National Labor Relations Act

The National Labor Relations Act establishes the right of most private-sector workers to form unions, bargain with management and strike.

Learning Objective

Explain the development of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)

Key Points

The key principles of the National Labor Relations Act include: encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association.
The law defined and prohibited five unfair practices which include: interfering with, restraining or coercing employees in their rights; and dominating or interfering with the formation or administration of any labor organization.
The act was controversial as it was viewed as a threat to freedom and the NLRB was accused of a pro-union and anti-employer bias.
While opponents have introduced several hundred bills to amend or repeal the lay only the Taft-Hartley amendment was passed in 1947.

Term

National Labor Relations Act
An act to diminish the causes of labor disputes burdening or obstructing interstate and foreign commerce, to create a National Labor Relations Board, and for other purposes.

Examples

It was found that an employer unlawfully interrogated three employees. The Board adopted the judge's finding that the employer threatened one of the employees during the course of his interrogation. The Board also adopted the judge's finding that the employer unlawfully laid off five employees, including the three employees it had interrogated. Member Hayes concurred in part and would have affirmed the judge's analysis of the unlawful layoff without further comment. Charge filed by Local 713, International Brotherhood of Trade Unions. Administrative Law Judge Raymond P. Green issued his decision on August 30, 2011. Members Hayes, Griffin, and Block participated.
It was found that an employer, a commercial laundry company, violated the Act by: (1) warning the union's shop steward not to provide information about bargaining to employees; (2) warning employees not to provide information to the union; (3) warning employees not to speak about the union during the workday, including break and lunch times; (4) threatening to discharge employees if they participated in union or other protected activities; (5) threatening employees that the shop would be closed and they would be discharged if the employer had to accept the union's contract proposals; (6) threatening to discharge employees if they went on strike; (7) promising employees a wage increase and new benefits if the union no longer represented them; (8) polling employees as to whether they supported the union; (9) interrogating employees about their union membership, activities, and sympathies; (10) deducting union dues from employees' paychecks, but failing to remit those funds to the union; (11) issuing written warnings to, and then discharging, an employee for supporting the union; (12) failing to bargain in good faith with the union; (13) conditioning bargaining upon the commitment of the union to refrain from handbilling the employer's customers or engaging in any strike or picketing activity; (14) unilaterally stopping payments to various union funds; (15) unilaterally granting employees a wage increase; (16) refusing to bargain with the union because the union's shop steward was present; and (17) unilaterally implementing new rules regarding the union's access to unit employees at the facility. Charge filed by Laundry, Dry-Cleaning & Allied Workers Joint Board. Administrative Law Judge Steven Davis issued his decision on December 17, 2010. Chairman Pearce and Members Hayes and Griffin participated.

Full Text

Introduction

The end of wartime economic controls saw the revelation of previously pent-up demands by American workers for better wages. This led to a series of major labor strikes that polarized American attitudes toward unions, as occurred in the 1890s. In 1935, the Democratic-controlled Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act, establishing the right of most private-sector workers to form unions, bargain with management over wages and working conditions, and hold strikes to obtain their demands. The National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency, was established to oversee union elections and address unfair labor complaints.

President Roosevelt signed this legislation into law on July 5, 1935. A key principle of the NLRA is embodied in the concluding paragraph of section 1: "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. "

NLRA key principles also include:

Protecting a wide range of activities, whether a union is involved or not, in order to promote organization and collective bargaining
Protecting employees as a class and expressly not on the basis of a relationship with an employer
Allowance of one exclusive bargaining representative for a unit of employees
Promotion of the practice and procedure of collective bargaining
Employers' duty to bargain with the representative of its employees

Unfair Practices

The law defined and prohibited five unfair labor practices. These prohibitions still exist, while others have been added under subsequent legislation. The original employer unfair labor practices consisted of:

Interfering with, restraining or coercing employees in their rights under Section 7*
"Dominating" or interfering with the formation or administration of any labor organization
Discriminating against employees to encourage or discourage acts of support for a labor organization
Discriminating against employees who file charges or testify
Refusing to bargain collectively with the representative of the employer's employees

*Section 7 rights include: 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.

Amendments

In the decade following its passage, opponents of the Wagner Act introduced several hundred bills to amend and/or repeal the law. These bills either 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 similar to a proposed amendment 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 then be certified through a secret-ballot election conducted by the NLRB.

Labor

The National Labor Relations Act is to establish the right of most private-sector workers to form unions, bargain with management.

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