Law Commons^™

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 …

Competitive Entertainment: Implications Of The Nfl Lockout Litigation For Sports, Theatre, Music, And Video Entertainment, Henry H. Perritt Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

The 2011 NFL lockout reveals profound changes in the labor and product markets for the entire entertainment industry, driven by a revolution in technology. This article explores the revolution in the professional sports, theatre, and movie-making industries and concludes that it is fragmenting production, blurring the boundaries between labor markets and product markets, and introducing new forms of competition. As a result, the labor exemptions to the antitrust laws, which featured prominently in the NFL controversy are becoming less relevant, shifting the law's policing of competition to antitrust rule-of-reason analysis, where counterpoises such as labor unions are inactive, and making …