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7 - Remedies, the Labor Reform Bill of 1978, and the Employee Free Choice Bill of 2009

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2013

William B. Gould IV
William B. Gould IV
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
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Summary

The principal reasons for the considerable focus on remedies and the emergence of proposals for labor law reform in the Labor Reform Bill of 1978 were the increased caseload of the National Labor Relations Board and the strain that caseload has placed on an administrative statutory scheme that was already convoluted and tortuous. Along with the sharp decline of organized labor in its capacity as a representative for collective bargaining in the workforce, this theme played out again in 2008 and 2009 when the so-called Employee Free Choice Bill was debated.

The problems addressed by both the 1978 and 2008–2009 legislative reforms are long-standing. As Chairman John Fanning of the NLRB said in testimony before the House Committee on Education and Labor:

In 1957, when I was first appointed to the Board, the agency processed a total of 16,000 cases and the Board issued 353 decisions in contested unfair labor practice cases. In the current fiscal year (1972) we will receive more than 52,000 cases and we expect to issue 1,121 such decisions. In fiscal year 1978 we estimate that 57,000 cases will be filed with the agency and we expect to issue 1,242 decisions. In fiscal year 1979 the number of cases will amount to 61,000, and our published decisions will number 1,400.

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A Primer on American Labor Law , pp. 229 - 250
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

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References

Weiler, Paul C., “Promises to Keep: Securing Workers’ Rights & Self-organization under the NLRA”, 96 Harv. L. Rev. 1769 (1983)Google Scholar
Bartosic, Florian and Lanoff, Ian, “Escalating the Struggle Against Taft-Hartley Contemnors,” 39 U. Chi. L. Rev. 255 (1971)Google Scholar
Brudney, James, “A Famous Victory: Collective Bargaining Protections and the Statutory Aging Process,” 74 North Carolina Law Review939 (1996)Google Scholar
Gould, William B., “New Labor Law Reform Variations on an Old Theme: Is the Employee Free Choice Act the Answer?” 70 La. L. Rev. 1 (2009)Google Scholar
Gould, William B., “The Employee Free Choice Act of 2009, Labor Law Reform, and What Can Be Done About the Broken System of Labor-Management Relations Law in the United States,” 43 Univ. of S.F. L. Rev. (2008)Google Scholar
Vipond, Melanie, “First Contract Arbitration: Evidence from British Columbia, Canada of the Significance of Mediators’ Non-Binding Recommendations,” 62 Labor L.J. (Fall 2011)Google Scholar

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