National Labor Relations Act

Legislation

By: Robert R. Wagner

Date: July 5, 1935

Source: 29th Congress of the United States. National Labor Relations Act. United States Code. Title 29, Chapter 7, Subchapter II. Available online at ?http://www.ourdocuments.gov/? (accessed April 24, 2006).

About the Author: Senator Robert R. Wagner of New York, a Democrat who served from 1927 to 1949, was the author of the National Labor Relations Act and helped to create the National Labor Relations Board. Wagner sponsored the Social Security Act as well as a wide range of other New Deal reforms.

INTRODUCTION

Organized labor unions in the United States began to gain power in the 1850s, as industrialization grew in the northern states. While guilds had been present during the colonial era and into the early 1800s, organized unions for all trade workers did not emerge until the 1820s; early attempts to control shift length or women's hours led to some successes.

In 1852, the Typographical Union formed the oldest continuing national union in the United States. In 1859, in Philadelphia iron molders created a union, and in 1866, the first national union, the National labor Union, was founded in Baltimore, Maryland. The NLU was a federation of local unions; its primary success was the passage of an eight hour workday for federal workers. By 1873, the NLU lost power during an economic depression, while the Knights of Labor, a new union, rose to prominence.

The Knights of Labor formed in 1869 as a trade union open to women, minorities (in 1883), and immigrants as well as native-born white men. Founder Uriah Stevens, a member of the Garment Cutter's Association, helped bring the union's messages of social revolution—not just economic protection—to the public. By the mid 1880s, the Knights of Labor platform of the eight hour work day, the end of child labor, equal pay regardless of gender, age, or race, and the elimination of the private banking system contrasted with the new national union, the American Federation of Labor, which worked with employers on a more pragmatic level with no element of social change in their platform.

Although the Knights of Labor experienced some successful strikes, the 1886 Haymarket Square Riot, a labor protest of 1500 workers that turned violent when a bomb exploded and killed eleven people, twisted public sentiment against the Knights of Labor. The American Federation of Labor, however, stepped in to fill the gap, but did not permit women and minorities to join.

As industrialization increased in the early 1900s and factories needed large numbers of skilled and unskilled workers, loosely regulated capitalism, with no government safety oversight or bureau of labor, created workplaces with high injury and death rates, high turnover, and increasing tension between workers and owners. The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in which 150 women and girls were killed ignited public outrage; the doors had been locked and chained from the inside by managers to prevent theft. The next year more than 50,000 textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, led by the Industrial Workers of the World, nicknamed the "Wobblies," went on strike. The strikers faced arrest, violence at the hands of police and militia, and women and children were attacked by police as they attempted to leave town. Local, state, and federal government officials and law enforcement found themselves caught between laborers and industrialists as labor conditions and corporate demands faced off in conflict.

The Department of Labor, founded in 1913, and the 1914 Clayton Act which protected the right to strike and boycott, helped labor unions to expand and advocate for workers. The economic boon of the 1920s, followed by the Great Depression, weakened unions; many employers took this opportunity to create "open shops" or only hire non-union members. Workers who attempted to join unions had faced opposition and intimidation at times throughout the development of unions; as anti-immigrant and anti-socialist sentiment increased in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s, some nativists began to equate unions with socialism and communism, using violence, strike breaking, and company unions to destroy the AFL and other unions.

In 1935, as part of the New Deal series of laws, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act.

PRIMARY SOURCE

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.

FINDINGS AND POLICIES Section 1. The denial by some employers of the right of employees to organize and the refusal by some employers to accept the procedure of collective bargaining lead to strikes and other forms of industrial strife or unrest, which have the intent or the necessary effect of burdening or obstructing commerce by (a) impairing the efficiency, safety, or operation of the instrumentalities of commerce; (b) occurring in the current of commerce; (c) materially affecting, restraining, or controlling the flow of raw materials or manufactured or processed goods from or into the channels of commerce, or the prices of such materials or goods in commerce; or (d) causing diminution of employment and wages in such volume as substantially to impair or disrupt the market for goods flowing from or into the channels of commerce.

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 substantially burdens and affects the flow of commerce, and tends to aggravate recurrent business depressions, by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners in industry and by preventing the stabilization of competitive wage rates and working conditions within and between industries.

Experience has proved that protection by law of the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively safeguards commerce from injury, impairment, or interruption, and promotes the flow of commerce by removing certain recognized sources of industrial strife and unrest, by encouraging practices fundamental to the friendly adjustment of industrial disputes arising out of differences as to wages, hours, or other working conditions, and by restoring equality of bargaining power between employers and employees.

Experience has further demonstrated that certain practices by some labor organizations, their officers, and members have the intent or the necessary effect of burdening or obstructing commerce by preventing the free flow of goods in such commerce through strikes and other forms of industrial unrest or through concerted activities which impair the interest of the public in the free flow of such commerce. The elimination of such practices is a necessary condition to the assurance of the rights herein guaranteed.

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.

SIGNIFICANCE

The National Labor Relations Act created the National Labor Relations Board, a government body that provides oversight for collective bargaining and the creation of unions. In addition, the NRLB investigates labor abuses, union concerns, and disputes. The NLRB conducts secret ballot elections in companies with employees who wish to develop unions. The National Labor Relations Act also protects workers' rights not to join or create unions; union organizers and coworkers cannot pressure others into union creation or membership under the law.

In 1947 Congress amended the act to prohibit unionization in four industries—airlines, railroads, agriculture, and government. The revision of the National Labor Relations Act, commonly called the Taft-Hartley Act, also curtailed union practices such as closed shops and certain forms of boycotting. In addition, the Taft-Hartley Act gave the federal government the power to use an injunction to stop a strike or a lockout if the strike or lockout caused harm to national interests. President Harry S. Truman vetoed the Taft-Hartley Act but Congress overrode his veto and the changes to the original National Labor Relations Act took effect on June 23, 1947.

The National Labor Relations Act and the Taft-Hartley Act have a long history of use. The federal government has used injunctions more than thirty times since its passage in 1947; President Richard Nixon used an injunction to break a dock strike in 1971. President Jimmy Carter invoked the Taft-Hartley Act during coal miner strikes in 1977 and 1978, President William J. Clinton in 1997 to avert an airline pilot strike, and in 2002 President George W. Bush used the provisions in the Taft-Hartley Act to stop a lockout started by shipping companies on west coast docks.

The National Labor Relations Board processes more than 30,000 cases of alleged unfair labor practices each year as part of its express mission, written into the original act, to promote industrial peace.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Dubofsky, Melvin. Hard Work: The Making of Labor History. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2000.

Fantasia, Rick and Kim Voss. Hard Work: Remaking the American Labor Movement. University of California Press, 2004.

Rosen, Ellen D. A Wobblie Life: IWW Organizer E.F. Doree. Wayne State University Press, 2004.

Web sites

FDR Library. "Franklin Roosevelt's Statement on the National Labor Relations Act (The Wagner Act)." ?http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnlrast.html? (accessed April 24, 2006).