Wagner+Act+per8

National Labor Relations Act, aka Wagner Act by Julija Vinckeviciute

A video on the Wagner Act []





Fireside Chat: "Fellow Americans, I would like to address the issue of growing stikes and boycotts. Over the past few years, 1933 and 1934 especaily, there has been a clear rise of striking by unions and organized laborers. An increasing number of these strikes have resulted in violence between the employers and laborers. The stikes and violence can be minimized by an act recently propsed by Senator Robert R. Wagner of New York. The National Labor Relations Act, to be passed in 1935, will ensure the fair treatment of all laborers who choose to unionize and will provide secret elections for union leadership. It will guarantee employees '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 and protection.' In addition, I will appoint five members to oversee thirty-three other regional directors, all of whom will compose the National Labor Relations Board. This group of individuals will personally work to ensure that all issues between unions and employers are solved without resolving to violence. This act will apply to all interstate commerce employers, with the exception of airlines, railroads, agriculture, and government. I put great hopes that this act will not only effectively lessen violence, but also minimize the need to strike in general. Thank you."

Immediate Impact: The Wagner Act was certainly an immediate success. It was meant to encourage unions by preventing discrimination against those who joined labor unions. This achievement can be most clearly illustrated by the large increase of unionized laborers in the decade following the passage of the act in 1935. Even women were not left out of the loop. The number of women in unions increased threefold over ten years, reaching 800,000 by the late 1930's. Despite many trials, the Wagner Act was proved constitutional by the US Supreme Court in 1937 with the //National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corps//.



Long Lasting Impact: Though the program is still around today, the National Labor Relations Board was greatly diminished in power by the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 and the Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959. Nevertheless, today it continues to handle about 40,000 union-employer cases each year, of which about 7,000 are representation petitions.

Websites Used for information:

[]

[]

[]

[]