This photograph of the giant 1947 Madison Square Garden rally sponsored by the Greater New York Industrial Union Council (CIO) highlighted a law that is still wreaking havoc on the U. S. labor movement - the Taft-Hartley Law - which CIO and UMWA President John L. Lewis called "a step toward fascism." As the sign at the rally shows, it was also called the "Slave Labor Law," because it forbade worker solidarity with strikers and laid the groundwork for the so-called "right-to-work" laws which made it illegal to sign union-shop contracts in those states where they were enacted.
