A trade union or labor union, often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages and benefits, improving working conditions, improving safety standards, establishing complaint procedures, developing rules governing status of employees and protecting and increasing the bargaining power of workers.
The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act, is a foundational statute of United States labor law that guarantees the right of private sector employees to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining, and take collective action such as strikes. Central to the act was a ban on company unions. The act was written by Senator Robert F. Wagner, passed by the 74th United States Congress, and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between employers and a group of employees aimed at agreements to regulate working salaries, working conditions, benefits, and other aspects of workers' compensation and rights for workers. The interests of the employees are commonly presented by representatives of a trade union to which the employees belong. A collective agreement reached by these negotiations functions as a labour contract between an employer and one or more unions, and typically establishes terms regarding wage scales, working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance mechanisms, and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs. Such agreements can also include 'productivity bargaining' in which workers agree to changes to working practices in return for higher pay or greater job security.
Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, these rights influence working conditions in the relations of employment. One of the most prominent is the right to freedom of association, otherwise known as the right to organize. Workers organized in trade unions exercise the right to collective bargaining to improve working conditions.
Leo Victor Panitch was a distinguished research professor of political science and a Canada Research Chair in comparative political economy at York University.
The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), is an independent democratic rank-and-file labor union representing workers in both the private and public sectors across the United States.
A strikebreaker is a person who works despite a strike. Strikebreakers are usually individuals who were not employed by the company before the trade union dispute but hired after or during the strike to keep the organization running. Strikebreakers may also refer to workers who cross picket lines to work.
SEIU 1199 New England, also known as the New England Health Care Employees Union, is a local labor union that represents some 29,000 health care providers in the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Founded in 1958 in Connecticut with support from 1199 union organizers from New York, the local SEIU 1199 New England has union halls in Hartford, CT and Providence, RI. It is the largest health care workers union in Connecticut.
Sam Gindin is a Canadian intellectual and activist known for his expertise on the labour movement and the economics of the automobile industry.
Labor Notes is an American non-profit organization and network for rank-and-file union members and grassroots labor activists. Though officially titled the Labor Education and Research Project, the project is best known by the title of its monthly magazine. The magazine reports news and analysis about labor activity or problems facing the labor movement. In its pages it advocates for a revitalization of the labor movement through Social Movement Unionism and union democracy. Labor Notes is based out of Detroit, Michigan, with an East Coast office located in Brooklyn, New York.
Card check, also called majority sign-up, is a method for employees to organize into a labor union in which a majority of employees in a bargaining unit sign authorization forms, or "cards", stating they wish to be represented by the union. Since the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) became law in 1935, card check has been an alternative to the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) election process. Card check and election are both overseen by the National Labor Relations Board. The difference is that with card sign-up, employees sign authorization cards stating they want a union, the cards are submitted to the NLRB and if more than 50% of the employees submitted cards, the NLRB requires the employer to recognize the union. The NLRA election process is an additional step with the NLRB conducting a secret ballot election after authorization cards are submitted. In both cases the employer never sees the authorization cards or any information that would disclose how individual employees voted.
The Bituminous coal strike of 1974 was a 28-day national coal strike in the United States led by the United Mine Workers of America. It is generally considered a successful strike by the union.
Labor relations or labor studies is a field of study that can have different meanings depending on the context in which it is used. In an international context, it is a subfield of labor history that studies the human relations with regard to work in its broadest sense and how this connects to questions of social inequality. It explicitly encompasses unregulated, historical, and non-Western forms of labor. Here, labor relations define "for or with whom one works and under what rules. These rules determine the type of work, type and amount of remuneration, working hours, degrees of physical and psychological strain, as well as the degree of freedom and autonomy associated with the work." More specifically in a North American and strictly modern context, labor relations is the study and practice of managing unionized employment situations. In academia, labor relations is frequently a sub-area within industrial relations, though scholars from many disciplines including economics, sociology, history, law, and political science also study labor unions and labor movements. In practice, labor relations is frequently a subarea within human resource management. Courses in labor relations typically cover labor history, labor law, union organizing, bargaining, contract administration, and important contemporary topics.
The Employee Free Choice Act is the name for several legislative bills on US labor law which have been proposed and sometimes introduced into one or both chambers of the U.S. Congress.
SEIU Healthcare is a Canadian trade union representing more than 60,000 workers in Ontario, Canada. Through collective bargaining, the union represents workers in hospitals, home care, nursing and retirement homes, and community services. The union has been active in Ontario for over 70 years.
The Blue Eagle at Work: Reclaiming Democratic Rights in the American Workplace is a legal treatise written by Charles J. Morris which analyzes collective bargaining under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the federal statute governing most private sector labor relations in the United States. Published in 2005 by Cornell University Press, the text claims that the NLRA guarantees that employees under that Act have the right to bargain collectively through minority unions—but only on a members-only basis—in workplaces where there is not an established majority union, notwithstanding that the present practice and general understanding of the law is that only majority-union employees are entitled to engage in collective bargaining on an exclusivity basis. Contracts resulting from such minority-union bargaining would apply to union members only, not to other employees.
Jane F. McAlevey was an American union organizer, author, and political commentator. She was a Senior Policy Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley's Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, and a columnist at The Nation.
The Workplace Democracy Act is a proposed US labor law, that has been sponsored by Bernie Sanders and re-introduced from 1992 to 2018. Among its different forms, it would have removed obstacles to employers making collective agreements, established an impartial National Public Employment Relations Commission to support fair collective bargaining, required that pensions plans are jointly managed by employee and employer representatives, changed the definition of an "employee" to ensure every person who works for other people has labor rights, and repeal all "right to work" laws.
No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age (ISBN 1586480499) is a 2016 non-fiction book by Jane McAlevey, in which the author argues that meaningful social change can only happen when organizing is built around workers and ordinary people at the community level. The book uses case studies from the labor unions and social movements.
Glacier Northwest, Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local Union No. 174, No. 21-1449, 598 U.S. 771 (2023) was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States related to federal labor law, concerning the power of employers to sue labor unions regarding intentional destruction of employer property following a strike. In an 8-1 decision, the Court acknowledged that the right to strike is not absolute, and concluded that the National Labor Relations Act did not preempt lawsuits filed against the union, thus allowing litigation to continue.
