The Wagner, Taft-Hartley, And Landrum-Martin Act

Answering the Questions
The role of unions in today’s workplace is still has the responsibility to ensure the rights of workers, and provide an opportunity for their voices to be heard. Issues that are addressed by labor unions include work assignment, compensation, benefits and working conditions. Unions benefit their members (monopoly power), at the expense of higher cost, and requiring responses to employees grievances “voice power”. As a result of little job creation, debt crises, growing fiscal deficits and difficulties in states and local governments a “new normal” to the role of the labor unions have been created. Nevertheless, the “new normal” has affected the role that the union will have to endure. Another role that the union has
The Wagner Act revamped organizing rights and identified employer unlawful actions. The focal point of the act was to specify the rights of employees to engage in union activities. As a result, Section 7 of this act allows employees to, self-organize, as well as, give contributions to employment organizations. Also, the act allows bargaining of laborious activities for the purpose of collective bargaining, other benefits and/or for employee’s protection. On the other hand, section 8 of this act fundamentally prohibited interfering with the rights of employees. Therefore, the Wagner act formed the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The board’s main responsibilities were to determine if it was the employee’s choice to be represented by the union to listen to and rule on suspected unfair labor practices. For that fact, the act established the idea of exclusive representation whereas all employees that chose the union would be represented all employees in unit in bargaining over wages, hours, and employment terms of conditions. Lastly, the Wagner Act did not apply to all employers and employees; for example, federal, state, local government, and those who fall under the umbrella of the Railway Labor Act were exempt from coverage. (Fossum, 2015 pp.
The modification of the Wagner Act incorporated employees to have the right to be excluded from union activities. Also, Congress also enacted a right-to-work laws prohibiting union participates be in included within their employment conditions. This enactment required that negotiations be in moral belief, use strikes as for the benefit for recognition purposes, and lastly, it provided unions a way to pressure involved second parties that go after the primary employer were outlawed. Also, the Taft-Hartley Act provided a national emergency dispute procedure as well as, established the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and nominated numerous unions’ unfair labor practices. Lastly, the Taft-Hartley Act put a halt to the unrestricted administrative initiated change by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The act requires that the decision making should be a subject of a court review instead of government promoting unionization as an offset to big businesses. The union’s role became more of that of an arbitrator. (Fossum, 2015 pp.