Act of July 5, 1935, Public Law 74-198, 49 STAT 449, to Diminish the Causes of Labor Disputes Burdening or Obstructing Interstate and Foreign Commerce, to Create a National Labor Relations Board, and for Other Purposes

This law was enacted after the National Industrial Recovery Act was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Organized labor was again looking for relief from employers who had been free to spy on, interrogate, discipline, discharge, and blacklist union members. In the 1930s, workers had begun to organize militantly, and in 1933 and 1934, a great wave of strikes occurred across the nation in the form of citywide general strikes and factory takeovers. Violent confrontations occurred between workers trying to form unions and the police and private security forces defending the interests of anti-union employers. In a Congress sympathetic to labor unions, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was passed and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law on July 5, 1935. The broad intention of the act, commonly known as the Wagner Act after Senator Robert R. Wagner of New York, was to guarantee employees “the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid and protection.” The NLRA

Date

1935-07-05

Archive

U.S. National Archives (via Wikimedia Commons)

Type

image

Original size

2,236 × 3,150 pixels

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