National Labor Relations Essay

Since the enactment of the Wagner Act, there has been a dramatic change in the way employment is handled between managers and employees. Employees have been given more of a chance to decide what they want at work, and are able to negotiate with their employers. They have the opportunity to discuss wage, hours, over time, etc. Previously, employees had little to no say in decisions that were made regarding their employment and basically had to be “yes men” for the employers. It prevented employers from firing people in unions, as well as people who were sympathetic to unions. Retracting these laws that have been put into place would be an egregious error. They are there in order to protect employees, regardless of whether they are in a

This law is also known as the Wagner Act, named for Senator Robert F. Wagner, the man who championed it. In a nutshell this law protects employees’ rights to form and participate in labor unions. The book, Labor Relations: Striking a Balance identifies the central provisions of the Act. These provisions include the establishment of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) which answers representation questions and settles unfair labor practice claims. The act gives workers the right to form unions and bargain collectively. It identifies five unfair labor practices and “establishes exclusive representation for unions that have majority support and grants them rights of collective bargaining over wages, hours of employment and other conditions of employment” (Budd, 2010, pp. 119-121). The law also made it illegal for companies to fire employees for forming or joining unions and prohibited company managed unions.

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), also known as the Wagner Act, was enacted in Congress in 1935 and became one of the most important legacies of the New Deal. Prior to the passage of the NLRA, employers had been free to spy on, interrogate, discipline, discharge, and blacklist union members. Reversing years of federal opposition, the statute guaranteed the right of employees to organize labor unions, to engage in collective bargaining, and to take part in strikes. The act also created a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to arbitrate deadlocked labor-management disputes, guarantee democratic union elections, and penalize unfair labor practices by employers. The law applied to all employees involved in the interstate

The National Labor Relations Act seeks to promote collective bargaining to resolve employer and employee concerns. Because many agreements between labor and management sometimes affect and/or restrain competition under the context of the Sherman Act of 1890, a

NLRA was considered to be the law that affected the relationship among the federal government and private enterprise; this measure considerably increased the government’s powers to arbitrate in labor relations. Prior to this law, employers had the emancipation to chastise, spy on, question for no reason and fire union members. Work stoppages commenced in the mid 1930’s (Gould, 1986), which included striking by factory and industrial occupational workers. By the time the strikes came to a halt, America had a more conservative Congress. This Congress led to balance the power between employers and unions. While the Wagner Act addressed only unfair labor practices by employers, it was added to the enactment of

The Taft-Hartley Act was passed in 1947 to protect the employee’s rights from the union and their unfair practices ("1947 Taft-Hartley Substantive Provisions | NLRB," n.d). The ACT changed the language of the Wagner ACT, to protect the employees who did not want to participate in union activities but they were required to become a member as one of the conditions when they were hired ("1947 Taft-Hartley Substantive Provisions | NLRB," n.d.). Another change made to protect the employees was stopping the union from overcharging the dues and fees. The amendment also noted that unions had an obligation to all members to bargain in good faith ("1947 Taft-Hartley Substantive Provisions | NLRB," n.d.).

This act includes protecting employees’ rights to self-organization and freedom, removing diplomatic labor dispute authority as of federal courts, and prohibition the yellow dog convention that proscribed a employee on or after synthesis a labor union as a phrase of employment.

The recent decision made by the National Labor Relations Board granted collective bargaining rights to graduate student workers and researchers. The focus on the decision was primarily based on the wording or a statutory employee as defined in Section (2)3 of the National Labor Relations Act and ultimately the reversal of the 2004 Brown University decision against the groups legitimate reasoning and desire to unionize. University administrators were against student worker unionization and cited that academy freedom would be encroached on as well as a deteriorated student-faculty relationship. Proponents to the decision cite poor wages, limited access to healthcare and respect as well as empirical evidence discrediting administrator’s claims as making unionization the most viable option.

The Court held an employer could not be compelled by the Act to do so if other channels of communication are available that allows the union to reach the employees, provided that the employer does not discriminate against the union by allowing other distributions. The Supreme Court stated that so long as the circumstances of the employment do not "place the employees beyond the reach of reasonable union efforts to communicate with them," respect for the employer 's property rights allow it to prohibit nonemployee access to its property. In doing so, the Court specifically differentiated the access rights of employees from those of nonemployees. The distinction [between employees and nonemployees] is one of substance. No restriction may be placed on the employees ' right to discuss self-organization among themselves unless the employer can demonstrate that a restriction is necessary to maintain production or discipline. Republic Aviation Corp. v. Labor Board, 324 U.S. 793, 803. But no such obligation is owed nonemployee organizers.” Ted Scott and Sara B. Kalis, Littler Mendelson, P.C.1.

During an organizing drive, federal labor law requires that management remain neutral and that they not interfere with, restrain or coerce any employee in the exercise of his or rights under the

employees exercising the rights they are entitled to. One of these rights I found was the right of

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) started in July 1935 to protect the rights of employees, rather, they be union or nor-union employees (Pozgar, 2012). The employees are protected under the Act or may employ in bubble-like, rigorous goings-on in situations other than the customary union organizations and cooperative bargaining. The National Labor Relations Board regulates the employers from interfering with the rights of the employees to implement or organize and join with a groups that offers assists with collective bargaining purposes like organization union or joining one (Pozgar, 2012). The employer may not restrain, coerce or stop employees

The National Labor Relations Act was enacted by congress in 1935 in order to define and defend the rights of the employment relationship. The act allows employees of a company the right to form a union and have the union organization represent them through collective bargaining. Collective bargaining is the process of negotiation between both parties; Union representatives and a corporation, with the purpose of reaching an agreement for the best interests of employees and the corporation. In the negotiation process the attempt is to establish primary factors of importance which are advantages the union fights for and ultimately provide for its stakeholders that would otherwise not have

Employment or labor laws have been developed to facilitate smooth relationship between employers and employees. Employment laws provide rules and regulations that should govern both the employer and the employees in their places of work. Employment laws discuss issues related to child labor, wages and salaries, retirement, working conditions, compensations, incentives and employment benefits among others. The major objective is to ensure the employer does not exploit the employee and on the other hand, the employee honors the terms and conditions of the job as presented by the employer.

Depending on which side – management or labor – is interested, calls for labor law reform are frequent (Fossum, pg.90, 2015). In general, labor favors reforms that would improve opportunities to organize and speed the process by which employees decide whether to be represented and provide