Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act ("NLRA") in 1935 to protect the rights of employees and employers, to encourage collective bargaining, and to curtail certain private sector labor and management practices, which can harm the general welfare of workers, businesses and the U.S. economy.
- National Labor Relations Board website
The NLRA does not include coverage for all workers. The Act specifically excludes from its coverage individuals who are:* employed as agricultural laborers
- National Labor Relations Board website
* employed in the domestic service of any person or family in a home
* employed by a parent or spouse
* employed as an independent contractor
* employed as a supervisor (supervisors who have been discriminated against for refusing to violate the NLRA may be covered)
* employed by an employer subject to the Railway Labor Act, such as railroads and airlines
* employed by Federal, state, or local government
* employed by any other person who is not an employer as defined in the NLRA
The full text of the act
Excerpts
From Section 1:
"The inequality of bargaining power between employees who do not possess full freedom of association or actual liberty of contract and employers who are organized in the corporate or other forms of ownership association substantially burdens and affects the flow of commerce, and tends to aggravate recurrent business depressions, by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners in industry and by preventing the stabilization of competitive wage rates and working conditions within and between industries.
"Experience has proved that protection by law of the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively safeguards commerce from injury, impairment, or interruption, and promotes the flow of commerce by removing certain recognized sources of industrial strife and unrest, by encouraging practices fundamental to the friendly adjustment of industrial disputes arising out of differences as to wages, hours, or other working conditions, and by restoring equality of bargaining power between employers and employees."
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