National Labor Relations Board

Abstract A set of hypotheses on the structure of foreign news, which had been presented by Johan Galtung and Mari Holmboe Ruge, is tested empirically by comparing New York Times' coverage of Sino-Indian relations in 1962 with the 'actual' relations of the two countries as reflected in their official correspondence, published by the Indian government in a series of White Papers. Four of the six hypotheses tested are confirmed. It is found that international relations, according to the newspaper, is comprised as predicted of a series of simple, discrete. and dramatic events, whose nature is such as to tend to confirm our expectations of what will happen. On the other hand, predictions that the newspaper would over-select events which are rare or unexpected, and overemphasize events which are more negative in their consequences, were not confirmed. Since the New York Times is generally considered one of the world's most complete and factual newspapers, these findings probably apply with even greater force to most other news papers in the world. Therefore, in reporting international news, newspapers should place more emphasis on background material, on complex and ambiguous events, and on dissonant events. Although Galtung and Ruge had only hypothesized, rather than demonstrated, the existence of the twelve factors influencing news selection discussed in their paper, this study seems to confirm that most, it not all, of the factors do exist and do exert a distorting effect on the news selection process.

We describe salient aspects of the idioculture of videogame play, based on interviews conducted with 20 devoted videogame players and several hours of observation of small‐group game play. We explore the meaningfulness of videogame play for participants, specifically through an examination of the social quality of play, interaction during play, the enactment of status differences in and through play, and players’ desire to play games perfectly and/or completely. We elicit players’ comments about acceptable and unacceptable forms of cheating, and we explore their management of the stigma attached to playing violent games and playing excessively. We conclude by highlighting game players’ penchant for finding moral content in their favorite games and game characters.

This Article analyzes the issues raised by English-only rules and the decisions discussing these rules. Part I reviews the leading cases on English-only rules. The Article then explores several issues that must be considered in deciding any English-only rule case under Title VII. Part II addresses whether speaking one's primary language should constitute a protected right as an aspect of national origin under Title VII. This Article argues that primary language should be protected under Title VII for several reasons: the courts and the EEOC construe the term "national origin" broadly; primary language constitutes a fundamental aspect of ethnicity and national origin, and the difficulty of second-language acquisition renders primary language practically immutable for many persons whose primary language is not English. Part III argues that English-only rules have an exclusive adverse impact on language minority groups distinct from the nonexclusive effect of facially neutral rules typically considered under disparate impact cases. Part IV analyzes the current burden of proof standards for establishing discrimination under Title VII in light of Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio. This Part proposes that courts should hold employers to a stricter standard than the Wards Cove standard for proving business justification in recognition of the exclusive impact of English-only rules. Finally, Part V discusses the extent of the business justification that can properly justify an employer's use of a language restriction under the standard established in Wards Cove.

In interpreting the provision of the Wagner and Taft-Hartley Acts that permits the National Labor Relations Board to require that an employer reimburse a discriminatorily discharged employee for lost wages, the courts have embraced a doctrine of individualism, according to the author of this article, thus impeding the development of collective bargaining. In the absence of dear indication of Congressional intent, it should be assumed, he contends, that the purpose of the back-pay remedy is to discourage employer interference with group, action, i.e. collective bargaining. The courts, however, have pursued a policy on back pay based on an individualistic, common-law interpretation which disregards, rather than fosters, the interest of the worker group. (Author's abstract courtesy EBSCO.)

A labor relations act is often as important for the workers who are excluded from coverage as for those who are included. There has always been speculation as to how many workers have been excluded from the coverage of the Wagner Act and how many have been excluded from the coverage of the Taft-Hartley Act. An attempt to arrive at the facts is made in this article. (Author's abstract courtesy EBSCO.)

The Nature of Industrial Disputes Strikes, like all disputes, result from conflict. Conflict arises out of clashing personal or party interests. In the industrial field the conflict occurs between the two parties to industry, those who work for profit and those who work for wages, or their agents. Given the existing economic system, superficial analysis suggests that industrial conflict must on this account continue ad infinitum. Both parties are working for money; what is accorded one in the nature of the case takes away from the other, therefore the conflict resolves itself into a struggle for purchasing power destined eternally to go on between those who supply stored up labor in the form of capital and those who furnish immediate labor by the sweat of their brows. Economic doctors taking this point of view customarily propose one of two solutions, on the one hand suppression of labor organizations and their activities with compulsory arbitration as a last resort, or unrelenting class war culminating in revolution, on the other. But such a simple resolution of industrial conflict completely ignores several factors entering into a condition of conflict, most important of which is the human. Do both parties to industry work exclusively for purchasing power? Does not the fact that no worker can separate his person from his labor; that every employer has invested in his business possessions which he regards as peculiarly his own, create other conflictual issues revolving among workers about the desire for self-respecting conditions of work, recognition of self-organizations and self-determination in connection with their jobs; among employers about the desire to manage their own businesses without interference either from employees or from the government?

The steel seizure case of 1952 renewed interest in an issue which perturbed many persons during World War II, when some fifty-nine seizures of properties involved in labor disputes occurred. What is the real meaning, or function, of seizure? What does it actually accomplish? Are there alternatives available which will better attain thee same ends? In an examination of Presidential seizure actions since 1918, Mr. Kleilet endeavors to answer these questions. (Author's abstract courtesy EBSCO.)

Summary. Neither industrial nor nonindustrial rehired workers were markedly aided by the decisions. Union officials and fellow workers both displayed open hostility to reinstated employees, particularly to those who had breached union‐fixed working rules. Furthermore, with the exception of the factionalists, rehired workers were unlikely to overcome union hostility. As one subject reported in graphic terms, “the NLRB case turned into a fight to the finish, and when I won the union did not surrender but just continued fighting me.” Given such conditions, discriminated workers could hardly be expected to re‐establish and reassert their membership rights. We need further study here, but it seems that among industrial subjects there was a correlation between unwilling union membership and discrimination. It appears more than mere chance that industrial workers who cared little for unions, tried to evade paying dues, subverted union rules, and were independent‐minded found themselves the victims of union‐caused discrimination. When rehired, they rarely changed their attitudes and conduct, and locals were unlikely to welcome them with open arms. By contrast, labor pool subjects in the main were staunch unionists before discrimination and after reinstatement. The data suggest that either certain types of workers enter craft occupations or the characteristics of the industries they work in tend to compel employees to behave in a certain manner within their unions. Since such workers looked to their unions for employment and the enforcement of standards and working rules, strong internal cohesion was not surprising. Two reservations should be noted to the above generalizations. Where the subjects suffered discrimination because they had been protecting group rights or supporting factions or rival unions, their reinstatement led them to even greater union participation. Where the local was dominated by a single, powerful leader, the reinstated worker's union activity tended to decrease.

Part I of this Article provides a background for both the NLRA and the IRCA. It examines the goals and remedies of both statutes as well as the impact of the Supreme Court’s Hoffman decision on available remedies. Part II addresses the currently-skewed remedial incentives. It considers why employers are tempted to hire unauthorized workers and commit unfair labor practices that are then inadequately remedied, which creates a situation that adversely effects the rights of authorized employees. Part III more closely analyzes this consequential harm. This Part identifies the erosions on the NLRA’s collective nature and the impact on authorized employees’ terms and conditions of employment as well as their ability to change them. It also examines the far-reaching erosion of mental confidence experienced by authorized employees when considering their statutorily protected rights. This chilling effect, when unaddressed, represents a failure of the NLRA to achieve its remedial goal to restore the status quo ex ante to the employer’s unfair labor practice. In Part IV, this Article considers the literature addressing remedies in cases involving unauthorized workers, including the many existing suggestions for refinements that might bring balance to the currently misaligned incentive structure. It observes, however, that these proposals reflect a current focus on unauthorized workers that not only poses practical and political dilemmas if implemented but, as a normative measure, continues to overlook the problem of the harm done to authorized employees—and may even cause them further harm. Given that any attempt to amend the NLRA or modify Hoffman to account for this developing problem is almost certainly doomed to fail in the foreseeable future, Part V concludes that it may be more expedient to work within the existing statutory text and case law to address the distinct harm to authorized worker as a part of the restoration of the status quo. It therefore suggests that in cases where an unfair labor practice has been found involving an unauthorized worker, the General Counsel and the Board should routinely consider expanded appropriate remedies. These remedies could potentially include longer notice posting times, notice mailing with explanatory material educating the remaining workers of their rights, publication of the notice for a period of weeks in a publication of general circulation, visitation to ensure compliance with the Board’s order, and other measures designed to restore the confidence and willingness to act of employees, particularly the authorized workers who have been harmed by their employer’s actions.

On January 22, 1941, the Attorney General's Committee on Administrative Procedure, appointed to investigate the need for procedural reform in various federal administrative tribunals and to suggest improvements therein, submitted its final report and a proposed bill to Attorney General Jackson, who on January 24, 1941, transmitted these to the Senate with his recommendation that the proposed bill receive favorable consideration. Every member of the committee approved this report and this proposed bill, but the approval of four members of the committee was subject to their additional views and recommendations, expressed in statements and in a differing proposed bill. Pending now before the Senate are S. 674 embodying the proposed bill favored by the minority of the committee, and S. 675 embodying the proposed bill favored by the majority of the committee, and S. 918 embodying certain features of these bills and also of the Logan-Walter Bill which President Roosevelt vetoed on December 18, 1940. The conflicting views embodied in these bills and in the committee's report and in the additional views and recommendations of the minority of the committee have been extensively discussed in the law periodicals and in hearings from April to July 1941 before a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee.8 The American Bar Association through its House of Delegates has endorsed S. 674. Debate on administrative procedure is today proceeding with somewhat more light and less heat than previously, 10 and credit for this belongs to both the majority and the minority of the Attorney General's Committee.

Today, some sixty years after passage of the Taft‐Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act, it seems that the centerpiece of the Act has become the right to refrain from protected, concerted or union activity. The original 1935 legislation was enacted, of course, to protect the right to engage in that activity, and to encourage the practice of collective bargaining. For nearly sixty years after Taft‐Hartley added the “right to refrain” to Section 7's employee protections, the Board has struggled to reconcile the sometimes competing statutory goals of promoting the stability of collective bargaining relationships and the individual freedom of choice, preserved by Section 7. That has changed, however, as the National Labor Relations Board, in several recent decisions, has said for the first time, that freedom of choice—which is to say, the freedom to reject union representation—prevails in the statutory scheme. It is as if the law, in abandoning the primacy of achieving economic justice through collective action, has been turned inside out. The stakes for this shift in policy are great.

B. Patricia Dyson; James B. Atleson. Values and Assumptions in American Labor Law. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. 1983. Pp. x, 240. Cloth $25.00, p

Labor made a bold attempt in the case of Apex Hosiery Company v. Leader to procure a determination by the Supreme Court that labor organizations and their activities are exempt from the Sherman Act. The act, having survived this attack, presumably remains a potential weapon against labor unions. However, the Court by its decision has rejected a theory that the Sherman Act should be expanded on the principles of the Wagner Act decisions, has imposed a new restriction upon its application, and has opened the way for developments which will have substantially the effect of excluding labor unions from its application.

The Indiana State Bar Association and the Indianapolis Bar Association held a joint Legal Institute upon this subject on August 24, 1939 at Indianapolis. This issue of the Journal publishes the two addresses and a synopsis of the general discussion which followed.

The evolution of pre dispute contractual agreements to arbitrate statutory claims culminating in the Supreme Courts holding in 14 Penn Plaza v. Pyett.

La idea de la posición empleadora plural ha venido tomando creciente importancia en elDerecho del Trabajo a partir de la desvertebración jurídica de la empresa fordista juntocon el crecimiento de la fragmentación empresarial (redes de empresas y grupos deempresas). A partir de este marco, el objeto de este artículo es el análisis jurídico de ladoctrina del joint employer estadounidense y, específicamente, de la controversia jurídicainiciada en agosto de 2015 (y que todavía permanece abierta) sobre el estándar del jointemployer de la National Labor Relations Board de los Estados Unidos de América(NLRB). El objetivo de ello es aproximarse preliminarmente a problemática de la posiciónempleadora plural y extraer lecciones jurídicas para su determinación y eventualtratamiento legislativo en España.

LONG before the United States Supreme Court in 1964 handed down its now celebrated Wiley decision,' drawing attention to the problems of successorship in the field of labor law, the National Labor Relations Board (the Board) on frequent occasions had to wrestle with these problems under the National Labor Relations Act (the Act). The Board's shift of position over the years on one of the two chief successorship issues-the liability of a successor to remedy the predecessor's unfair labor practices - is indicative of the legal and practical difficulties inherent in this issue. In recent years, the increasing number of sales and mergers of corporations and other business entities has brought more successorship cases before the Board, and it appears that no two cases decided by the Board are exactly the same or even very similar. Thus, there has been and continues to be a myriad of different situations as to which it may be increasingly difficult for the Board to apply any simple rule-of-thumb as to the successor's liability. The Wiley decision and the several significant court decisions which followed it were the results of section 301 suits to compel the observance of an arbitration clause in a collective bargaining agreement signed by a predecessor employer. Thus, the Board was not a party to these important court cases. Nevertheless, the impact of these decisions, particularly Wiley, on Board doctrines is bound to be significant before too long. Although this impact has been delayed by the Board's apparent reluctance to make definitive pronouncements in some Wiley - related issues presented to it, a ruling in this very important area cannot be long delayed.

IN 1938, a few short years after the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act,' and only one year after the constitutionality of the Act had been upheld, 2 the Supreme Court resolved a fundamental question concerning the extent to which the Act protected employees in their exercise of the right to strike. In NLRB v. Mackay Radio & Telegraph Co.," the Supreme Court held that an employer, in order to carry on his business, could lawfully hire permanent replacements for his employees who were engaged in an economic strike, and that the employer was under no obligation to create positions for such re- placed strikers by discharging their replacements at the termination of the strike. In the key passage of the Court's opinion, Justice Roberts stated: Nor was it an unfair labor practice to replace the striking em- ployees with others in an effort to carry on the business. Although § 13 provides "Nothing in this Act shall be construed so as to interfere with or impede or diminish in any way the right to strike," it does not follow that an employer, guilty of no act de- nounced by the statute, has lost the right to protect and continue his business by supplying places left vacant by strikers. And he is not bound to discharge those hired to fill the places of strikers, upon the election of the latter to resume their employment in order to create places for them. The assurance by respondent to those who accepted employment during the strike that if they so desired their places might be permanent was not an unfair labor practice nor was it such to reinstate only so many of the strikers as there were vacant places to be filled.

My topic is the need for new and novel remedies for unfair labor practices. I do not mean to suggest that there is no such need, but I would, before going any further, like to put it into perspective. The case load of the National Labor Relations Board (the Board) has been rising steadily, being over 30,000 cases per year at the present time, a development which should concern all of us. About 17,000 of these cases involve alleged unfair labor practices. That number, in it- self, seems to suggest that the Board is not successfully accomplishing its purpose. But the number itself means very little. What the Board sees is in a sense the pathology of labor relations. There is a great deal of successful collective bargaining that, simply because it is so successful, does not reach us. Many unions are voluntarily recognized without Board conducted elections. When elections are necessary four out of five are conducted on an amicable consent basis. Thousands of con- tracts are negotiated every year without Board intervention. I think it is fair to say that the body of law the Board has built up, by making clear to parties what the law requires, has helped to create the climate in which so much successful bargaining and labor relations can occur.

There has long been a consensus among scholars and union-side practitioners that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) is under-enforced. As a result, employers often treat violations of the NLRA as a cost of doing business rather than a serious violation of a federal statute. Calls for reform have historically tended to propose legislative amendments to the NLRA to constrain employer conduct and impose greater consequences for discrimination violations. However, little attention has been given to improving the flawed legal test by which such discrimination is analyzed, Wright Line, 251 N.L.R.B. 1083 (1980), enforced 662 F.2d 899 (1st Cir. 1981), cert. denied 455 U.S. 989 (1982). In this article, we propose a new causation test that better addresses how adjudicators should weigh the evidence that Congress and jurists have deemed relevant for evaluating discrimination claims. Our test lightens the initial burden to establish a showing of discrimination, formalizes the employer’s defense burden, and then provides a rebuttal burden for the discriminatee. This is no radical departure from historical precedent. Rather, we argue that the original Wright Line decision itself contained hints of our test, but that adjudicators and practitioners alike have whittled Wright Line to an oversimplified shell at best and an ambiguous, complex inquiry at worst. Our test better fulfills the NLRA’s objective of promoting collective bargaining in the private sector by encouraging a deeper inquiry in NLRA cases’ pre-litigation investigative stage.