Labor Law

Labor Law

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The purpose of labor law is to protect the interests of employers and employees in the workplace. Labor laws grant employers and employees the right to engage in certain conduct such as collective bargaining, strikes, and lockouts, in pursuit of their demands.

In the United States the area of labor law is governed by federal and state statutory law, judicial decisions and regulations, and decisions of administrative agencies. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), also known as the Wagner Act, enacted by Congress on July 5, 1935, marks the foundation of modern U.S. labor law. The NLRA covers all employers and employees involved in businesses that affect interstate commerce. The NLRA protects workers’ rights to strike, associate freely with one another, join labor organizations, and bargain collectively without interference. The NLRA also prohibits employers and unions from engaging in “unfair labor practices” and requires both parties to engage in good-faith negotiations to resolve their disputes.

The NLRA was amended in 1947 by the Taft-Hartley Act (29 U.S.C. § 141 et seq.), which was aimed at reducing the number of industrial disputes and strengthening the power of employers in their dealings with unions. The Taft-Hartley Act was a response to problems that emerged during World War II (1939–1945), such as closed-shop and union-shop agreements, secondary boycotts, and strikes that often resulted in violence. Under a closed-shop agreement, employees are required to join the union as a precondition of employment. Closed shops are the opposite of open shops, which are characterized by the unlawful refusal to hire persons or give them preference in hiring based on their membership in a union. Union-shop agreements do not require employees to be union members as a precondition of employment, but do require employees to join the union or pay union dues within a set period of time after being hired.

The Taft-Hartley Act outlawed the closed shop in the United States, but permits the union shop in states that have not enacted “right-to-work” laws. Right-to-work laws are statutes that discourage collective bargaining and prohibit unions from making union membership a condition of employment. Currently, there are twenty-two states that have right-to-work laws, including Florida, Texas, Virginia, North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau, the share of jobs in the manufacturing sector rose from 25.4 in 1970 to 34.3 in 2000 in right-to-work states, and all right-to-work states registered a net gain in manufacturing payrolls despite the loss of nearly 875,000 manufacturing jobs nationwide during this period. Moreover, from 1978 to 2000, right-to-work states had lower average annual unemployment rates for all but five years. However, in 2000, per capita disposable income was approximately 10 percent higher in unionshop states than in right-to-work states, and both the poverty rate and income inequality remained higher in right-to-work states than in union-shop states.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) was established under the NLRA to hear disputes between employers and employees. The NLRB’s purpose is (1) to prevent and remedy unfair labor practices, whether committed by labor organizations or employers, and (2) to establish whether or not certain groups of employees desire labor organization representation for collective-bargaining purposes, and if so, which union. The NLRB is composed of five members whose five-year terms are staggered. There is a long-standing tradition that the board consist of a split in political party affiliation, usually a 3 to 2 split in favor of the president’s party. The president designates the chairman of the NLRB. The NLRB’s membership as of 2007 included Robert J. Battista (chairman), Wilma B. Liebman, Peter Carey Schaumber, Dennis P. Walsh, and Peter N. Kirsanow.

Usually, both labor and management are represented by attorneys who file grievances in writing with the NLRB, prepare and submit evidence, and argue their positions in the grievances. In cases where the employer-employee relationship is not governed by the NLRA, that relationship may be governed by other federal statutes such as the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Act (5 U.S.C. § 7101 et seq.) or the Railway Labor Act (29 U.S.C. § 101). State law may also govern the employer-employee relationship where federal statutes do not apply.

Since 2005, new labor legislation has been enacted in several states seeking to improve standards associated with child labor, drug and alcohol testing, equal employment opportunity, human trafficking, the minimum wage, the prevailing wage, time off, wages paid, and worker privacy, among other areas. Currently, seventeen states and the District of Columbia have a higher minimum-wage rate than the federal minimum-wage rate of $5.15 per hour. Kansas and Ohio are the only two states with a minimumwage rate lower than the federal rate.

The labor movement has been instrumental in the establishment of laws protecting workers’ rights around the globe. For example, over 90 percent of all nations have some kind of minimum wage law. Eighteen out of twenty-seven members of the European Union have national minimum wages, and the People’s Republic of China, too, has established a monthly minimum wage for full-time workers and an hourly minimum wage for part-time workers. Moreover, labor-rights advocates in Europe have had success pushing through legislation that strengthens maternity and paternity rights and protects individuals from discrimination on the basis of age, religion, and sexual orientation, as well as gender, race and disability. The 35-hour maximum work week in France and the Working Time Directive in the United Kingdom, which covers working time, rest breaks, and the right to paid annual leave, are two of the most progressive pieces of labor legislation.

With the growth of democracy and capitalism worldwide, labor law will become more important in balancing the interests of employers and employees in the twenty-first century.

SEE ALSO Employment; Labor; Law; Occupational Safety; Regulation; Unions; Wages; Work; Work Week

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gould, William B. 1994. A Primer on American Labor Law. 4th ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Labor and Labor Relations. 1994. American Jurisprudence 48 (2nd. ed.) §§ 1–7. Rochester, NY: Lawyers Cooperative Publishing.

Rifkin, Bernard, and Susan Rifkin. 1979. American Labor Sourcebook. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Wilson, William T. 2002. The Effect of Right-to-Work Laws on Economic Development. A Mackinac Center for Public Policy Report. Midland, MI: Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Klint W. Alexander