A Tale of Seven Cases – Faculty Unions in the United States – From Yeshiva To Elon: Is It Time to Review Yeshiva and the Positions of Church-Sponsored Colleges and Universities As Well?

This article is a summary discussion of the main issues faced by faculty at private, often church-sponsored, universities who sought to be represented by a union in collective bargaining with their employers. The discussion begins by tracing the origins of the rule that faculty at private universities are managers and not employees under the aegis of the National Relations Act in the Supreme Court case of Yeshiva University. The summary then follows developments over the years up to the most recent decision of the National Labor Relations Board that sanctioned the efforts of adjunct professors at Elon University to seek union representation. In examining these two book-end cases, the article discusses issues relating to the effect of the religion clauses of the First Amendment in the context of the National Labor Relations Board’s shifting views on the topic. Last, the authors discuss unionization in the context of church-sponsored colleges and universities. Is it now time for the Supreme Court to review its seminal decision in Yeshiva University and for church-sponsored colleges and universities to rethink their positions as well?

A Tale of Seven Cases – Faculty Unions in the United States – From Yeshiva To Elon: Is It Time to Review Yeshiva and the Positions of Church-Sponsored Colleges and Universities As Well?

This article is a summary discussion of the main issues faced by faculty at private, often church-sponsored, universities who sought to be represented by a union in collective bargaining with their employers. The discussion begins by tracing the origins of the rule that faculty at private universities are managers and not employees under the aegis of the National Relations Act in the Supreme Court case of Yeshiva University. The summary then follows developments over the years up to the most recent decision of the National Labor Relations Board that sanctioned the efforts of adjunct professors at Elon University to seek union representation. In examining these two book-end cases, the article discusses issues relating to the effect of the religion clauses of the First Amendment in the context of the National Labor Relations Board’s shifting views on the topic. Last, the authors discuss unionization in the context of church-sponsored colleges and universities. Is it now time for the Supreme Court to review its seminal decision in Yeshiva University and for church-sponsored colleges and universities to rethink their positions as well?

Biden will seek to strengthen trade unions

Significance Biden has long ties to the union movement, an important source of financial and organisational support for Democrats locally. His nominee for labor secretary has deep union roots and Biden’s team has already begun rolling back National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) anti-union rulings from the Trump administration. This indicates the new administration’s interest in actively strengthening unions and promoting workers' rights more generally. Impacts Current trends show fewer than 1 million unionised workers in manufacturing by 2023, down from nearly 3 million in 2000. Biden will end Trump’s pursuit of undocumented immigrants through the workplace, pleasing unions and Progressive Democrats. Like employers, unions face expectations among younger workers that the workplace environment will support their societal values.

The Memorial Day Massacre and American Labor

On the afternoon of May 30, 1937, the Chicago Police killed or mortally wounded ten men who were among a large group of unionists attempting to picket a mill operated by the Republic Steel Corporation. Scores of demonstrators were injured, some critically, in this shocking episode. The “Memorial Day Massacre” occurred during the Little Steel Strike, a sprawling and protracted conflict that arose out of the Committee for Industrial Organization’s (CIO) attempt to overcome the strident resistance of a coalition of power companies and to organize the basic steel industry. The strike evolved into a contest to decide how much the Second New Deal and its legislative centerpiece, the Wagner Act, would alter the landscape of American labor relations. This was evident in Chicago, where the unionists’ efforts to engage in mass picketing at Republic’s plant were an attempt to wrest from the Wagner Act’s ambiguous terms an effective right to strike, and where the violence of the police, who were doing Republic’s bidding, was intended to prevent this. Ultimately, the use of violence against the unionists not only defeated this bid to engage in mass picketing but served, along with similar clashes elsewhere during the strike, to justify government intervention that ended the walkout and secured the companies’ victory. Later, the strike and the massacre were invoked to justify political and legal changes that further limited the right to strike and that endorsed much of what the police, the steel companies, and their allies had done during the conflict. While the CIO did eventually organize steel, this success was primarily the result of the war and not the strike or the labor law. And although the National Labor Relations Board prosecuted the steel companies for violating the Wagner Act, this litigation took years and ended with Republic facing only modest penalties.

Labor Unions and Workplace Safety

The authors examine the effect of labor unions on workplace safety. For identification, they exploit the timing and outcome of union elections, using establishments in which elections narrowly fail as a comparison group for establishments in which elections narrowly pass. Data on elections come from the National Labor Relations Board, and data on workplace safety come from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The results indicate that unionization had no detectable effect on accident case rates at the mean, but shifted downward the case-rate distribution below 2 cases per 100 full-time equivalent workers annually. The downward shift is most evident among larger bargaining units and manufacturing establishments. Results at the higher end of case-rate distribution are inconclusive.

Effects of Union Certification on Workplace-Safety Enforcement: Regression-Discontinuity Evidence

The authors study how union certification affects the enforcement of workplace-safety laws. To generate credible causal estimates, a regression discontinuity design compares outcomes in establishments in which unions barely won representation elections to outcomes in establishments in which unions barely lost such elections. The study combines two main data sets: the census of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) representation elections and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) enforcement database since 1985. Evidence shows positive effects of union certification on establishment’s rate of OSHA inspection, the share of inspections carried out in the presence of a union representative, violations cited, and penalties assessed.

A Different Set of Rules? NLRB Proposed Rule Making and Student Worker Unionization Rights

This article presents data, precedent, and empirical evidence relevant to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) proposal to issue a new rule to exclude graduate assistants and other student employees from coverage under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The analysis in three parts. First, the authors show through an analysis of information from other federal agencies that the adoption of the proposed NLRB rule would exclude over 81,000 graduate assistants on private campuses from the right to unionize and engage in collective bargaining. Second, the article presents a legal history from the past half-century about unionization of student employees at private and public sector institutions of higher education, including the NLRB’s oscillation on the question of whether student employees are protected under the NLRA. The inconsistencies of the NLRB is in stark contrast to state and Canadian provincial precedent during the same period. Lastly, the authors analyze the terms of 42 current collective bargaining agreements covering student workers, including 10 at the private sector institutions. The empirical evidence from five decades of relevant collective bargaining history, precedent, and contracts demonstrates consistent economic relationships between student employees and their institutions.

Contesting the Great Compression: The National Labor Relations Board and Skilled Workers’ Struggle to Control Wage Differentials, 1935–1955

This article argues that federal labor policy was a factor in causing the Great Compression, the dramatic compression of skill-based wage differentials that occurred in the 1940s, and in bringing it to an end. By giving the National Labor Relations Board the power to determine the appropriate collective-bargaining unit, New Dealers gave industrial unions the means with which to build a more egalitarian wage structure. Unskilled and semiskilled workers seized the opportunity and voted themselves big pay raises. Skilled craftsmen responded by petitioning the NLRB for permission to form their own craft bargaining units, a process known as “craft severance.” As conservatives gained influence in Washington in the 1940s, the board adopted a bargaining-unit policy more favorable to craft unions. By the early 1950s, skilled craftsmen had regained control of their wage demands and thereby helped bring the Great Compression to a halt.