What is the most extensive labor law in the United States?
The 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), also known as the Wagner Act, largely carried on the labor provisions of the 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act, which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the same year. The Act enshrined monopoly bargaining—that is, a union, once certified, became the sole bargaining agent for all employees at a given company. It also created a new juridical body, the National Labor Relations Board, which, as the late economist Hans Sennholz noted, “became prosecutor, judge, and jury, all in one.” And, said Sennholz, “Anything an employer might do in self-defense became an ‘unfair labor practice’ punishable by the Board.” The 1948 Taft-Hartley Act mitigated some of the NLRA’s worst effects, by allowing states to enact right-to-work laws, which prohibit making union membership a prerequisite for employment, but many of the Act’s problems persist today.
