National Labor Relations Board. The
National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (Wagner Act) established a three‐member National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to interpret and apply the act.As an independent quasi‐judicial administrative agency with the power to enforce its rulings, the NLRB decided cases through a formal adversary process and developed a body of binding case law.
After the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled the act constitutional in 1937, the NLRB, under chairman J. Warren Madden, initially enforced it vigorously and literally. An unlikely coalition of critics, including business interests, congressional conservatives, old‐style union leaders, and even President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, sought to weaken the board, however, and consequently it began to act more cautiously and less decisively on behalf of labor.
The 1947
Taft‐Hartley Act further limited the NLRB, restricting it to adjudicative responsibilities and creating the office of general counsel to investigate charges, prosecute complaints, and represent the agency in court proceedings. By the 1990s, the NLRB, headquartered in
Washington, D.C., had more than thirty regional offices across the United States.
The NLRB implements statutory language that, while broad, can also be unclear or ambiguous. In carrying out its statutory mandate, the board chooses among alternatives that affect opposed constituencies and that reflect conflicting views of what national labor policy should be. After 1954, when the NLRB had its first Republican‐appointed majority and general counsel, case doctrine underwent periodic modification depending on which political party held power. Democrats interpreted Taft‐Hartley in ways that encouraged collective bargaining and facilitated union organizing, while Republicans focused on provisions in Taft‐Harley protecting individual choice and the right to reject collective bargaining.
See also
Industrial Relations;
Labor Movements;
New Deal Era, The;
Strikes and Industrial Conflict.
Bibliography
James A. Gross , The Making of the National Labor Relations Board: A Study in Economics, Politics, and the Law, 1974.
James A. Gross , The Reshaping of the NLRB: National Labor Policy in Transition, 1937–1947, 1981.
James A. Gross , Broken Promise: The Subversion of U.S. Labor Relations Policy, 1947–1994, 1995.
James A. Gross