Happy 70th, Wagner Act!

At 70 years old this year, the National Labor Relations Act (informally known as the Wagner Act), as amended by some subsequent legislation, is still the law of the land concerning labor relations. In an era when the percentage of represented workers approaches single digits, what are we to think of the grand dame of the New Deal? Is the Act still relevant to 21st Century globalization and the new economic reality? Call me nostalgic, but I still say yes. One need look no further than Section 1, in which Congress formally stated the Act’s “purpose and policy”. It declared, in order to alleviate “industrial strife which interferes with the normal flow of commerce”, orderly and peaceful procedures for resolution of disputes between employers and employees would be provided. After the bitter, unregulated labor strife -- including serious violence -- of the first several years of the Great Depression, we officially accepted and endorsed collective bargaining as the national labor policy. The Act did the trick, resulting not coincidentally in decades of labor peace. Seventy years later, relatively few American workers collectively bargain. Plenty has been said and written about why this is so.

My thesis for this blog is simple. We should not lose sight of the important historical policy reasons underlying the Act. No one wishes to return to an era of strife and violence. In practice, for seventy years, secret-ballot elections of labor representatives, collective bargaining, and policing unfair labor practices has been an overwhelming success in maintaining labor peace. It is no less relevant today. My sense is that the vast majority of Americans still believe in the basic policies upon which the Act was based. It is unfortunate, then that the fringe elements have succeeded in swinging the debate toward a discussion about protecting workers from unions and, ultimately, dismantling the current system to return to 1934. With history as our guide, I submit that nobody in their right mind can want that. Domestic peace and prosperity owe a continuing debt of gratitude to the Act. Happy 70th!