The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 29 U.S.C. § 151–169 is a foundational
statute of US labor law which guarantees basic rights of private sector employees
to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining for better terms
and conditions at work, and take collective action including strike if
necessary. The act also created the National Labor Relations Board, which
conducts elections that can require employers to engage in collective
bargaining with labor unions. The Act does not apply to workers who are
covered by the Railway Labor Act, agricultural employees, domestic
employees, supervisors, federal, state or local government workers, independent
contractors and some close relatives of individual employers.
Background President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed
the legislation into law on July 5, 1935.
It also has its roots in a variety of different labor acts previously enacted:
National War Labor Board est 1918 Norris – La Guardia Act 1930
National Industrial Recovery Act 1933 National Labor Board
Senator Robert F. Wagner WPA
Content Under section 1 of the Act, the key
principles and policy findings on which the Act was based are explained. The Act
aims to correct the "inequality of bargaining power between employees who
do not possess full freedom of association or actual liberty of
contract and employers who are organized in the corporate or other forms of
ownership association". To achieve this, the central idea is the promotion of
collective bargaining between independent trade unions, on behalf of
the workforce, and the employer. Various definitions are explained in
section 2, including 2(5) defining "labor organization" and 2(9) defining
"labor dispute". The Act aims to protect employees as a group, and so is not
based on a formal or legal relationship between an employer and employee.
= Enforcement = The National Labor Relations Board,
which is established in NLRA 1935 sections 3 to 6, is the primary enforcer
of the Act. Employees and unions may act themselves in support of their rights,
however because of collective action problems and the costs of litigation,
the National Labor Relations Board is designed to assist and bear some of the
costs. Under section 3, the NLRB has two basic functions: overseeing the process
by which employees decide whether to be represented by a labor organization and
prosecuting violations. Those processes are initiated in the regional offices of
the NLRB. The General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board give
legal advice. Sections 4 and 5 set out provisions on the officers of the Board
and their expenses. Section 6 empowers the Board to issue rules interpreting
the labor legislation. This will generally be binding, unless a court
deems it to have acted outside its authority.
Under section 10 the NLRB is empowered to prevent unfair labor practices, which
may ultimately be reviewed by the courts. Under section 11 it can lead
investigations, collect evidence, issue subpoenas, and require witnesses to give
evidence. Under section 12 it is an offense for people to unduly interfere
with the Board's conduct. = Collective bargaining =
Section 7 sets out the general principle that employees have the right to join a
trade union and engage in collective bargaining.
Specific rules in support of collective bargaining are as follows.
There can be only one exclusive bargaining representative for a unit of
employees. Promotion of the practice and procedure
of collective bargaining. Employers are compelled to bargain with
the representative of its employees. Employees are allowed to discuss wages.
= Unfair labor practices = Under section 8 the law defines a set of
prohibited actions by employers, employees, and unions, known as an
unfair labor practice. The first five unfair labor practices aimed at
employers are in section 8(a). These are,
(a)(1) "to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the
rights guaranteed in section 7". This includes freedom of association, mutual
aid or protection, self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor
organizations, to bargain collectively for wages and working conditions through
representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other protected
concerted activities with or without a union.
(a)(2) "to dominate or interfere with the formation or administration of any
labor organization or contribute financial or other support to it"
(a)(3) "by discrimination in regard to hire or tenure of employment or any term
or condition of employment to encourage or discourage membership in any labor
organization" (a)(4) discriminating against employees
who file charges or testify. (a)(5) refusing to bargain collectively
with the representative of the employer's employees.
In addition, added by the Taft-Hartley Act 1947, there are seven unfair labor
practices aimed at unions and employees. = Election of bargaining representatives
Under section 9 the people elected by a majority of the workforce have the right
to become the exclusive representatives of workers in collective bargaining with
the employer. = Exclusions =
The NLRA 1935 does not cover two main groups of employees: those working for
the government, and in the railway or airline industries. Section 2(2)) states
that the Act does not apply to employees of the "United States or any wholly
owned Government corporation, or any Federal Reserve Bank, or any State or
political subdivision thereof, or any person subject to the Railway Labor
Act". Under section 19, people who have religious convictions against joining a
trade union are entitled to not associate or financially support it.
Reactions The act was bitterly opposed by the
Republican Party and business groups. The American Liberty League viewed the
act as a threat to freedom and engaged in a campaign of opposition in order to
repeal these "socialist" efforts. This included encouraging employers to refuse
to comply with the NLRB and supporting the nationwide filing of injunctions to
keep the NLRB from functioning. This campaign continued until the NLRA was
found constitutional by the Supreme Court in National Labor Relations Board
v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation. Labor groups, while overwhelmingly
supportive, expressed a set of reservations. The American Federation of
Labor and some employers accused the NLRB of favoring the Congress of
Industrial Organizations, particularly when determining whether to hold union
elections in plant-wide, or wall-to-wall, units, which the CIO
usually sought, or to hold separate elections in separate craft units, which
the craft unions in the AFL favored. While the NLRB initially favored
plant-wide units, which tacitly favored the CIO's industrial unionism, it
retreated to a compromise position several years later under pressure from
Congress that allowed craft unions to seek separate representation of smaller
groups of workers at the same time that another union was seeking a wall-to-wall
unit. Employers and their allies in Congress
also criticized the NLRA for its expansive definition of "employee" and
for allowing supervisors and plant guards to form unions, sometimes
affiliated with the unions that represented the employees whom they were
supposed to supervise or police. Many accused the NLRB of a general pro-union
and anti-employer bias, pointing to the Board's controversial decisions in such
areas as employer free speech and "mixed motive" cases, in which the NLRB held
that an employer violated the Act by using misconduct that ordinarily would
not result in termination to fire an employee who was engaged in pro-union
activity. In addition, employers campaigned over the years to outlaw a
number of union practices such as closed shops, secondary boycotts,
jurisdictional strikes, mass picketing, strikes in violation of contractual
no-strike clauses, pension and health and welfare plans sponsored by unions
and multi-employer bargaining. Many of these criticisms included
provisions that employers and their allies were unable to have included in
the NLRA. Others developed in reaction to NLRB decisions. Over all, they wanted
the NLRB to be neutral as to bargaining power, but the NLRA's policy section
takes a decidedly pro-employee position: It is declared to be the policy of the
United States to eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions to the
free flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when
they have occurred by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective
bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of
association, self- organization, and designation of representatives of their
own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of
their employment or other mutual aid or protection.
Some of these changes were later achieved in the 1947 amendments.
Amendments Opponents of the Wagner Act introduced
several hundred bills to amend or repeal the law in the decade after its passage.
All of them failed or were vetoed until the passage of the Taft-Hartley
amendments in 1947. More recent failed amendments included
attempts in 1978 to permit triple backpay awards and union collective
bargaining certification based on signed union authorization cards, a provision
that is similar to one of the proposed amendments in the Employee Free Choice
Act. Under the NLRA, unions can become the representative based on signed union
authorization cards only if the employer voluntarily recognizes the union. If the
employer refuses to recognize the union, the union can be certified through a
secret-ballot election conducted by the NLRB.
Legacy The Little Wagner Act, written by Ida
Klaus, is the New York City version of the Wagner Act.
See also Duty of fair representation
Employee Free Choice Act Union organizer
United States labor law Labor rights in American meatpacking
industry Notes
References Books
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Schlesinger, Arthur M.. The coming of the New Deal : 1933-1935.. Boston:
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doi:10.2307/791821. "The Proposed Amendments to the Wagner
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Pope, J. G.. "How American Workers Lost the Right to Strike, and Other Tales".
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Pope, Jim. "Worker Lawmaking, Sit-Down Strikes, and the Shaping of American
Industrial Relations, 1935-1958". 24 Law & Hist. Rev.: 45–113.
doi:10.1017/S0738248000002273. JSTOR 27641352.
Scheunemann, Edward. The National Labor Relations Act Versus the Courts, 11
Rocky Mountain L. Rev. 135 Warm, J. Louis. "A Study of the Judicial
Attitude Toward Trade Unions and Labor Legislation". 23 Minn. L. Rev.: 256.
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External links 29 USC §§151-169, Labor-Management
Relations at the Legal Information Institute
National Labor Relations Act National Labor Relations Board