Sectoral Bargaining: Labor’s Pathway to Power?

Abstract

contrac-tors. 2 Jennifer Abruzzo, whom Biden appointed as general counsel to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), stunned employers by issuing a memo deeming mandatory “cap-tive audience” meetings to be unlawful. Given the widespread use by employers of these meetings to dissuade workers from voting for union-ization, this posture holds great potential significance.To consider how this may play out, history provides some useful examples of the positive interaction between politics and policy and mass labor organizing. The 1934 West Coast dockers/maritime strike took place a year ahead of the passage of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which provided a legal frame-work to enterprise-level or workplace-based bargaining. But the earlier passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) featured provisions giving workers the right to engage in concerted activity and bargain collectively over wages, hours, and conditions. 3 Although later invalidated by the Supreme Court in 1935, this law, with its sweeping industry regulations, was the product of social ferment and political will. Sensing that FDR had their back, passage of the NIRA gave courage and legitimacy to the 12,000 dockworkers who went on strike for eighty-four days on the West Coast. 4