Under the leadership of Senator Robert F. Wagner, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act in July 1935. In March 1933, Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA). This legislation articulated the specific rights of unions to exist and to negotiate with employers. Although it lacked real enforcement powers, the law required employers to recognize the right of workers to organize, 37 The NIRA lasted only 2 years before the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1935,38 This setback for the labor movement was short-lived; just over a month later, Congress passed a law that provided even stronger protections for unions.
The other thing seen in the same period are changes in labor legislation. In 1935, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act or what was called the Wagner Act, after Senator Robert Wagner, its sponsor. And this for the first time says that American workers have a right, a federal right to belong to a union, to participate in collective activities, to go on strike without retaliation. And it demanded that employers, if most workers indicated that they wanted to have a union, it demanded that employers, whether they wanted to or not, recognize the union and engage in collective bargaining and establish a system of what was called exclusive representation.
The union that indicated that it had the support of the majority represented all workers, including those who joined and those who did not. And any contract I signed covered every worker in the workplace. So this is a different system than what you see in, say, France or Italy, where there can be several unions in the same workplace. All of this is still the case today.
Some of the first organizing efforts in the United States were young women working in factories. From that moment on, the labor movement has played a central role in advancing women's rights. Popular unrest and mass poverty during the Great Depression led to a series of historic labor laws. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (the Wagner Act) established the right of workers to organize and forced employers to accept collective bargaining as a guiding principle in the industry.
The Social Security Act of 1935 created the foundation for federal unemployment insurance. The Fair Labor Standards Act, or Wages and Hours Act (193), established minimum wages and overtime pay for workers in interstate commerce, thus setting standards for many basic industries. Common law, state and federal statutes generally confer labor rights on employees, but not on individuals who are self-employed and have sufficient bargaining power to be independent contractors. During his brief tenure, McLaughlin sought to reconcile the demands of work and family life, largely through non-governmental means, by establishing a Commission on Workforce Quality and Market Efficiency.
To ensure that employees can effectively negotiate a collective agreement, NLRA 1935 created a section 158 rights group to stop unfair labor practices by employers. The basic objective of labor law is to remedy the inequality of bargaining power between employees and employers, especially employers organized in corporate partnership or other forms of homeowners' association. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 created the right to a minimum wage and one-half time overtime pay if employers asked people to work more than 40 hours a week. The prudent and cashless beginner in the world works for a while for a salary, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or dirt for himself, then works on his own another time, and finally hires another new beginner to help him.
Since its reluctant inception in 1913 as primarily an immigration agency with limited obligations for data collection, labor relations and social welfare, the Department has become one of the federal government's foremost regulatory and human resource development departments. And then there's a third piece, which I think is very relevant not just for Africa, but for China and much of the world, which is that there is a kind of Keynesian assumption behind much of American labor law, although no one in the United States realizes that. But the political organization fell apart when it couldn't appear at the polls, and many of its members went to the Knights of Labor. Until its abolition, the Atlantic slave trade led millions of Africans to perform forced labor in the Americas.
The Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959 required reporting of union funds to the Department of Labor, prohibited communists from holding union office, and tightened restrictions on secondary boycotts by unions. Durkin's quest to improve the organization continued, establishing himself as the Administration's representative for all work-related federal agencies and reducing overlap in functions. Well, as you get this increasing level of type of conflict and militancy, there are efforts to create national labor organizations that bring together local and craft groups. In particular, the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 § 2 (1) exempts supervisors with authority, in the interest of the employer, from exercising discretion over the jobs and terms of other employees.
The state also has its own labor law that covers farmworkers, the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act. Administered by the Department of Labor, the law establishes a minimum wage of 25 cents per hour and a maximum workweek of 40 hours (to be phased in in 1940) for most workers in the manufacturing industry. . .
