National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act)

National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act). Signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on 5 July 1935, and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1937, the act was a major part of FDR's New Deal revolution. Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York, who supervised the drafting of the act, asserted that its provisions embodied two principles: first, that there must be democracy in industry as in government; second, that workers can participate in the decisions that affect their workplace lives only if allowed to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing.

The Wagner Act constituted a fundamental change in labor policy, particularly in regard to the government's role in labor relations. As a matter of policy, the act committed the U.S. government to encourage collective bargaining and to protect “the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self‐organization, and designation of representatives of their choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection.” After the Wagner Act, union recognition was a right, no longer something to be decided by economic warfare.

The act outlawed employer interference with or coercion of employees' statutory rights to organize, to bargain collectively, and to engage in strikes and picketing. In addition, it required employers to bargain collectively with their employees' chosen representatives. The Wagner Act established a National Labor Relations Board to implement and enforce its provisions.

The Wagner Act also sought to create labor peace as well as to promote economic recovery by increasing workers' earnings and purchasing power. Yet the law was vigorously opposed by employers, most of the press, and the legal community, all of whom claimed that it was either impractical or unconstitutional. The Communist party opposed it as well, warning of government control of unions and a consequent loss of the right to strike.

In part because of the Wagner Act, the giant steel, automobile, rubber, and electrical industries were unionized and obliged to bargain with their employees' representatives. Most significantly, the Wagner Act established the most democratic procedure in U.S. labor history for the participation of workers in the determination of their wages, hours, and working conditions.
See also Automotive Industry; Industrial Relations; Iron and Steel Industries; Labor Movements; New Deal Era, The; Strikes and Industrial Conflict.

Bibliography

Irving Bernstein , The New Deal Collective Bargaining Policy, 1950.
Milton Derber , The American Ideal of Industrial Democracy, 1865–1965, 1970.
Peter H. Irons , The New Deal Lawyers, 1982.

James A. Gross