4 - The National Labor Relations Board in the Twenty-First Century

Summary

At one time the National Labor Relations Act was a bulwark for the rights of workers to organize and protest working conditions. Its preamble, unaltered after more than eight decades, charges the Board to promote both freedom of association and the collective bargaining process. But today, the labor movement in the United States and throughout substantial portions of the industrialized world is in retreat due to offshoring, contracting out, automation, globalization, and the law. Right-to-work legislation, which prohibits collective agreements requiring the payment of a service fee as a condition of employment, is now the law in twenty-seven states, and the Supreme Court has endorsed the same framework in the public sector. Further, the agency’s mission ensnarls it in the problem to which Professor Bodah alluded. The NLRA admittedly allows for a measure of politicization through broad ambiguous language that could be interpreted differently by different administrative (and, on appeal, judicial) tribunals, as well as staggered terms of tenure for National Labor Relations Board Members.