MG420 Labor Relations Research Assignment

MG420 DL Labor Relations

1. Define and discuss the term ";collective bargaining.";

Collective bargaining is the process of negotiations involving the representatives of the employer and employee for terms and conditions of employment that will apply to the employee. In the United States the negotiations that happen between concerning parties are written into legally binding contracts and usually last from one to five years. (Budd, 2009 , p. 229)

Amanda Terkel, a writer for the Huffington Post website writes about the recent labor unrest in the states of Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana. The governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker is trying to deprive the state's public-employee unions from having collective-bargaining rights. The governor states that this will make it possible to shore up the states expected 3 billion shortfall. This legislative action has caused some major protest in Madison, Wisconsin, with crowds that are estimated to be around 25,000 protestors while Wisconsin's Democratic senators have fled the state to stop the bill from being voted on. Consequently, thousands of opponents of the Ohio's Senate proposed collective-bargaining overhaul surrounded the Statehouse with chants of kill the bill prior to the latest hearing on Ohio's Senate Bill 5. This bill is written to do away with the collective-bargaining rights for state employees and cut back on the rights of local-level government employees. While the Indiana legislature is considering a bill that will strip Indiana teachers of their collective bargaining rights between local districts and teachers' unions. The object of this bill is to focus on wages and wage-related benefits. This bill would also limit teacher contracts to a span of two years to coincide with the length of Indiana's state budget cycle. The article makes a point to tell the audience that the middle class of the United States of America is under attack from many newly elected and establish representatives from the Republican political party in several states. However several labor unions are now mobilizing to fight back this tide of attacks on the American workers by the pro business state executive and legislative branches of government. (Terkel, 2011)

Works Cited

Budd, J. W. ( 2009 ). Labor Relations: Striking a Balance. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Terkel, A. (2011, February 17). DNC Expands Role in Labor Protests to Ohio, Indiana. Retrieved February 18, 2011, from Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/17/dnc-expands-mobilization-protests-ohio-indiana_n_824743.html

2. Identify and discuss three laws that support collective bargaining.

The three laws that support collective bargaining between employers and labor unions are the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935, the Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947, and Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959.

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935, which is also known as the Wagner Act, made it legal to form unions and engage in collective bargaining. The Wagner Act created a labor environment to equalize the bargaining power between the employer and employees as stated by this text ";the policy of the United States to eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when they have occurred by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining"; (National Labor Relations Board) The main purpose of the Wagner Act ";was to encourage collective bargaining in the private sector by protecting workers' rights to join and form labor unions."; (Budd, 2009 , p. 119) Furthermore, this act also gave more expansive powers to the federal government with the regulating of labor relations; and it banned employers from punishing workers for using their collective bargaining rights. Americans did have the right to join unions and strike, prior to the enactment of this law. Previously, employers had been free to spy on, to question, to discipline, to discharge, to terminate, and to blacklist employees for either joining unions or striking.

The Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947, which is also known as the Taft-Hartley Act.

According to the website Infoplease.com the Taft-Hartley Act "; amended much of the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act of 1935, the federal law regulating labor relations of enterprises engaged in interstate commerce, and it nullified parts of the Federal Anti-Injunction (Norris-LaGuardia) Act of 1932. The act established control of labor disputes on a new basis by enlarging the National Labor Relations Board and providing that the union or the employer must, before terminating a collective-bargaining agreement, serve notice on the other party and on a government mediation service. The government was empowered to obtain an 80-day injunction against any strike that it deemed a peril to national health or safety. (Taft-Hartley Labor Act, 2011) The Labor-Management Relations Act provided the government far more oversight over union activities, including the right of the U.S. president to stop a strike if it was deemed dangerous to national health. The act also stripped unions of their power in several ways, including forbidding unions from contributing to political campaigns and only allowing unions to organize after a majority vote by employees. Although President Truman vetoed the act, it passed easily over his veto, and this act remains the heart of U.S. labor law.

The Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959. Also called the Landrum-Griffin Act, this law amended the Taft-Hartley Act to protect the rights of union members within their union and imposed new reporting requirements and codes of conduct on unions and employers. This was act created in response to the surge of corruption from various labor union officials who used violence as a way to quail the union opposition from employers and employees. Another process of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 was to stop labor unions from be infiltrated by communist. Furthermore, ";former members of the Communist party and former convicts were prevented from holding a union office for a period of five years after resigning their Communist party membership or being released from prison."; (infoplease.com, 2011)

Works Cited

Budd, J. W. ( 2009 ). Labor Relations: Striking a Balance. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Landrum-Griffin Act. (2011). Retrieved February