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Saturday, July 11, 2020

National Labor Relations Board

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
National Labor Relations Board
NLRB
National Labor Relations Board logo - color.jpg
Agency overview
FormedJuly 5, 1935; 85 years ago
Preceding agencies
JurisdictionFederal government of the United States
HeadquartersWashington, D.C.
Employees1,628 (2008)
Agency executives
Parent agencyExecutive Office of the President of the United States
Websitenlrb.gov

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is an independent agency of the federal government of the United States with responsibilities for enforcing U.S. labor law in relation to collective bargaining and unfair labor practices. Under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 it supervises elections for labor union representation and can investigate and remedy unfair labor practices. Unfair labor practices may involve union-related situations or instances of protected concerted activity. The NLRB is governed by a five-person board and a General Counsel, all of whom are appointed by the President with the consent of the Senate. Board members are appointed to five-year terms and the General Counsel is appointed to a four-year term. The General Counsel acts as a prosecutor and the Board acts as an appellate quasi-judicial body from decisions of administrative law judges.

The NLRB is headquartered at 1015 Half St. SE, Washington, D.C., with over 30 regional, sub-regional and residential offices throughout the United States.

History

1933–1935: First collective bargaining organization 'National Labor Board'

The history of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) can be traced to enactment of the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933. Section 7(a) of the act protected collective bargaining rights for unions, but was difficult to enforce. A massive wave of union organizing was punctuated by employer and union violence, general strikes, and recognition strikes. The National Industrial Recovery Act was administered by the National Recovery Administration (NRA). At the outset, NRA Administrator Hugh S. Johnson believed that Section 7(a) would be self-enforcing, but the tremendous labor unrest proved him wrong. On August 5, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the establishment of the National Labor Board, under the auspices of the NRA, to implement the collective bargaining provisions of Section 7(a).

The National Labor Board (NLB) established a system of 20 regional boards to handle the immense caseload. Each regional board had a representative designated by local labor unions, local employers, and a "public" representative. All were unpaid. The public representative acted as the chair. The regional boards could hold hearings and propose settlements to disputes. Initially, they lacked authority to order representation elections, but this changed after Roosevelt issued additional executive orders on February 1 and February 23, 1934.

The NLB, too, proved ineffective. Congress passed Public Resolution No. 44 on June 19, 1934, which empowered the president to appoint a new labor board with authority to issue subpoenas, hold elections, and mediate labor disputes. On June 29, President Roosevelt abolished the NLB and in Executive Order 6763 established a new, three-member National Labor Relations Board.

Lloyd K. Garrison was the first Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board (often referred to by scholars the "First NLRB" or "Old NLRB"). The "First NLRB" established organizational structures which continue at the NLRB in the 21st century. This includes the regional structure of the board; the use of administrative law judges and regional hearing officers to initially rule on cases; an appeal process to the national board; and the use of expert staff, organized into various divisions, at the national level. Formally, Garrison established the:
  • Executive Office, which handled administrative activities of the national and regionalsit boards, field staff, and Legal Division. It was overseen by an Executive Secretary.
  • Examining Division, national staff which conducted field investigations and assisted the regional boards with adjudications, hearings, and representative elections.
  • Information Division, which provided the press and public with news.
  • Legal Division, which assisted the Department of Justice in seeking compliance with board decisions in the courts, or in responding to suits brought about by board decisions.
  • Research Division, which studied decisions of the regional boards so that a comprehensive labor law might be developed, and studied the economics of each case.
Within a year, however, most of the jurisdiction of the "First NLRB" was stripped away. Its decisions in the automobile, newspaper, textile, and steel industries proved so volatile that Roosevelt himself often removed these cases from the board's jurisdiction. Several federal court decisions further limited the board's power. Senator Robert F. Wagner (DNY) subsequently pushed legislation through Congress to give a statutory basis to federal labor policy that survived court scrutiny. On July 5, 1935, a new law—the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA, also known as the Wagner Act)—superseded the NIRA and established a new, long-lasting federal labor policy. The NLRA designated the National Labor Relations Board as the implementing agency.

1935–1939: Constitutionality, communism, and organizational changes

J. Warren Madden (left), Nathan Witt, and Charles Fahy (right) reviewing documents before a congressional hearing on December 13, 1937.

The first Chairman of the "new" NLRB was J. Warren Madden, professor of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Madden largely confirmed the previous structure of the "first NLRB" by formally establishing five divisions within the agency:
  • Administrative Division: Oversaw all administrative activities of national and regional boards and their finances; led by Secretary
  • Economic Division: Analyzed economic evidence in cases; made studies of economics of labor relations for use by board and courts; supervised by Chief Industrial Economist; also known as the Technical Service Division
  • Legal Division: Handled NLRB either decisions appealed to courts or cases in which NLRB sought enforcement of its decisions; overseen by General Counsel (hired by NLRB board); comprised two subdivisions:
    • Litigation Section: Advised national and regional boards, prepared briefs, worked with Justice Department
    • Review Section: Analyzed regional hearings and decisions; issued interpretations of law; prepared forms; drafted regulations
  • Publications Division: Handled all press and public inquiries; published decisions of national and regional boards and their rules and regulations; overseen by Director of Publications
  • Trial Examining Division: Held hearings before the national board; overseen by Chief Trial Examiner
Benedict Wolf served as first Secretary of the NLRB, Charles H. Fahy the first General Counsel, and David J. Saposs the first Chief Industrial Economist. Wolf resigned in mid-1937, and Nathan Witt, an attorney in the Legal Division, was named Secretary in October.

The Economic Division was a critical one for the NLRB. Cause-and-effect was one of the fundamental assumptions of the National Labor Relations Act, and for the causes of labor unrest to be understood economic analysis was needed. From the start, the Economic Division undertook three important tasks: 1) Gather economic data in support of cases before the courts; 2) Conduct general studies of labor relations to guide the board in formulating decisions and policies; and 3) Research the history of labor relations (the history of written agreements, whether certain issues were historically part of collective bargaining, how unions functioned internally, trends in employer activities, trends in collective bargaining, whether certain employer actions led to labor disputes, etc.) so that the board could educate itself, the courts, Congress, and the public about labor relations. The first function proved critical to the survival of the NLRB. It was the Economic Division's data and analysis, more than then NLRB's legal reasoning, which proved critical in persuading the Supreme Court to sustain the Wagner Act in NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel. The Court even cited several Economic Division studies in its decision. In the wake of Jones & Laughlin Steel, many labor relations experts outside the agency concluded that economic analysis was "an accepted fact" essential to the proper functioning of the agency. The Economic Division did, too. It asked Madden to pair an economist with an attorney in every important case, and prepared outline of the economic data needed to support each case in case it went before the courts.

During his time on the NLRB, Madden was often opposed by the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which believed that Madden was using the NLRA and the procedures and staff of the NLRB to favor the AFL's primary competitor, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The NLRB and NLRA were also under intense pressure from employers, the press, congressional Republicans, and conservative Democrats.

The NLRB's Economic Division proved critical in pushing for a congressional investigation into employer anti-union activities, and ensuring that investigation was a success. The Economic Division was deeply aware of employer use of labor spies, violence, and company unions to thwart union organizing, and quietly pressed for a congressional investigation into these and other tactics. Senator Robert M. La Follette, Jr. took up the suggestion, on June 6, 1936, the Senate Committee on Education and Labor established a Subcommittee Investigating Violations of Free Speech and the Rights of Labor chaired by La Follette. Better known as the "La Follette Committee", the subcommittee held extensive hearings for five years and published numerous reports. The committee uncovered extensive evidence of millions of company dollars used to pay for spies and fifth columnists within unions, exposed the culpability of local law enforcement in acts of violence and murder against union supporters (particularly in the Harlan County War), revealed the wide extent of illegal blacklisting of union members, and exposed the use of armed strikebreakers and widespread stockpiling of tear gas, vomit gas, machine guns, mortars, and armor by corporations to use against strikers. Some of the evidence the committee used was provided by the Economic Division, and the investigation proved critical for a time in defending the agency from business and congressional attack.

The biggest issue the NLRB faced was constitutional. The Justice Department and NLRB legal staff wanted the Supreme Court to rule as quickly as possible on the constitutionality of the NLRA. But the Board and Justice Department also realized that the Court's Lochner era legal philosophy made it unlikely for the Court to uphold the Act. Subsequently, Madden strove to resolve minor cases before they could become court challenges, and worked to delay appeals as long as possible until the best possible case could be brought to the Court. This legal strategy paid off. The Supreme Court upheld the NLRA in National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, 301 U.S. 1 (1937). Afterward, Madden continued to strategically guide the NLRB's legal efforts to strengthen the federal courts' view of the NLRA and the board's actions. Because of the efforts of Madden and NLRB General Counsel Charles H. Fahy, the Supreme Court reviewed only 27 cases between August 1935 and March 1941, even though the board had processed nearly 5,000 cases since its inception. The Supreme Court enforced the NLRB's rulings in 19 cases without modifying them, enforced them with modification in six more, and denied enforcement in two cases. Additionally, the Board won all 30 injunction and all 16 representation cases before the lower courts, a rate of success unequalled by any other federal agency.

AFL opposition to the "Madden Board" grew after decisions in Shipowners' Ass'n of the Pacific Coast, 7 NLRB 1002 (1938), enf'd American Federation of Labor v. National Labor Relations Board, 308 U.S. 401 (1940) (awarding a longshoremen's unit to the CIO rather than the AFL), and American Can Co., 13 NLRB 1252 (1939) (unit's history of collective bargaining outweighs desire of workers to form craft-only unit).

The AFL began pushing for an investigation into the NLRB, and this investigation led to allegations of communist influence within the agency. In June 1938, the House Un-American Activities Committee (led by Chairman Martin Dies, Jr. [D-TX]) heard testimony from AFL leader John P. Frey, who accused Madden of staffing the NLRB with communists. The allegations were true, in at least one case: Nathan Witt, the NLRB's executive secretary and the man to whom Madden had delegated most administrative functions, was a member of the Communist Party of the United States. These allegations and discoveries significantly damaged the agency's support in Congress and with the public.

A second investigation into the NLRB led to organizational changes at the board. On July 20, 1939, Republicans and conservative Democrats formed a coalition to push through the House of Representatives a resolution establishing a Special Committee to Investigate the National Labor Relations Board (the "Smith Committee"), chaired by conservative, anti-labor Rep. Howard W. Smith (D-VA). On March 7, 1940, the Smith Committee proposed legislation to abolish the NLRB, reconstitute it, and radically amend the NLRA. President Roosevelt opposed the bill, although he conceded that perhaps the Board's membership should be expanded to five from three. The Smith bill won several early tests in the House, which also voted to substantially cut the NLRB's budget. Smith won a vote in the House Rules Committee permitting him to bring his bill to the floor for a vote. In an attempt to defuse the legislative crisis, Madden fired 53 staff and forced another five to resign, and decentralized the NLRB's trial process to give regional directors and field agents more authority. But the House still passed the Smith bill by a vote of 258 to 129 on June 7, 1940. To protect the NLRB, Roosevelt convinced Senator Elbert D. Thomas, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, to hold no hearings or votes on the bill, and the legislation died.

The Smith Committee investigation had a lasting effect on labor law in the U.S., and was the basis for the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. Madden's term on the NLRB came to an end after just four years. On November 15, 1940, President Roosevelt nominated Harry A. Millis to the NLRB and named him Chairman, and nominated Madden to a seat on the U.S. Court of Claims.

1940–1945: The Economics Division and World War II

Another major structural change occurred at the same time that Madden left the NLRB. The Smith committee's anti-communist drive also targeted David J. Saposs, the NLRB Chief Industrial Economist. Saposs had been surreptitiously assessed by members of the Communist Party USA for membership, and rejected as a prospect. But Smith and others attacked Saposs as a communist, and Congress defunded his division and his job on October 11, 1940. Although the Smith committee's investigation proved critical, the disestablishment of the Economic Division was due to many reasons—both internal and external to the NLRB, and only some of which involved allegations of communist infiltration. As historian James A. Gross observed:
The Division was eliminated for all kinds of reasons which had nothing to do with the merits and importance of its work: political pressures and maneuverings, jealousy and empire building between and among lawyers and economists inside the Board, opposition to leftist ideologies, a personal attack on the Chief Economist, David Saposs, and a mighty hostility to the administrative process.
The loss of the Economic Division was a major blow to the NLRB. It had a major tactical impact: Economic data helped the NLRB fulfill its adjudicatorial and prosecutorial work in areas such as unfair labor practices (ULPs), representation elections, and in determining remedial actions (such as reinstatement, back pay awards, and fines). Economic data also undermined employer resistance to the agency by linking that opposition to employer ULPs. The loss also left the board dependent on the biased information offered by the parties in dispute before it, leading to poor decision-making and far less success in the courts. It also had a major strategic impact: It left the board unable to determine whether its administration of the law was effective or not. Nor could the board determine whether labor unrest was a serious threat to the economy or not. As labor historian Josiah Bartlett Lambert put it: "Without the Economic Research Division, the NLRB could not undertake empirical studies to determine the actual impact of secondary boycotts, jurisdictional strikes, national emergency strikes, and the like." The Economic Division was critical to a long-range NLRB process to lead to the long-term evolution of industrial labor relations in the U.S., but that goal had to be abandoned. Most importantly, however, the evisceration of the Economic Division struck at the fundamental purpose of federal labor law, which was to allow experts to adjudicate labor disputes rather than use a legal process. With this data and analysis, widespread skepticism about the board's expertise quickly spread through Congress and the courts. It also left the board largely unable to engage in rule-making, forcing it to make labor law on an inefficient, time-consuming case-by-case basis. As of 1981, NLRB was still the only federal agency forbidden to seek economic information about the impact of its activities.

The second Chairman of the NLRB, Harry A. Millis, led the board in a much more moderate direction. Lacking an economic division to give it ammunition to fight with Millis deliberately made the NLRB dependent on Congress and the executive branch for its survival. Millis made a large number of organizational changes. He stripped the office of Secretary of its power, set up an Administrative Division to supervise the 22 regional offices, initiated a study of the Board's administrative procedures, and genuinely delegated power to the regional offices. He removed casehandling and regional office communication from the jurisdiction of the Office of the Secretary and created a Field Division. He also adopted procedures requiring the board made its decisions based solely on the trial examiner's report, authorized NLRB review attorneys to review trial examiner report, required decisions to be drafted ahead of time and distributed for review, authorized review attorneys to revise drafts before a final decision was issued, required trial examiners to emphasize findings of fact and to address points of law, and began holding board meetings when there were differences of opinion over decisions.

Millis eliminated the Review Division's decisive role in cases, which had been established under Madden and Witt. Madden and Witt had adopted a highly centralized Board structure so that (generally speaking) only the cases most favorable to the board made it to the courts. The centralized structure meant that only the strongest cases made it to national board, so that the board could apply all its economic and legal powers to crafting the best decision possible. This strategy enabled the NLRB to defend itself very well before the Supreme Court. But Madden and Witt had held on to the centralized strategy too long, and made political enemies in the process. Millis substituted a decentralized process in which the board was less a decision-maker and more a provider of services to the regions. Many of the changes Millis instituted were designed to mimic requirements placed on other agencies by the Administrative Procedure Act.

American entry into World War II on December 8, 1941, significantly changed the NLRB. On January 12, 1942, President Roosevelt created the National War Labor Board (NWLB), which displaced the NLRB as the main focus of federal labor relations for the duration of the war. The NWLB was given the authority to "finally determine" any labor dispute which threatened to interrupt war production, and to stabilize union wages and benefits during the war. Although Roosevelt instructed the NWLB not to intrude on jurisdiction exercised by the NLRB, the War Labor Board refused to honor this request. From 1942 to 1945, Millis tried to secure a jurisdictional agreement with NWLB Chairman George W. Taylor. But these discussions proved fruitless, and Millis broke them off in June 1945. The NWLB also heavily raided the NLRB for staff, significantly hindering NLRB operations.

Additional changes came with the passage of the War Labor Disputes Act (WLDA) on June 25, 1943. Enacted over Roosevelt's veto after 400,000 coal miners, their wages significantly lower due to high wartime inflation, struck for a $2-a-day wage increase, the legislation (in part) required the NLRB to issue a ballot outlining all the collective bargaining proposals and counter-proposals, wait 30 days, and then hold a strike vote. The War Labor Disputes Act proved very burdensome. The NLRB processed 2,000 WLDA cases from 1943 to the end of 1945, of which 500 were strike votes. The act's strike vote procedures did little to stop strikes, however, and Millis feared unions were using the referendums to whip up pro-strike feelings among their members. Millis also believed the law's strike vote process permitted more strikes to occur than the NLRB would have allowed under its old procedures. There were so many strike vote filings in the six months after the war ended that NLRB actually shut down its long distance telephone lines, cancelled all out of town travel, suspended all public hearings, and suspended all other business to accommodate the workload. By early 1945, Millis was in ill health. He resigned from the NLRB on June 7, 1945, and Paul M. Herzog was named his successor.

1947–1965: Taft-Hartley

A major turning point in the history of the NLRB came in 1947 with passage of the Taft-Hartley Act. Disruptions caused by strikes during World War II as well as the huge wave of strikes that followed the end of the war fueled a growing movement in 1946 and 1947 to amend the NLRA to correct what critics saw as a pro-labor tilt in federal law. Drafted by the powerful Republican Senator Robert A. Taft and the strongly anti-union Representative Fred A. Hartley, Jr., the Taft-Hartley Act banned jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary picketing, mass picketing, union campaign donations made from dues money, the closed shop, and unions of supervisors. The act also enumerated new employer rights, defined union-committed ULPs, gave states the right to opt out of federal labor law through right-to-work laws, required unions to give an 80-days' strike notice in all cases, established procedures for the President to end a strike in a national emergency, and required all union officials to sign an anti-Communist oath. Organizationally, the act made the General Counsel a presidential appointee, independent of the board itself, and gave the General Counsel limited powers to seek injunctions without referring to the Justice Department. It also banned the NLRB from engaging in any mediation or conciliation, and formally enshrined in law the ban on hiring personnel to do economic data collection or analysis.

In August 1947, Robert N. Denham became the NRLB's general counsel. He held "conservative views" and wielded "considerable influence" on labor-management relations and interpretations of the newly passed Taft-Hartley Act. In 1950, US President Harry S. Truman fired Denham (New York Times: "left at the behest of the President"). While NLRB general counsel, Denham received considerable news coverage as a "quasi-Republican." Nominated by US President Harry S. Truman, Denham received unanimous approval by the US Senate Labor Committee. He received "full and independent powers to investigate violations, file complaints and prosecute offenders before the board." In August 1947, he supported an "Anti-Red Affidavit Rule" and so sided with US Senator Robert A. Taft. In October 1947, the NRLB overruled him, which meant that top officers of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) would not have to sign an anti-Communist oath per the Taft-Hartley Act.

Herzog publicly admitted the need for some change in the NLRA, but privately he opposed the proposed Taft-Hartley amendments. He felt the communist oath provisions were unconstitutional, that the amendments would turn the NLRA into a management weapon, that creation of an independent General Counsel would weaken the NLRB, and that the law's dismantling of the agency's economic analysis unit deprived the NLRB of essential expertise. Nonetheless, Congress overrode Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act on June 23, 1947, and the bill became law.

The Taft-Hartley Act fundamentally changed the nature of federal labor law, but it also seriously hindered the NLRB's ability to enforce the law. The loss of the mediation function left the NLRB unable to become involved in labor disputes, a function it had engaged in since its inception as the National Labor Board in 1933. This hindered the agency's efforts to study, analyze, and create bulwarks against bad-faith collective bargaining; reduced its ability to formulate national labor policy in this area; and left the agency making labor law on an ineffective, time-consuming case-by-case basis. The separation of the General Counsel from supervision by the national board also had significant impact on the agency. This separation was enacted against the advice of the Justice Department, contradicted the policy Congress had enacted in the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, and ignored Millis' extensive internal reforms. The change left the NLRB as the only federal agency unable to coordinate its decision-making and legal activities, and the only agency exempted in this manner under the Administrative Procedure Act. The separation of the General Counsel was not discussed by the committee or by any witnesses during the legislation's mark-up. Indeed, there was no basis for it at all in the public record. It was, in the words of sociologist Robin Stryker, "little-noted" and "unprecedented".

The anti-communist oath provisions generated extensive public debate, and generated disputes before the Supreme Court several times. The Taft-Hartley oath first reached the court in American Communications Ass'n v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382 (1950), in which the court held 5-to-1 that the oath did not violate the First Amendment, was not an ex post facto law or bill of attainder in violation of Article One, Section 10, and was not a "test oath" in violation of Article Six. The issue again came before the court in Garner v. Board of Public Works, 341 U.S. 716 (1951), in which the court unanimously held that a municipal loyalty oath was not an ex post facto law or bill of attainder. It came before the court yet a third time in Wieman v. Updegraff, 344 U.S. 183 (1952). This time, the outcome was radically different. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that state loyalty oath legislation violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1965, the Supreme Court held 5-to-4 that the anti-communist oath was a bill of attainder in United States v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437 (1965). The Supreme Court essentially overturned Douds, but did not formally do so.

1966–2007

The board itself (as an adjudicating body distinct from the functions separated as a result of Taft-Harley) has a fixed seating which is assigned based on the names of 5 original members.

2007–2013: Lack of quorum

From December 2007 until June 2010, the five-person Board had only two members, creating a legal controversy. Three members' terms expired in December 2007, leaving the NLRB with just two members—Chairman Wilma B. Liebman and Member Peter Schaumber. President George W. Bush refused to make some nominations to the Board and Senate Democrats refused to confirm those which he did make.

On December 28, 2007, just before the Board lost its quorum, the four members agreed to delegate their authority to a three-person panel per the National Labor Relations Act. Only Liebman and Schaumber remained on the Board, but the Board concluded that the two constituted a quorum of the three-person panel and thus could make decisions on behalf of the Board. Liebman and Schaumber informally agreed to decide only those cases which were in their view noncontroversial and on which they could agree, and issued almost 400 decisions between January 2008 and September 2009.

The U.S. Courts of Appeals for the First, Second, and Seventh Circuits upheld the two-member NLRB's authority to decide cases, while the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals did not. In September 2009, the Justice Department asked the U.S. Supreme Court to immediately hear arguments concerning the dispute, given the high stakes involved. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in October and agreed to decide the issue.

In June 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in New Process Steel, L. P. v. NLRB that the two-member Board had no authority to issue decisions, invalidating all rulings made by Liebman and Schaumber. In 2013, the question of a legitimate quorum on the NLRB surfaced again, when the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that President Obama had "violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate to fill three board vacancies".

Structure

Plaque on the exterior of 1099 14th Street NW in Washington, D.C., the NLRB headquarters as of 2013.
 
Union members picketing NLRB rulings outside the agency's Washington, D.C., headquarters in November 2007.
 
In 1947, the Taft–Hartley Act created a formal administrative distinction between the Board and the General Counsel of the NLRB. In broad terms, the General Counsel is responsible for investigating and prosecuting unfair labor practice claims and for the general supervision of the NLRB field offices. The General Counsel is appointed by the President to a four-year term and independent from the Board; it has limited independence to argue for a change in the law in presenting cases to the Board. The General Counsel oversees four divisions: the Division of Operations Management, the Division of Administration, the Division of Advice, and the Division of Enforcement Litigation.

The Board, on the other hand, is the adjudicative body that decides the unfair labor practice cases brought to it. Once the Board has decided the issue, it is the General Counsel's responsibility to uphold the Board's decision, even if it is contrary to the position it advocated when presenting the case to the Board. The Board is also responsible for the administration of the Act's provisions governing the holding of elections and resolution of jurisdictional disputes.

The Board has more than thirty regional offices. The regional offices conduct elections, investigate unfair labor practice charges, and make the initial determination on those charges (whether to dismiss, settle, or issue complaints). The Board has jurisdiction to hold elections and prosecute violations of the Act in Puerto Rico and American Samoa.

Jurisdiction

The Board's jurisdiction is limited to private sector employees and the United States Postal Service; other than Postal Service employees, it has no authority over labor relations disputes involving governmental, railroad and airline employees covered by the Adamson Railway Labor Act, or agricultural employees. On the other hand, in those parts of the private sector its jurisdictional standards are low enough to reach almost all employers whose business has any appreciable impact on interstate commerce.

Processing of charges

Charges are filed by parties against unions or employers with the appropriate regional office. The regional office will investigate the complaint. If a violation is believed to exist, the region will take the case before an Administrative Law Judge who will conduct a hearing. The decision of the Administrative Law Judge may be reviewed by the five member Board. Board decisions are reviewable by United States Courts of Appeals. The Board's decisions are not self-executing: it must seek court enforcement in order to force a recalcitrant party to comply with its orders.

General Counsel

Lafe Solomon was named Acting General Counsel on June 21, 2010. His nomination was sent to the U.S. Senate on January 5, 2011. Solomon's authority came into question on August 13, 2013 when Judge Benjamin Settle for the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington denied a petition for injunctive relief, ruling that Solomon had not been properly appointed under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 (FVRA). Although other district courts had enforced Solomon's requests, Judge Settle's decision called into question all of Solomon's activity since June 21, 2010, focusing on subsections (a)(1) and (2) of the FVRA; some pundits claimed that Solomon's appointment was allowed under subsection (a)(3). President Obama withdrew Solomon's nomination.
On July 31, 2013, President Obama nominated former NLRB nominee Richard Griffin as General Counsel—"a kind of prosecutor at the board" and "one of the most critical roles at the agency." Solomon's nomination was withdrawn. The Senate approved Griffin's nomination on October 29, 2013, by a vote of 55 to 44.

2007–2013: Unoccupied board seats

In April 2009, President Obama nominated Craig Becker (Associate General Counsel of the Service Employees International Union), Mark Gaston Pearce (a member on the Industrial Board of Appeals, an agency of the New York State Department of Labor), and Brian Hayes (Republican Labor Policy Director for the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) to fill the three empty seats on the NLRB.

Becker's nomination appeared to fail on February 8, 2010, after Republican Senators (led by John McCain) threatened to filibuster his nomination. President Obama said he would consider making recess appointments to the NLRB due to the Senate's failure to move on any of the three nominations. On March 27, 2010, Obama recess appointed Becker and Pearce.

On June 22, 2010, a voice vote in the Senate confirmed Pearce to a full term, allowing him to serve until August 27, 2013. The same day, the Senate confirmed Republican nominee Brian Hayes of Massachusetts by voice vote. Hayes' term ended on December 16, 2012. Becker's term, as a recess appointee, ended on December 31, 2011. Effective August 28, 2011, Pearce was named Chairman to replace Democrat Wilma Liebman, whose term had expired.

On January 4, 2012, Obama announced recess appointments to three seats on the board: Sharon Block, Terence F. Flynn, and Richard Griffin. The appointments were criticized by Republicans, including the House Speaker John Boehner, as unconstitutional and "a brazen attempt to undercut the role of the Senate to advise and consent the executive branch on appointments". Although made as recess appointments, critics questioned their legality, arguing that Congress had not officially been in recess as pro forma sessions had been held. Former U.S. attorney general Edwin Meese stated that in his opinion, since the appointments were made when the Senate was "demonstrably not in recess" they represented "a constitutional abuse of a high order". On January 12, 2012 the U.S. Justice Department released a memo stating that appointments made during pro forma sessions are supported by the Constitution and precedent.

On January 25, 2013, in Noel Canning v. NLRB, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that President Obama's recess appointments were invalid as they were not made during an intersession recess of the Senate, and the President moved to fill them during the same recess. On May 16, 2013, in National Labor Relations Board v. New Vista Nursing and Rehabilitation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit became the second federal appellate court to rule that the recess appointments to the NLRB were unconstitutional. In a split decision, it also found that the March 27, 2010 recess appointment of Craig Becker was unconstitutional. On January 14, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning.

Between January 2008 and mid-July 2013 the agency never had all five members, and not once did it operate with three confirmed members. On July 14, 2013, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid threatened to exercise the "nuclear option" and allow a simple majority (rather than a supermajority) of the Senate to end a filibuster. This threat to end the filibuster's privileged position in the Senate was intended to end Republican filibustering of NLRB nominees. On July 16, 2013, President Obama and Senate Republicans reached an agreement to end the impasse over NLRB appointees. Obama withdrew the pending nominations of Block and Griffin, and submit two new nominees: Nancy Schiffer, associate general counsel at the AFL-CIO, and Kent Hirozawa, chief counsel to NLRB Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce. Republicans agreed not to oppose a fourth nominee, to be submitted in 2014.

On July 30, 2013, the Senate confirmed all five of Obama's nominees for the NLRB: Kent Hirozawa, Harry I. Johnson III, Philip A. Miscimarra, Mark Gaston Pearce and Nancy Schiffer. Johnson and Miscimarra represented the Republican nominees for the board. Pearce was confirmed for a second five-year term. Nancy Schiffer's term ended on December 15, 2014. She was succeeded by Lauren McFerran on December 16, 2014. Harry I. Johnson III's term ended on August 27, 2015.

2017 appointments

On January 25, 2017, President Donald Trump appointed Philip Miscimarra the acting Chairman of the NLRB. Miscimarra's term expired on December 16, 2017. Marvin Kaplan succeeded him as NLRB Chairman on December 21, 2017. Kaplan was replaced as Chairman in April 2018 by John F. Ring, who currently holds that position.

At-will employment

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
At-will employment is a term used in U.S. labor law for contractual relationships in which an employee can be dismissed by an employer for any reason (that is, without having to establish "just cause" for termination), and without warning, as long as the reason is not illegal (e.g. firing because of the employee's race, religion or sexuality). When an employee is acknowledged as being hired "at will," courts deny the employee any claim for loss resulting from the dismissal. The rule is justified by its proponents on the basis that an employee may be similarly entitled to leave his or her job without reason or warning. The practice is seen as unjust by those who view the employment relationship as characterized by inequality of bargaining power.

At-will employment gradually became the default rule under the common law of the employment contract in most U.S. states during the late 19th century, and was endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court during the Lochner era, when members of the U.S. judiciary consciously sought to prevent government regulation of labor markets. Over the 20th century, many states modified the rule by adding an increasing number of exceptions, or by changing the default expectations in the employment contract altogether. In workplaces with a trade union recognized for purposes of collective bargaining, and in many public sector jobs, the normal standard for dismissal is that the employer must have a "just cause." Otherwise, subject to statutory rights (particularly the discrimination prohibitions under the Civil Rights Act), most states adhere to the general principle that employer and employee may contract for the dismissal protection they choose. At-will employment remains controversial, and remains a central topic of debate in the study of law and economics, especially with regard to the macroeconomic efficiency of allowing employers to summarily and arbitrarily terminate employees.

Definition

At-will employment is generally described as follows: "any hiring is presumed to be 'at will'; that is, the employer is free to discharge individuals 'for good cause, or bad cause, or no cause at all,' and the employee is equally free to quit, strike, or otherwise cease work." In an October 2000 decision largely reaffirming employers' rights under the at-will doctrine, the Supreme Court of California explained:
Labor Code section 2922 establishes the presumption that an employer may terminate its employees at will, for any or no reason. A fortiori, the employer may act peremptorily, arbitrarily, or inconsistently, without providing specific protections such as prior warning, fair procedures, objective evaluation, or preferential reassignment. Because the employment relationship is "fundamentally contractual" (Foley, supra, 47 Cal.3d 654, 696), limitations on these employer prerogatives are a matter of the parties' specific agreement, express or implied in fact. The mere existence of an employment relationship affords no expectation, protectible by law, that employment will continue, or will end only on certain conditions, unless the parties have actually adopted such terms. Thus if the employer's termination decisions, however arbitrary, do not breach such a substantive contract provision, they are not precluded by the covenant.
At-will employment disclaimers are a staple of employee handbooks in the United States. It is common for employers to define what at-will employment means, explain that an employee's at-will status cannot be changed except in a writing signed by the company president (or chief executive), and require that an employee sign an acknowledgment of his or her at-will status. However, the National Labor Relations Board has opposed as unlawful the practice of including in such disclaimers language declaring that the at-will nature of the employment cannot be changed without the written consent of senior management.

History

The original common law rule for dismissal of employees according to William Blackstone envisaged that, unless another practice was agreed, employees would be deemed to be hired for a fixed term of one year. Over the 19th century, most states in the North adhered to the rule that the period by which an employee was paid (a week, a month or a year) determined the period of notice that should be given before a dismissal was effective. For instance, in 1870 in Massachusetts, Tatterson v. Suffolk Mfg Co held that an employee's term of hiring dictated the default period of notice. By contrast, in Tennessee, a court stated in 1884 that an employer should be allowed to dismiss any worker, or any number of workers, for any reason at all. An individual, or a collective agreement, according to the general doctrine of freedom of contract could always stipulate that an employee should only be dismissed for a good reason, or a "just cause," or that elected employee representatives would have a say on whether a dismissal should take effect. However, the position of the typical 19th-century worker meant that this was rare.

The at-will practice is typically traced to a treatise published by Horace Gray Wood in 1877, called Master and Servant. Wood cited four U.S. cases as authority for his rule that when a hiring was indefinite, the burden of proof was on the servant to prove that an indefinite employment term was for one year. In Toussaint v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Michigan, the Court noted that "Wood's rule was quickly cited as authority for another proposition." Wood, however, misinterpreted two of the cases which in fact showed that in Massachusetts and Michigan, at least, the rule was that employees should have notice before dismissal according to the periods of their contract.

In New York, the first case to adopt Wood's rule was Martin v New York Life Ins Co in 1895. Bartlett J asserted that New York law now followed Wood's treatise, which meant that an employee who received $10,000, paid in a salary over a year, could be dismissed immediately. The case did not make reference to the previous authority. Four years earlier, in 1891, Adams v Fitzpatrick had held that New York law followed the general practice of requiring notice similar to pay periods. However, subsequent New York cases continued to follow the at-will rule into the early 20th century.

Some courts saw the rule as requiring the employee to prove an express contract for a definite term in order to maintain an action based on termination of the employment. Thus was born the U.S. at-will employment rule, which allowed discharge for no reason. This rule was adopted by all U.S. states. In 1959, the first judicial exception to the at-will rule was created by one of the California Courts of Appeal. Later, in a 1980 landmark case involving ARCO, the Supreme Court of California endorsed the rule first articulated by the Court of Appeal. The resulting civil actions by employees are now known in California as Tameny actions for wrongful termination in violation of public policy.

Since 1959, several common law and statutory exceptions to at-will employment have been created.

Common law protects an employee from retaliation if the employee disobeys an employer on the grounds that the employer ordered him or her to do something illegal or immoral. However, in the majority of cases, the burden of proof remains upon the discharged employee. No U.S. state but Montana has chosen to statutorily modify the employment at-will rule. In 1987, the Montana legislature passed the Wrongful Discharge from Employment Act (WDEA). The WDEA is unique in that, although it purports to preserve the at-will concept in employment law, it also expressly enumerates the legal bases for a wrongful discharge action. Under the WDEA, a discharge is wrongful only if: "it was in retaliation for the employee's refusal to violate public policy or for reporting a violation of public policy; the discharge was not for good cause and the employee had completed the employer's probationary period of employment; or the employer violated the express provisions of its own written personnel policy."

The doctrine of at-will employment can be overridden by an express contract or civil service statutes (in the case of government employees). As many as 34% of all U.S. employees apparently enjoy the protection of some kind of "just cause" or objectively reasonable requirement for termination that takes them out of the pure "at-will" category, including the 7.5% of unionized private-sector workers, the 0.8% of nonunion private-sector workers protected by union contracts, the 15% of nonunion private-sector workers with individual express contracts that override the at-will doctrine, and the 16% of the total workforce who enjoy civil service protections as public-sector employees.

By state

Public policy exceptions

U.S. states (Blue) without a public policy exception
 
Under the public policy exception, an employer may not fire an employee, if the termination would violate the state's public policy doctrine or a state or federal statute.

This includes retaliating against an employee for performing an action that complies with public policy (such as repeatedly warning that the employer is shipping defective airplane parts in violation of safety regulations promulgated pursuant to the Federal Aviation Act of 1958), as well as refusing to perform an action that would violate public policy. In this diagram, the pink states have the 'exception', which protects the employee.

As of October 2000, 42 U.S. states and the District of Columbia recognize public policy as an exception to the at-will rule.

The 8 states which do not have the exception are:

Implied contract exceptions

U.S. states (pink) with an implied-contract exception
 
Thirty-six U.S. states (and the District of Columbia) also recognize an implied contract as an exception to at-will employment. Under the implied contract exception, an employer may not fire an employee "when an implied contract is formed between an employer and employee, even though no express, written instrument regarding the employment relationship exists." Proving the terms of an implied contract is often difficult, and the burden of proof is on the fired employee. Implied employment contracts are most often found when an employer's personnel policies or handbooks indicate that an employee will not be fired except for good cause or specify a process for firing. If the employer fires the employee in violation of an implied employment contract, the employer may be found liable for breach of contract.

Thirty-six U.S. states have an implied-contract exception. The 14 states having no such exception are:
The implied-contract theory to circumvent at-will employment must be treated with caution. In 2006, the Texas Court of Civil Appeals in Matagorda County Hospital District v. Burwell held that a provision in an employee handbook stating that dismissal may be for cause, and requiring employee records to specify the reason for termination, did not modify an employee's at-will employment. The New York Court of Appeals, that state's highest court, also rejected the implied-contract theory to circumvent employment at will. In Anthony Lobosco, Appellant v. New York Telephone Company/NYNEX, Respondent, the court restated the prevailing rule that an employee could not maintain an action for wrongful discharge where state law recognized neither the tort of wrongful discharge, nor exceptions for firings that violate public policy, and an employee's explicit employee handbook disclaimer preserved the at-will employment relationship. And in the same 2000 decision mentioned above, the Supreme Court of California held that the length of an employee's long and successful service, standing alone, is not evidence in and of itself of an implied-in-fact contract not to terminate except for cause.

"Implied-in-law" contracts

U.S. states (pink) with a covenant-of-good-faith-and-fair-dealing exception

Eleven US states have recognized a breach of an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing as an exception to at-will employment. The states are:
Court interpretations of this have varied from requiring "just cause" to denial of terminations made for malicious reasons, such as terminating a long-tenured employee solely to avoid the obligation of paying the employee's accrued retirement benefits. Other court rulings have denied the exception, holding that it is too burdensome upon the court for it to have to determine an employer's true motivation for terminating an employee.

Statutory exceptions

Although all U.S. states have a number of statutory protections for employees, most wrongful termination suits brought under statutory causes of action use the federal anti-discrimination statutes which prohibit firing or refusing to hire an employee because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or handicap status. Other reasons an employer may not use to fire an at-will employee are:
  • for refusing to commit illegal acts – An employer is not permitted to fire an employee because the employee refuses to commit an act that is illegal.
  • family or medical leave – federal law permits most employees to take a leave of absence for specific family or medical problems. An employer is not permitted to fire an employee who takes family or medical leave for a reason outlined in the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993.
  • in retaliation against the employee for a protected action taken by the employee – "protected actions" include suing for wrongful termination, testifying as a witness in a wrongful termination case, or even opposing what they believe, whether they can prove it or not, to be wrongful discrimination. In the federal case of Ross v. Vanguard, Raymond Ross successfully sued his employer for firing him due to his allegations of racial discrimination.
Examples of federal statutes include:
  • Equal Pay Act of 1963 (relating to discrimination on the basis of sex in payment of wages);
  • Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (relating to discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin);
  • Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (relating to certain discrimination on the basis of age with respect to persons of at least 40 years of age);
  • Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (related to certain discrimination on the basis of handicap status);
  • Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (relating to certain discrimination on the basis of handicap status).
  • The National Labor Relations Act provides protection to employees who wish to join or form a union and those who engage in union activity. The act also protects employees who engage in a "concerted activity." Most employers set forth their workplace rules and policies in an employee handbook. A common provision in those handbooks is a statement that employment with the employer is "at-will." In 2012, the National Labor Relations Board, the federal administrative agency responsible for enforcing the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), instituted two cases attacking at-will employment disclaimers in employee handbooks. The NLRB challenged broadly worded disclaimers, alleging that the statements improperly suggested that employees could not act concertedly to attempt to change the at-will nature of their employment, and thereby interfered with employees' protected rights under the NLRA.

Controversy

The doctrine of at-will employment has been heavily criticized for its severe harshness upon employees. It has also been criticized as predicated upon flawed assumptions about the inherent distribution of power and information in the employee-employer relationship. On the other hand, conservative scholars in the field of law and economics such as Professors Richard A. Epstein and Richard Posner credit employment-at-will as a major factor underlying the strength of the U.S. economy. 

At-will employment has also been identified as a reason for the success of Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur-friendly environment.

In a 2009 article surveying the academic literature from both U.S. and international sources, University of Virginia law professor J.H. Verkerke explained that "although everyone agrees that raising firing costs must necessarily deter both discharges and new hiring, predictions for all other variables depend heavily on the structure of the model and assumptions about crucial parameters." The effect of raising firing costs is generally accepted in mainstream economics (particularly neoclassical economics); for example, professors Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok explain in their macroeconomics textbook that employers become more reluctant to hire employees if they are uncertain about their ability to immediately fire them. However, according to contract theory, raising firing costs can sometimes be desirable when there are frictions in the working of markets. For instance, Schmitz (2004) argues that employment protection laws can be welfare-enhancing when principal-agent relationships are plagued by asymmetric information.

The first major empirical study on the impact of exceptions to at-will employment was published in 1992 by James N. Dertouzos and Lynn A. Karoly of the RAND Corporation, which found that recognizing tort exceptions to at-will could cause up to a 2.9% decline in aggregate employment and recognizing contract exceptions could cause an additional decline of 1.8%. According to Verkerke, the RAND paper received "considerable attention and publicity." Indeed, it was favorably cited in a 2010 book published by the libertarian Cato Institute.

However, a 2000 paper by Thomas Miles found no effect upon aggregate employment but found that adopting the implied contract exception causes use of temporary employment to rise as much as 15%. Later work by David Autor in the mid-2000s identified multiple flaws in Miles' methodology, found that the implied contract exception decreased aggregate employment 0.8 to 1.6%, and confirmed the outsourcing phenomenon identified by Miles, but also found that the tort exceptions to at-will had no statistically significant influence. Autor and colleagues later found in 2007 that the good faith exception does reduce job flows, and seems to cause labor productivity to rise but total factor productivity to drop. In other words, employers forced to find a "good faith" reason to fire an employee tend to automate operations to avoid hiring new employees, but also suffer an impact on total productivity because of the increased difficulty in discharging unproductive employees.

Other researchers have found that at-will exceptions have a negative effect on the reemployment of terminated workers who have yet to find replacement jobs, while their opponents, citing studies that say "job security has a large negative effect on employment rates," argue that hedonic regressions on at-will exceptions show large negative effects on individual welfare with regard to home values, rents, and wages

Right-to-work law

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
In the context of US labor politics, "right-to-work laws" refers to state laws that prohibit union security agreements between employers and labor unions. Under these laws, employees in unionized workplaces are banned from negotiating contracts which require all members who benefit from the union contract to contribute to the costs of union representation.

According to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, right-to-work laws prohibit union security agreements, or agreements between employers and labor unions, that govern the extent to which an established union can require employees' membership, payment of union dues, or fees as a condition of employment, either before or after hiring. Right-to-work laws do not aim to provide general guarantee of employment to people seeking work, but rather are a government ban on contractual agreements between employers and union employees requiring workers to pay for the costs of union representation.

Right-to-work laws (either by statutes or by constitutional provision) exist in 27 US states, in the Southern, Midwestern, and interior Western states.[3][4] Such laws are allowed under the 1947 federal Taft–Hartley Act. A further distinction is often made within the law between people employed by state and municipal governments and those employed by the private sector, with states that are otherwise union shop (i.e., workers must pay for union representation in order to obtain or retain a job) having right to work laws in effect for government employees; provided, however, that the law also permits an "agency shop" where employees pay their share for representation (less than union dues), while not joining the union as members.

History

Origins

According to Slate, right-to-work laws are derived from legislation forbidding unions from forcing strikes on workers, as well as from legal principles such as liberty of contract, which as applied here sought to prevent passage of laws regulating workplace conditions.

According to PandoDaily and NSFWCORP, the term itself was coined by Vance Muse, a Republican operative who headed an early right-to-work group, the "Christian American Association", to replace the term "American Plan" after it became associated with the anti-union violence of the First Red Scare. Muse used racist rhetoric in his defense of "right-to-work" laws.

According to the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, the term "right to work" was coined by Dallas Morning News editorial writer William Ruggles in 1941. (An unrelated use of the term right to work had been coined by French socialist leader Louis Blanc before 1848.)

Wagner Act (1935)

The National Labor Relations Act, generally known as the Wagner Act, was passed in 1935 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Second New Deal". Among other things, the act provided that a company could lawfully agree to be any of the following:
  • A closed shop, in which employees must be members of the union as a condition of employment. Under a closed shop, an employee who ceased being a member of the union for whatever reason, from failure to pay dues to expulsion from the union as an internal disciplinary punishment, was required to be fired even if the employee did not violate any of the employer's rules.
  • A union shop, which allows for hiring non-union employees, provided that the employees then join the union within a certain period.
  • An agency shop, in which employees must pay the equivalent of the cost of union representation, but need not formally join the union.
  • An open shop, in which an employee cannot be compelled to join or pay the equivalent of dues to a union or be fired for joining the union.
The act tasked the National Labor Relations Board, which had existed since 1933, with overseeing the rules.

Taft–Hartley Act (1947)

In 1947 Congress passed the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, generally known as the Taft–Hartley Act, over President Harry S. Truman's veto. The act repealed some parts of the Wagner Act, including outlawing the closed shop. Section 14(b) of the Taft–Hartley Act also authorizes individual states (but not local governments, such as cities or counties) to outlaw the union shop and agency shop for employees working in their jurisdictions. Any state law that outlaws such arrangements is known as a right-to-work state.

In the early development of the right-to-work policy, segregationist sentiment was used as an argument, as many people in the South felt that it was wrong for blacks and whites to belong to the same unions. Vance Muse, one of the early developers of the policy in Texas, used that argument in the development of anti-union laws in Texas in the 1940s.

Current status

The federal government operates under open shop rules nationwide, but many of its employees are represented by unions. Unions that represent professional athletes have written contracts that include particular representation provisions (such as in the National Football League), but their application is limited to "wherever and whenever legal," as the Supreme Court has clearly held that the application of a right-to-work law is determined by the employee's "predominant job situs". Players on professional sports teams in states with right-to-work laws are thus subject to those laws and cannot be required to pay any portion of union dues as a condition of continued employment.

Arguments for and against

Rights of dissenting minority and due process

The first arguments concerning the right to work centered on the rights of a dissenting minority with respect to an opposing majoritarian collective bargain. President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal had prompted many US Supreme Court challenges, among which were challenges regarding the constitutionality of the National Industry Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA). In 1936, as a part of its ruling in Carter v. Carter Coal Co. the Court ruled against mandatory collective bargaining, stating:
The effect, in respect to wages and hours, is to subject the dissentient minority ... to the will of the stated majority . ... To 'accept' in these circumstances, is not to exercise a choice, but to surrender to force. The power conferred upon the majority is, in effect, the power to regulate the affairs of an unwilling minority. This is legislative delegation in its most obnoxious form; for it is not even delegation to an official or an official body ... but to private persons . ... [A] statute which attempts to confer such power undertakes an intolerable and unconstitutional interference with personal liberty and private property. The delegation is so clearly arbitrary, and so clearly a denial of rights safeguarded by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, that it is unnecessary to do more than refer to decisions of this Court which foreclose the question.

Freedom of association

Besides the US Supreme Court, other proponents of right-to-work laws also point to the Constitution and the right to freedom of association. They argue that workers should both be free to join unions or to refrain, and thus, sometimes refer to states without right-to-work laws as forced unionism states. These proponents argue that by being forced into a collective bargain, what the majoritarian unions call a fair share of collective bargaining costs is actually financial coercion and a violation of freedom of choice. An opponent to the union bargain is forced to financially support an organization they did not vote for, in order to receive monopoly representation they have no choice over.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church discourages the joining of unions, citing the writings of Ellen White, one of the church's founders, and what writer Diana Justice calls the "loss of free will" that occurs when a person joins a labor union.

Unfairness

Proponents such as the Mackinac Center for Public Policy contend that it is unfair that unions can require new and existing employees to either join the union or pay fees for collective bargaining expenses as a condition of employment under union security agreement contracts. Other proponents contend that unions may still be needed in new and growing sectors of the economy, for example, the voluntary and third party sectors, to assure adequate benefits for new immigrant, "part-time" aides in America (e.g., US Direct Support Workforce).

Political contributions

Right-to-work proponents, including the Center for Union Facts, contend that political contributions made by unions are not representative of the union workers. The agency shop portion of this had previously been contested with support of National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation in Communications Workers of America v. Beck, resulting in "Beck rights" preventing agency fees from being used for expenses outside of collective bargaining if the non-union worker notifies the union of their objection. The right to challenge the fees must include the right to have it heard by an impartial fact finder. Beck applies only to unions in the private sector, given agency fees were struck down for public-sector unions in Janus v. AFSCME in 2018.

Free riders

Opponents such as Richard Kahlenberg have argued that right-to-work laws simply "gives employees the right to be free riders—to benefit from collective bargaining without paying for it". Benefits the dissenting union members would receive despite not paying dues also include representation during arbitration proceedings. In Abood v. Detroit BoE, the Supreme Court of the United States permitted public-sector unions to charge non-members agency fees so that employees in the public sector could be required to pay for the costs of representation, even as they opted not to be a member, as long as these fees are not spent on the union's political or ideological agenda. This decision was reversed, however, in Janus v. AFSCME, with the Supreme Court ruling that such fees violate the first amendment in the case of public-sector unions, since all bargaining by a public-sector union can be considered political activity.

Freedom of contract and association

Opponents argue that right-to-work laws restrict freedom of association, and limit the sorts of agreements individuals acting collectively can make with their employer, by prohibiting workers and employers from agreeing to contracts that include fair share fees. Moreover, American law imposes a duty of fair representation on unions; consequently non-members in right to work states can force unions to provide without compensation grievance services that are paid for by union members.

In December 2012, libertarian writer J.D. Tuccille, in Reason magazine, wrote: "I consider the restrictions right-to-work laws impose on bargaining between unions and businesses to violate freedom of contract and association. ... I'm disappointed that the state has, once again, inserted itself into the marketplace to place its thumb on the scale in the never-ending game of playing business and labor off against one another. ... This is not to say that unions are always good. It means that, when the state isn't involved, they're private organizations that can offer value to their members."

Kahlenberg and Marvit also argue that, at least in efforts to pass a right-to-work law in Michigan, excluding police and firefighter unions—traditionally less hostile to Republicans—from the law caused some to question claims that the law was simply an effort to improve Michigan's businesses climate, not to seek partisan advantage.

Studies of economic effect

According to a 2020 study, right-to-work laws lead to greater economic inequality by indirectly reducing the power of labor unions.

A 2019 paper in the American Economic Review by economists from MIT, Stanford, and the US Census Bureau which surveyed 35,000 US manufacturing plants found that right-to-work laws "boosts incentive management practices."

According to Tim Bartik of the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, studies of the effect of right-to-work laws abound, but are not consistent. Studies have found both "some positive effect on job growth," and no effect. Thomas Holmes argues that it is difficult to analyze right-to-work laws by comparing states due to other similarities between states that have passed these laws. For instance, right-to-work states often have some strong pro-business policies, making it difficult to isolate the effect of right-to-work laws. Looking at the growth of states in the Southeast following World War II, Bartik notes that while they have right-to-work laws they have also benefited from "factors like the widespread use of air conditioning and different modes of transportation that helped decentralize manufacturing".

Economist Thomas Holmes compared counties close to the border between states with and without right-to-work laws (thereby holding constant an array of factors related to geography and climate). He found that the cumulative growth of employment in manufacturing in the right-to-work states was 26 percentage points greater than that in the non-right-to-work states. However, given the study design, Holmes points out "my results do not say that it is right-to-work laws that matter, but rather that the 'probusiness package' offered by right-to-work states seems to matter." Moreover, as noted by Kevin Drum and others, this result may reflect business relocation rather than an overall enhancement of economic growth, since "businesses prefer locating in states where costs are low and rules are lax."

A February 2011 study by the Economic Policy Institute found:
  • Wages in right-to-work states are 3.2 percent lower than those in non-RTW states, after controlling for a full complement of individual demographic and socioeconomic variables as well as state macroeconomic indicators. Using the average wage in non-RTW states as the base ($22.11), the average full-time, full-year worker in an RTW state makes about $1,500 less annually than a similar worker in a non-RTW state. The study goes on to say "How much of this difference can be attributed to RTW status itself? There is an inherent endogeneity problem in any attempt to answer that question, namely that RTW and non-RTW states differ on a wide variety of measures that are also related to compensation, making it difficult to isolate the impact of RTW status."
  • The rate of employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI) is 2.6 percentage points lower in RTW states compared with non-RTW states, after controlling for individual, job, and state-level characteristics. If workers in non-RTW states were to receive ESI at this lower rate, 2 million fewer workers nationally would be covered.
  • The rate of employer-sponsored pensions is 4.8 percentage points lower in RTW states, using the full complement of control variables in [the study's] regression model. If workers in non-RTW states were to receive pensions at this lower rate, 3.8 million fewer workers nationally would have pensions.
A 2008 editorial in The Wall Street Journal comparing job growth in Ohio and Texas stated that from 1998 to 2008, Ohio lost 10,400 jobs, while Texas gained 1,615,000. The opinion piece suggested right-to-work laws might be among the reasons for the economic expansion in Texas, along with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the absence of a state income tax in Texas. Another Wall Street Journal editorial in 2012, by the president and the labor policy director of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, reported 71 percent employment growth in right-to-work states from 1980 to 2011, while employment in non-right-to-work states grew just 32 percent during the same period. The 2012 editorial also stated that since 2001, compensation in right-to-work states had increased four times faster than in other states.

Polling

In January 2012, in the immediate aftermath of passage of Indiana's right-to-work law, a Rasmussen Reports telephone survey found that 74 percent of likely American voters disagreed with the question, "Should workers who do not belong to a union be required by law to pay union dues if the company they work is unionized?" but "most also don't think a non-union worker should enjoy benefits negotiated by the union."

In Michigan in January through March 2013, a poll found that 43 percent of those polled thought the law would help Michigan's economy, while 41 percent thought it would hurt.

US states with right-to-work laws

  Statewide Right-to-work law
  Local Right-to-work laws
  No Right-to-work law
The following 27 states have right-to-work laws:
In addition, the territory of Guam also has right-to-work laws, and employees of the US federal government have the right to choose whether or not to join their respective unions.

Local or repealed laws

Some states had right-to-work laws in the past, but repealed them or had them declared invalid. There are also some counties and municipalities located in states without right-to-work laws that have passed local laws to ban union security agreements.

Delaware

Seaford passed a right-to-work ordinance in 2018.

Illinois

Lincolnshire passed a local right-to-work ordinance, but it was struck down by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. An appeal to the Supreme Court resulted in the case being vacated as being moot because in the intervening period Illinois had passed the Illinois Collective Bargaining Freedom Act to invalidate such local ordinances.

Indiana

Before its passage in 2012, the Republican-controlled Indiana General Assembly passed a right-to-work bill in 1957, which led to the Democratic takeover of Indiana's Governor's Mansion and General Assembly in the coming elections, and eventually, the new Democrat-controlled legislature repealing the right-to-work law in 1965. Right-to-work was subsequently reenacted in 2012.

Kentucky

On November 18, 2016, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the right of local governments to enact local right-to-work laws in Kentucky. Kentucky had 12 local ordinances. A statewide law was subsequently enacted in 2017.

Missouri

The legislature passed a right-to-work bill in 2017, but the law was defeated in a 2018 referendum before it could take effect.

New Hampshire

New Hampshire adopted a right-to-work bill in 1947, but it was repealed in 1949 by the state legislature and governor.

New Mexico

New Mexico law was previously silent on local right-to-work laws, and Chaves, Eddy, Lea, Lincoln, McKinley, Otero, Roosevelt, Sandoval, San Juan, and Sierra counties, in addition to Ruidoso village adopted such laws. But in 2019 Governor Grisham signed legislation that prohibits local right-to-work laws and further states that union membership and the payment of union dues may be required as a condition of employment in workplaces subject to a collective bargaining agreement.

Equality (mathematics)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equality_...