National Labor Relations Act

Labor had long had a lower priority than business under the law. While lawmakers had done much to rationalize corporate and business activity, labor had received little protection to bargain and organize collectively. The labor movement was itself divided between elite craft workers and unskilled industrial laborers; therefore, the expectations of these two groups regarding government involvement were significantly different. The American Federation of Labor (AFL), which represented craft workers, had painstakingly established over the previous quarter-century a network of private agreements. Industrial workers, on the other hand, had increasingly resorted to strikes, sitins, and outright violence to coerce business into accepting their right to bargain and organize.

Even before the Roosevelt administration came to office, Congress had granted labor unions distinct legal personalities. The Norris-LaGuardia Act in 1932, for example, recognized that individual workers were unable to deal effectively with employers under prevailing economic conditions and, therefore, that they should be able to bring their collective strength to bear in support of themselves. The act treated unions as entities with rights and interests of their own, and it permitted them greater legal authority to engage in economic conflicts (e.g., strikes) and narrowed the grounds on which employers could obtain injunctions. The Norris-LaGuardia Act, however, contained no means of enforcing provisions for labor representation, leaving the unions to seek relief through the courts, where often in the past they had been treated hostilely.

The Depression produced increasing labor militancy. In 1934 alone there were about eighteen hundred strikes involving 1.5 million workers. This labor upheaval, coupled with the weak administration of the NIRA provisions governing labor, placed enormous pressure on the administration. Roosevelt only decided to accept stronger legislation when it became apparent that the NRA had collapsed administratively and that, in any case, the Supreme Court would likely declare the measure unconstitutional.

At the very last moment, the administration threw its support behind the Wagner Act, named after Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York. The National Labor Relations Act, ultimately passed by Congress in 1935, drew its authority from the commerce and due-process clauses of the Constitution. Wagner's constitutional reasoning was significant, for upon it rested the modern-day authority for federal labor law. He insisted that unfair labor practices, which the act enumerated, were actually burdens on interstate commerce that Congress was fully empowered to regulate and that restriction of those practices was not contrary to a substantive reading of due process of law. Although a friend of labor, Wagner cleverly operated on the premise that industrial peace, rather than the best interests of laborers, supported the legislation.

The act placed the weight of the federal government on the side of labor in the struggle to organize. It upheld the right of workers to join unions by outlawing many unfair management practices, such as blacklisting workers for union activities or failing to join a company union. The act established the nonpartisan National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to protect workers from employer coercion, to oversee elections for union representatives, and to enforce collective bargaining agreements. The NLRB, unlike the NRA, was given punitive powers to enforce its findings.

The act was a milestone in the history of U. S. labor law, but it had mixed

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implications for labor. Its passage meant that collective bargaining was guaranteed in a wide range of industries. Organized labor, for the first time, was permitted to participate directly in decisions about the shape of the U.S. economy, a goal it had been seeking since the beginning of the century. The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which was established the same year as the Wagner Act, was directly aided by the new law. The CIO undertook a highly successful, if sometimes violence-ridden organizing effort among the nation's unskilled workers; it drew, as well, unprecedented numbers of black and women workers into the ranks of organized labor. In this regard, the tangible social benefits of the Wagner Act were great indeed.

The act also reconstituted the practice of collective bargaining, "bringing this hitherto private activity fully within the regulatory ambit of the administrative state." ²⁰ The national government lent its authority to aid employees in creating the unions that could bargain collectively with employers. Federal involvement, however, was undertaken in the name of industrial peace and harmony, requiring the unions to act within the guidelines established by the NLRB. The effect of the New Deal legislation in changing actual working conditions was not revolutionary; collective bargaining, while surely an important gain, did not redistribute power in U.S. industry. The administrative regulations of the NLRB legitimated the role of labor in the economy without fundamentally altering the distribution of either wealth or authority.

Date: 2015-01-29; view: 551