Page 238 - Introduction to Business

212 PART 2 Managing Business Behavior

Union-negotiated labor contracts with just cause provisions represent the
antithesis of the doctrine of employment-at-will. Under the employment-at-will doc-
trine, employers can fire or discipline employees at any time for any reason, includ-
ing not liking the color green! The just cause protection brought to workers by unions
via negotiated labor contracts has historically been a very important one indeed.

The Decline of Unions
Union power grew enormously between the enactment of the Wagner Act in 1935
and the end of World War II in 1945, with unions representing close to 40 percent of
the nonagricultural workforce by the end of the war. During the war, however,
unions began sowing the seeds of their own demise. Some unions ignored war
labor regulations against going on strike and otherwise pushed the envelope, so
that by the end of the war many in the U.S. Congress felt that the power of unions
had to be cut back. This feeling led to the enactment in 1947, over multiple vetoes
Taft-Hartley Act A federal law of 1947 by President Harry S Truman, of the Taft-Hartley Act amending the NLRA.
cutting back on the power of labor The Taft-Hartley Act, known to unions as the Slave Labor Act, sharply curtailed the
unions
power of unions in the United States. Officially, these amendments to the original
NLRA put the U.S. government in a neutral posture regarding whether employees
should join unions, as opposed to the law’s initial posture of encouraging unioniza-
tion. Indeed, Section 7 of the NLRA was specifically amended to state that not only
did employees have the right to join unions, but they also had the right to refrain from
right-to-work laws Laws allowing joining unions. The new amendments allowed individual states to pass right-to-
workers represented by unions the right work laws, and close to half of the states in the United States (see Exhibit 6.1) have
to be employed without paying dues to
passed such legislation. Under right-to-work laws, employees in the states with such
the union
legislation have the right to work without paying any union dues or fees, even if the
union has won a bona fide representation elec-
EXHIBIT 6.1 tion at their workplace. These laws operate as a
Right-to-Work States disincentive for unions to organize in the states
that have them because they mean that a union
can win an election in those states and come
WA
VT
ME under a duty to represent certain employees but
MT ND
OR MN NH that these employees do not have to pay any dues
ID SD WI NY MA
MI RI or fees to the union. In short, unions are at risk of
WY CT
IA PA NJ losing considerable money when they organize in
NE
NV IN OH DE
UT IL MD right-to-work states; in non-right-to-work states
CA CO KS MO WV VA
KY unionized employees are generally required to
NC
TN pay at least a service fee to the union for its repre-
AZ OK SC
NM AR sentation efforts. Right-to-work states tend to be
MS AL GA
the more conservative states in the southern and
TX LA
AK western parts of the United States.
FL
HI
The Taft-Hartley Act also made a number of
union practices unlawful and gave the president
States without right-to-work laws
of the United States special powers to resolve
States with right-to-work laws union strikes, such as the October, 2002, long-
shore worker strikes at ports on the West Coast,
deemed to be posing a national emergency. In 1959, after a series of congressional
hearings revealing unethical practices by labor unions, the U.S. Congress further reg-
Landrum Griffin Act A federal law of ulated union power with the enactment of the Landrum Griffin Act of 1959, which
1959 regulating internal union activities further amended the NLRA. The Landrum Griffin Act gives the U.S. Department of
Labor broad supervisory power over the internal workings of labor unions. All union
expenditures, for example, must be reported to the Labor Department, and the Labor
Department also plays a role in supervising elections for union officers.
Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning, Inc. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.