Exploration Assignment
Statutory & Regulatory Schemes Intro
Wagner Act
- Also known as The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, was a bill passed to establish the National Labor Relations Board and addressed relations between unions and employers in the private sector. It was enacted to eliminate employers' interference with the autonomous organization of workers into unions.
- Signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt on July 5, 1935.
- It is a foundational statute of US labor law which grants basic rights of private sector employees to organize into trade unions , engage in collective bargaining for better terms and conditions at work, and take collective action including strike if necessary.
- The act also created the National Labor Relations Board, which conducts elections that can require employers to engage in collective bargaining with labor unions (also known as trade unions).
Taft- Harley Act
- A Federal law that was enacted in 1947 that prohibited certain union practices and required improvement in union disclosure of financial and political dealings.
- It continues most of the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act and that, in addition, provides for an eighty-day injunction against strikes that endanger public health and safety and bans closed shops, featherbedding, secondary boycotts, jurisdictional strikes, and certain other union practices.
- President Harry S. Truman vetoed Taft-Hartley, but it became law by a two-thirds vote of Congress.
- For example, the law prohibited a list of “unfair” labor practices and restricted the political activities of labor unions. It basically gives employers a right to a constitutional work base. Gives you the right to fight for better working conditions.
Employment-At-Will
- 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.
Job applicants and new employees are often perplexed to read--in a job application, employment contract, or employee handbook--that they will be employed "at will."
they can be fired anytime for any reason. You have very limited legal rights for your termination.
The law generally presumes that you are employed at will unless you can prove otherwise, usually through written documents relating to your employment or oral statements your employer has made.
You work until you find something better or you choose not to continue. You can basically quit whenever you want.