Improving the Administration of the NLRA Without Statutory Change
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Description
For the first time in more than three decades, there is now considerable political momentum for the passage of significant pro-union amendments to the basic federal labor law, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA or Act). First enacted in 1935, the Act is administered by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board), an independent agency of the federal government. Five members serve on the Board when it is at full strength; the General Counsel of the agency is an independent office. The Act was amended to restrict union organizing and bargaining tactics in 1947 and 1959. Aside from the 1974 amendments that extended the Act's reach to the not-for-profit healthcare sector, there have been no further substantive changes in the statute. The Act has not been changed despite a plummeting unionization rate in private companies—from 35 % in the mid-1950s to under 80% today—and persistent complaints from the labor movement and its congressional allies, who argue that employer opposition, both lawful and unlawful, is eviscerating the rights of association and collective bargaining the Act supposedly safeguards. Labor's effort during the Carter administration to bolster NLRA remedies for unlawful employer conduct, the Labor Reform Act of 1977, did not gather enough support to overcome a threatened filibuster in the Senate. Twenty years later, President Clinton had his secretaries of labor and commerce appoint the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations, chaired by Harvard professor John T. Dunlop, who served as Secretary of Labor in the Ford administration. Though tempered by the 1994 midterm election results, the Dunlop Commission recommended greater access to employers' property by union organizers, quicker representation elections, and stronger remedies for employer violations. Those recommendations were not implemented. Since the Clinton administration, a rising chorus of voices among union-side practitioners and academics has questioned whether the NLRA has become obsolete.
Source Publication
Labor and Employment Law Initiatives and Proposals Under the Obama Administration: Proceedings of the New York University 62nd Annual Conference on Labor
Source Editors/Authors
Zev J. Eigen
Publication Date
2011
Recommended Citation
Estreicher, Samuel, "Improving the Administration of the NLRA Without Statutory Change" (2011). Faculty Chapters. 462.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/462
