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University of California Law Review Article Summary

Labor Law-Directory of Labor Law Statutes

The goal of labor laws is to equalize the bargaining power between employers and employees. The laws primarily deal with the relationship between employers and unions. Labor laws grant employees the right to unionize and allows employers and employees to engage in certain activities (e.g. strikes, picketing, seeking injunctions, lockouts) so as to have their demands fulfilled.

The area of labor law is governed by both federal law, state law and judicial decisions. It is also governed by regulations and decisions of administrative agencies and by federal court application of stutory and review of administrative decisions. States are preempted from interfering with federal statutory law or with the guidelines promulgated by agencies established under federal law or by the U.S. Constitution. See U.S. Constitution , Art. VI.

The National Labor Relations Act is the primary body of federal 
law controlling labor-management relations in private industry. 
The Act was shaped in three major cycles: (1) the Wagner Act in 1935,  (2) the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 and (3) the Landrum-Griffin Act in 1959. 

The basic principle of the NLRA is to be found in its section 7, 
granting to employees the right to form labor organizations, to deal 
collective­ly through such organizations regarding terms. and 
conditions of em­ployment and to engage in concerted activities in 
support of these other rights. The statute can best be understood 
as an effort by the Congress to create the conditions of industrial 
peace in interstate commerce by removing obstacles to-indeed, 
encouraging-the formation of labor unions as an effective voice 
for the individual worker. See Labor Law; Unionization And Collective Bargaining, Robert A. Gorman, American Case Book Series, West Publishing

Simultaneously, in the early years of the twentieth century, the federal courts were also active in enjoining concerted 
labor activities, in part through the diversity-of-citizenship 
jurisdiction (under which it was thought appropriate to formulate rules of federal common law independent of those obtaining in the courts of the state) and in part through the jurisdiction accorded by the federal antitrust laws. 

The Sherman Act of 1890 declared illegal "every contract, combination  or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States," and provided in such cases for government injunction, criminal prosecution and private treble‑damage actions; the Clayton Act of 1914 added the private injunctive action to the arsenal of sanctions 
for the antitrust violation. Although obviously designed to counter the abuse of power by manufacturers in combining to set price and supply in the product market, the Sherman Act was applied yet more frequently by the lower federal courts to labor unions. And, in 1908, the Supreme Court in Loewe v. Lawlor (U.S.1908), a case involving a boycott by the hatters' union of retail stores which continued to do business with the struck hat manufacturer, held such a secondary boycott to be outlawed by the Sherman Act and sustained a private judgment for treble damages against the individual employee defendants.

The Clayton Act of 1914 was designed to withdraw the power of federal courts to regulate labor activities through the antitrust laws. Section 20 of the Act listed the conventional concerted activities such as strikes, picketing and boycotts, and declared these to be nonenjoin­able and not violative of the Sherman Act. But that section was very narrowly construed by the Supreme Court in Duplex Printing Press Co. v. Deering (U.S.1921), and held not to shelter the second­ary boycott because of the lack of a direct employment relationship between the defendant employees and the company which was the ultimate object of the boycott. The legislative response was the enact­ment by Congress in 1932 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act. That statute declared it to be the public policy of the United States that employees be permitted to organize and bargain collectively free of employer coercion and sought to achieve that goal by regulating and in most cases barring altogether the issuance of injunctions in a "labor dispute." That term was broadly defined so as to engross all persons in the same trade as that in which the dispute occurred or persons hav­ing an indirect interest therein, regardless of any proximate employ­ment relationship. Peaceful strikes, picketing and boycotts were sheltered against the injunction and, in the extraordinary cases in which an injunction could lawfully issue, the Act imposed limitations upon the duration of restraining orders and provided for full and fair hearings for preliminary injunctions, specificity of allegations and court findings, and trial by jury and recusal of the judge in contempt proceedings.

In Apex Hosiery Co. v. Leader (U.S.1940), the Supreme Court drastically limited the reach of the Sherman Act as applied to labor unions, acknowledging that even anticompetitive impact in the prod­uct market is an allowable byproduct of a union's lawful attempt to eliminate competition from nonunion goods as a means of protecting organizational gains elsewhere. And the next year, in United States v. Hutcheson (U.S.1941) , the Court held the broad protections of the Norris-LaGuardia Act not only to bar injunctions against labor activ­ities but also to immunize them against antitrust actions for treble damages and criminal relief.

With the Wagner Act, or National Labor Relations Act of 1935, Congress announced a more affirmative policy. Drawing upon antecedents in the Erdman Act and the Railway Labor Act and under the War Labor Board, Congress in Section 7 of the NLRA declared to be federally protected "the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representa­tives of their own choosing, and to engage in concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protec­tion." Section 8 went on to declare illegal certain employer acts, such as restraint, interference or coercion of employees in the exercise of their section 7 rights; domination of unions; discrimination in terms of employment so as to discourage union membership; and refusal to bargain in good faith with the majority employee repre­sentative. These "unfair labor practices" were to be monitored through judicial-type proceedings before a newly created administra­tive agency, the National Labor Relations Board. The Board was also empowered, under section 9, to conduct secret elections by which employees could freely select a labor organization to represent them in dealing with their employer. The Board was authorized to order the employer to remedy its unfair labor practices, and such Board or­ders were made enforceable or reviewable in the United States courts of appeals. The National Labor Relations Act was sustained by the Supreme Court against constitutional attack in NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. (U.S.1937).

In 1935, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was enacted by Congress, under its power to regulate interstate commerce, to govern the employer/employee bargaining and union relationship on a national level. The NLRA was amended by the Labor Management Relations (Taft-Hartley) Act in 1947 and the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure (Landrum-Griffen) Act in 1959. Most employers and employees involved in businesses that affect interstate commerce are regulated by the act. The NLRA established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to hear disputes between employers and employees arising under the act and to determine which labor organization will represent a unit of employees. The act also establishes a General Council to independently investigate and prosecute cases against violators of the act before the NLRB. The rights of employees to join labor organizations and collectively bargain is also ensured. The NLRA prohibits employers and unions from engaging in specified "unfair labor practices" and establishes an obligation of both parties to engage in good faith collective bargaining. The act also establishes guidelines and regulations to determine what union will represent a given set of employees. The right to strike is guaranteed by the NLRA. If there is a conflict between the NLRA and the Bankruptcy Code, the NLRA generally prevails.

Employers and employees not subject to the NLRA may have their relationships governed by other federal or state statutes. The Railway Labor Act governs labor relations in the railway and airline industries. The employees and agencies in the federal public sector are subject to the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Act (FSLMRA), which is administered by the Federal Labor Relations Authority.

The Norris-LaGuardia Act was passed in 1932. Its main effect was to limit the power of federal courts to issue injunctions prohibiting unions from engaging in strikes and other coercive activities.

States extensively regulate the employer/employee bargaining relationship. They may regulate employers and employees not covered by the NLRA.

Twelve years later, in 1959, the basic federal Labor Act was amended further. The Landrum‑Griffin Act, also known as the La­bor‑Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, was addressed pri­marily to the problems of corruption within union leadership, which was to be cured by elaborate reporting requirements, and of undemo­cratic conduct of internal union affairs, which was to be cured by a "bill of rights" for union members in such matters as union meetings and elections, eligibility for office, and union disciplinary procedures. The Landrum‑Griffin Act also imposed further regulation of union activities by amendments to the unfair labor practice provisions en­acted in the Taft-Hartley Act. Certain "loopholes" in the secondary­boycott provisions were closed; for example, certain forms of appeals to consumers (rather than employees) of "neutral" employers were outlawed, as were "hot cargo" provisions in collective bargaining agreements. And more substantial restrictions were placed upon picketing to organize employees or to secure bargaining rights.

It is the unfair labor practice and representation-election provi­sions of these three Congressional acts‑which will frequently be re­ferred to generically as the Labor Act‑which are the subject of labor law.

Federal Statutes

• 29 U.S.C. - Labor
  • Labor Management Relations (Taft-Hartley) Act - 29 U.S.C. § 141 et seq. (1947).
  • Norris-LaGuardia Act - 29 U.S.C. § 101 (1932)
  • Landrum-Griffin Act Labor-Management Reporting And Disclosure Act (LMRD) 29 U,S.C. Ch. 11 §§ 401-531 (1959)
• Railway Labor Act - 45 U.S.C. § 151 et seq.
• Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Act (FSLMRA) - 5 U.S.C. § 7101 et seq.

  Related Federal Statutes

• Sherman Antitrust Act

• RICO

  Federal Regulations

• 29 C.F.R.

  Federal Judicial Decisions

• U.S. Supreme Court:
  • Historic Labor Law Decisions
  • Recent Labor Law Decisions
• Recent U.S. Court of Appeals Labor Law Decisions

State Statutes

• State Statutes concerning:
  • Labor
  • Labor and Industrial Safety

  • Unemployment

State Judicial Decisions

             Labor Unions

• Teamstrs Union Local 890

• Teamsters On Line

• International Longshore And Warehouse Union

• AFL-CIO-Main Page

Useful Offnet (or Subscription - $) Sources

• IHS Peopleworks
• Good Starting Point in Print: Mark A. Rothstein et al., Rothstein, Craver, Schroeder, Shoben, and Vander Velde's Hornbook on Employment Law, West Group (1991).
• LII Disk Materials

Other Employment Law Topics