin in the post-War negotiations, giving Stalin everything he wanted in Eastern Europe. Many feared communist infiltration of labor unions in the United States, and the devastating work stoppages hurt the economy and alarmed the public.
No year in American history had as many labor strikes, affecting so many industries, as occurred in 1946. A newspaper called named the ''Evansville Courier'', for example, observed that a coal strike in 1946 was "the most momentous event in the country's peacetime history."
Historians refer to this as the "Great Strike Wave of 1946," or sometimes late 1945 is also included, because the strikes began almost as soon as World War II ended in August 1945. In 1946, there was a total of 4,985 strikes, which involved 4.6 million workers for a grand total of 116 million workdays.
The American public was outraged by this, and punished the Democrats on Election Day in November 1946. Republicans won by electing many Republicans in a landslide in the races for to Congress. It was not a presidential election year, so Democrat Harry Truman remained the president. But Republicans obtained large majorities in the House of Representatives (the "House") and the Senate, and immediately began thinking of ways to curb the power of unions.
The result was the passage in the House and Senate of the Taft-Hartley Act, in 1947. This law declared required an oath swearing not to be a communist to be taken by the leaders of unions, and the this law established the right of states to become "right to work" states prohibiting unions from requiring forcing all the workers at a company to join a union in order to work there. (Most southern states are "right to work" statestoday; New Jersey is not, which means that unions are still very powerful in New Jersey.)
Then Democratic President Harry Truman , a Democrat, vetoed the legislation, as a president has the power to do under the Constitution.
The Republican Congress then next exercised its power under the Constitution to ''override'' the veto, by a 2/3rds majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate , to enact the law. As a result, the Taft-Hartley Act has remained in effect with good results ever since.
== Not a Democracy ==
