Law Commons^™

Are Unions A Constitutional Anomaly?, Cynthia Estlund

Michigan Law Review

This term in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Ass’n, the Supreme Court will consider whether ordinary public employees may constitutionally be required to pay an “agency fee,” as a condition of employment, to the union that represents them in collective bargaining. The Court established the terms of engagement in the 2014 decision Harris v. Quinn, which struck down an agency fee on narrower grounds while describing the current doctrine approving agency fees, blessed many times by the Court itself, as an “anomaly.” This Article asks whether labor unions are themselves anomalies in our legal system, particularly in their constitutional entitlements. Its …

Unions And Campaign Finance Litigation, Charlotte Garden

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Workers Disarmed: The Campaign Against Mass Picketing And The Dilemma Of Liberal Labor Rights, Ahmed A. White

Publications

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, mass picketing, characterized by large numbers of workers congregating in common protest at or near their employers' establishments, emerged as a crucial weapon in a historic campaign by American workers to realize basic labor rights and build an enduring labor movement in the face of strident resistance from a powerful business community. So potent a weapon did mass picketing prove that these business interests, aided by allies at all levels of government, moved quickly to ban the tactic. From the real-world complexities of labor conflict, this coalition forged a simplistic, analytically dubious, but …

The Striking Success Of The National Labor Relations Act, Michael L. Wachter

All Faculty Scholarship

Although often viewed as a dismal failure, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) has been remarkably successful. While the decline in private sector unionization since the 1950s is typically viewed as a symbol of this failure, the NLRA has achieved its most important goal: industrial peace.

Before the NLRA and the 1947 Taft-Hartley Amendments, our industrial relations system gave rise to frequent and violent strikes that threatened the nation’s stability. For example, in the late 1870s, the Great Railroad Strike spread throughout a number of major cities. In Pittsburg alone, strikes claimed 24 lives, nearly 80 buildings, and over 2,000 …

Industrial Terrorism And The Unmaking Of New Deal Labor Law, Ahmed A. White

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Industrial Terrorism And The Unmaking Of New Deal Labor Law, Ahmed A. White

Publications

The passage of the Wagner (National Labor Relations) Act of 1935 represented an unprecedented effort to guarantee American workers basic labor rights--the rights to organize unions, to provoke meaningful collective bargaining, and to strike. Previous attempts by workers and government administrators to realize these rights in the workplace met with extraordinary, often violent, resistance from powerful industrial employers, whose repressive measures were described by government officials as a system of "industrial terrorism." Although labor scholars have acknowledged these practices and paid some attention to the way they initially frustrated labor rights and influenced the jurisprudence and politics of labor relations …

The Depression Era Sit-Down Strikes And The Limits Of Liberal Labor Law, Ahmed A. White

Publications

This paper explores the history of sit-down strikes from the New Deal Era and beyond and traces their influence on the substance of modern labor law. It argues that, even as the sit-down strikes proved essential to the development of a meaningful system of labor rights, the strikes also had a very different effect. As this paper undertakes to demonstrate, legal and political attacks on labor rights that were originally aimed at the sit-down strikes metastasized into a more general campaign to prohibit a range of militant strike practices, even those bearing little outward resemblance to the original sit-down strikes. …

The Nlra's "Guard Exclusion": An Analysis Of Section 9(B)(3)'S Legislative Intent And Modern-Day Applicability, Eric M. Jensen

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Integrity And Circumspection: The Labor Law Vision Of Bernard D. Meltzer, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Bernard Meltzer has testified under oath that he "rarely take[s] absolute positions." The record bears him out. While his colleagues among labor law scholars often strain to demonstrate that the labor relations statutes and even the Constitution support their hearts' desires, the typical Meltzer stance is one of cool detachment, pragmatic assessment, and cautious, balanced judgment. The "itch to do good," Meltzer has remarked wryly, "is a doubtful basis for jurisdiction" -or, he would likely add, for any other legal conclusion. In this brief commentary I propose to examine the Meltzer approach to four broad areas of labor law: (1) …

Federal Regulation Of The Workplace In The Next Half Century, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Even the general circulation press, from the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times to Business Week, has taken to examining the current malaise of the labor movement and the increased emphasis upon ensuring the safety, health, and economic security of employees through direct governmental regulation rather than through collective bargaining. What accounts for this upsurge of scholarly and popular interest in labor relations and labor law? There are undoubtedly multiple causes but I should like to focus on a couple of reasons that seem preeminent to me.

Free Speech Or Economic Weapon? The Persisting Problem Of Picketing, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

"Peaceful picketing," the United States Supreme Court has said, "is the workingman's means of communication."' One line of analysis is that, as a means of communication, picketing is free speech and is therefore entitled to every constitutional protection afforded other forms of expression. This means that it cannot be subjected to special restrictions, such as antiboycott curbs, simply because it is picketing. The opposing line of analysis is that picketing is not simply speech; it is "speech plus." The "plus" element removes picketing from the realm of pure speech and enables it to be regulated in ways that the Constitution …

The Case For Quick Relief: Use Of Section 10(J) Of The Labor-Management Relations Act In Discriminatory Discharge Cases, Randal L. Gainer

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Union Representation Election Statements: A Call For Implementation Of The Statute, Bruce Charles Navarro

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Wildcat Strikes: The Unions' Narrowing Path To Rectitude?, M. Jay Whitman

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Labor Law - The District Of Columbia And Seventh Circuits Split Over Whether Union Discipline Of Supervisor-Members For Crossing Picket Lines To Perform Rank-And-File Struck Work Is An Unfair Labor Practice, Richard J. Conn

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Labor Law - Arbitration - Presumption Of Arbitrability Applicable To Safety Disputes - Injunction Authorized As Remedy For Breach Of Implied No-Strike Obligation - Objective Evidence Standard Established For Section 502 Of Taft-Hartley Act, Anthony Allen Geyelin

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Labor Law - An Employer Does Not Commit An Unfair Labor Practice When, Subsequent To An Impasse In Collective Bargaining, He Locks Out His Regular Employees And Operates With Temporary Replacements, Francis P. Newell

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Post-V Aca Standards Of The Union's Duty Of Fair Representation: Consolidating Bargaining Units, David Mathews

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Recent Developments, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Preservation of internal union solidarity through the exercise of disciplinary power over members has been recognized as an essential prerequisite to maintenance of a strong bargaining position vis-a-vis management.' Therefore, courts have afforded unions relative freedom to discipline members who violate rules of internal union government. Somewhat different principles of union discipline, however, are applied to members who occupy supervisory positions with the employer.' The employee-member is loyal primarily to his union, but the loyalty of the supervisor-member ultimately is two-dimensional:' he is loyal to the union by virtue of his union membership and to the employer by virtue of …

Organized Labor, The Environment, And The Taft-Hartley Act, James C. Oldham

Michigan Law Review

The legal issues inherent in treating out-plant pollution under the Taft-Hartley Act cannot be fully evaluated without a realistic appreciation of practical considerations and industrial experience. For this reason, considerable empirical information has been collected from a variety of sources. The examination and evaluation of this data will precede the legal analysis. The data, it is hoped, will resolve two questions: What is the effect of out-plant pollution on the workers, and what has been the response of labor unions to date?

National Labor Relations Policy: Attuning It To Unions Within Reasonable Limits, Jay J. Levit

University of Richmond Law Review

In the National Labor Relations Act it is the stated policy of the United States to encourage the collective bargaining process. This article submits that in order to effectuate such a policy, a recognition of the nature and basic need of the union in a procedure involving three parties is vital.

Judicial Valour And The Warren Court's Labor Decisions, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Book Chapters

Lawyers who practice regularly before the Supreme Court are likely to prepare their arguments with a specific Justice in mind. The choice does not necessarily tum on who might be the swing vote in a given case. Often it is just a matter of which Justice can be relied upon, because of his particular interests and his insight, to search out the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing positions, and to see that all the hard questions are asked. In a labor case during the early years of the Warren Court, that would usually have meant Justice Frankfurter. Later on, …

A Touchstone For Labor Board Remedies, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Fashion dictates what lawyers argue about, and law professors write about, more than we may care to admit. In labor law, especially, the styles change with a rapidity that would impress a Paris couturier. During the past decade the spotlight has moved from union democracy to labor contract enforcement to the union organizing campaign. Today the "in" topic is National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) remedies. Yet if any subject deserves immunity from the vagaries of fashion, this is the one; for all rights acquire substance only insofar as they are backed by effective remedies. Coke said it long ago: "[W]ant …

Indiana Labor Relations Law: The Case For A State Labor Relations Act, Julius G. Getman

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Labor Law-Independent Contractor Status-Extension Of The Right Of Control Test, F. Bruce Kulp Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Petitioner, a large independent oil company, owned a gasoline service station which it leased to an individual operator, reserving the right to determine certain aspects of the lessee's operations. During the lease period, a majority of the station attendants signed union authorization cards, and the union requested a meeting with the lessee for the purpose of negotiating a contract. The lessee refused to negotiate, discharged the attendants, and hired replacements. The trial examiner found that petitioner, as an employer of his lessee, had violated section 8(a)(5) of the National Labor Relations Act by refusing to bargain. On appeal, held, …

No-Strike Clauses In The Federal Courts, Frank H. Stewart

Michigan Law Review

One consideration will support several promises. A promisor may extract more than one promise in return for his single undertaking to do - or not to do. It depends upon his bargaining power. His single undertaking may be so valuable that several promises are necessary to induce him to act, or not to act. He is privileged to hold out for the best deal. The law does not examine his motives or reduce his demands. And from this arises the common- law principle that one consideration may support several promises.

Intermittent And Constant Common Situs Picketing

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Labor Law - Arbitration - Restriction Of Judicial Intervention Into The Arbitration Process, James J. White

Michigan Law Review

Respondent company laid off a number of employees as a result of its decision to contract out maintenance work formerly done in the company shop. After the grievance procedure failed to resolve petitioner union's claim that this violated the contract provision against lockouts, and the company refused the union's request for arbitration, the union sought specific performance of the promise to arbitrate contained in the collective bargaining contract. In dismissing the plea, the district court found that contracting out work was solely a function of management and therefore not arbitrable because the contract specifically excluded from arbitration "matters which are …

Labor Law - Appropriate Bargaining Unit Under Section 9(B) Of The Taft-Hartley Act- Determination Requires Nlrb To Exercise Discretion, James N. Adler

Michigan Law Review

Petitioner union sought to represent maintenance and construction electricians employed by plate glass manufacturer at a new plant. How ever, employer and intervenor union entered into an agreement extending to the new plant an existing contract covering employees at certain of employer's other plants. At hearings upon petitioner's application to determine the "appropriate" bargaining unit under criteria established by section 9 (b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, employer and intervenor urged that the highly integrated nature of the plant and the history of plantwide bargaining at employer's other plants made a single bargaining unit covering all plant's employees the only appropriate …

Labor Law - National Labor Relations Board - Effect Of The Nlrb's Refusal To Take Jurisdiction, Joseph O. Sullivan, John C. Dowd S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Appellant corporation was charged by the United Steelworkers of America with unfair labor practices in violation of sections 8(a)(1), (3) and (5) of the National Labor Relations Act. Although appellant's business affected commerce within the meaning of the act, the acting regional director of the NLRB declined to issue a complaint because the company's volume of business did not meet the Board's revised minimum "jurisdictional" standards. The union then filed substantially the same charges with the Utah Labor Relations Board. The Utah Board's determination that it had jurisdiction was affirmed by the Utah Supreme Court. On certiorari to the Supreme …