The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board

National Labor Policy in Transition 1937-1947

By James A. Gross

Subjects: Public Policy
Paperback : 9780873955171, 381 pages, June 1982
Hardcover : 9780873955164, 381 pages, June 1982
Out of print (Hardcover)

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Post-Constitutionality: The NLRB's Vigorous Enforcement of the Wagner Act

2. Controversial NLRB Decisions: A Public Attack and a Political Reaction

3. The AFL-NLRB Alliance: Weakening but Still Effective

4. The AFL-Employer Alliance Solidifies

5. The Aftermath of The 1938 Congressional Elections: Senate and House Hearings on Amendments and a Special House Committee to Investigate the NLRB

6. Leiserson and Witt: An Internal Power Struggle

7. Communists and Other Leftists at the NLRB

8. The Special House Committee to Investigate the NLRB

9. The NLRB Under Investigation: Regional Directors, Trial Examiners, and Review Attorneys

10. The Smith Bill to Amend the Wagner Act

11. The Triumph of the Anti-NLRB Conservatives: A Green-Smith Alliance Leads to Passage of the Senate Bill

12. A New NLRB

13. A New Labor Policy

14. Concluding Observations

Notes

Index

Description

In this volume, covering the years 1937–1947, James A. Gross describes and analyzes the NLRB's vigorous and uncompromising enforcement of the Wagner Act and the intense political pressure to which the Board was subjected as a consequence. He identifies and examines the forces that succeeded in pressuring the NLRB out of its essential role in the making of U. S. labor policy.

This is the story of the transformation of the NLRB from an expert administrative agency that played a major role in the making of labor policy, into an insecure, politically sensitive agency preoccupied with its own survival and reduced to deciding marginal issues.

James A. Gross is Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University.