Federal law is the body of law created by the federal government of a country. A federal government is formed when a group of political units, such as states or provinces join in a federation, delegating their individual sovereignty and many powers to the central government while retaining or reserving other limited powers. As a result, two or more levels of government exist within an established geographic territory. The body of law of the common central government is the federal law.
In the context of labor law in the United States, the term right-to-work laws refers to state laws that prohibit union security agreements between employers and labor unions. Such agreements can be incorporated into union contracts to require employees who are not union members to contribute to the costs of union representation. Unlike the right to work definition as a human right in international law, U.S. right-to-work laws do not aim to provide a general guarantee of employment to people seeking work but rather guarantee an employee's right to refrain from being a member of a labor union.
United States labor law sets the rights and duties for employees, labor unions, and employers in the US. Labor law's basic aim is to remedy the "inequality of bargaining power" between employees and employers, especially employers "organized in the corporate or other forms of ownership association". Over the 20th century, federal law created minimum social and economic rights, and encouraged state laws to go beyond the minimum to favor employees. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 requires a federal minimum wage, currently $7.25 but higher in 29 states and D.C., and discourages working weeks over 40 hours through time-and-a-half overtime pay. There are no federal laws, and few state laws, requiring paid holidays or paid family leave. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 creates a limited right to 12 weeks of unpaid leave in larger employers. There is no automatic right to an occupational pension beyond federally guaranteed Social Security, but the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 requires standards of prudent management and good governance if employers agree to provide pensions, health plans or other benefits. The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 requires employees have a safe system of work.
The duty of fair representation is incumbent upon Canadian and U.S. labor unions that are the exclusive bargaining representative of workers in a particular group. It is the obligation to represent all employees fairly, in good faith, and without discrimination.
A strikebreaker is a person who works despite an ongoing strike. Strikebreakers may be current employees, or new hires, who are hired after or during the strike to keep the organization running. In continuing to work, or taking jobs at a workplace under current strike, strikebreakers are said to "cross picket lines".
Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Association, 500 U.S. 507 (1991), deals with First Amendment rights and unions in public employment.
NLRB v. Hearst Publications, 322 U.S. 111 (1944), was an administrative law case heard before the United States Supreme Court. The case concerned the meaning of the term "employees" in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
Brown v. Hotel and Restaurant Employees, 468 U.S. 491 (1984), is a 4-to-3 ruling by the United States Supreme Court which held that a New Jersey state gaming law requiring union leaders to be of good moral character was not preempted by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
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.
The National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) is an American labor union which represents about 100,000 public employees in the federal government.
NLRB v. Mackay Radio & Telegraph Co., 304 U.S. 333 (1938), is a United States labor law case of the Supreme Court of the United States which held that workers who strike remain employees for the purposes of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The Court granted the relief sought by the National Labor Relations Board, which sought to have the workers reinstated by the employer. However, the decision is much better known today for its obiter dicta in which the Court said that an employer may hire strikebreakers and is not bound to discharge any of them if or when the strike ends.
Davenport v. Washington Education Association, 551 U.S. 177 (2007), is a ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that it does not violate the First Amendment for a state to require its public-sector unions to receive affirmative authorization from a non-member before spending that nonmember's agency fees for election-related purposes.
Duplex Printing Press Co. v. Deering, 254 U.S. 443 (1921), is a United States Supreme Court case which examined the labor provisions of the Clayton Antitrust Act and reaffirmed the prior ruling in Loewe v. Lawlor that a secondary boycott was an illegal restraint on trade. The decision authorized courts to issue injunctions to block this practice, and any other tactics used by labor unions that were deemed unlawful restraints on trade.
Communications Workers of America v. Beck, 487 U.S. 735 (1988), is a decision by the United States Supreme Court which held that, in a union security agreement, unions are authorized by statute to collect from non-members only those fees and dues necessary to perform its duties as a collective bargaining representative. The rights identified by the Court in Communications Workers of America v. Beck have since come to be known as "Beck rights", and defining what Beck rights are and how a union must fulfill its duties regarding them is an active area of modern United States labor law.
National Labor Relations Board v. Sands Manufacturing Co., 306 U.S. 332 (1939), is United States labor law case, decided by a majority of 5 to 2 by the Supreme Court of the United States, which overturned a decision by the National Labor Relations Board because it was not supported by substantial evidence. The Court defined collective bargaining under the National Labor Relations Act to mean that proposals and responses to proposals were pending, and that future meetings were being planned. Absent such conditions, bargaining was not occurring. The Court also held that an employer did not violate the Act if it chose to deal with the employees on an individual basis.
Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209 (1977), was a US labor law case where the United States Supreme Court upheld the maintaining of a union shop in a public workplace. Public school teachers in Detroit had sought to overturn the requirement that they pay fees equivalent to union dues on the grounds that they opposed public sector collective bargaining and objected to the political activities of the union. In a unanimous decision, the Court affirmed that the union shop, legal in the private sector, is also legal in the public sector. They found that non-members may be assessed agency fees to recover the costs of "collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment purposes" while insisting that objectors to union membership or policy may not have their dues used for other ideological or political purposes.
14 Penn Plaza LLC v. Pyett, 556 U.S. 247 (2009), is a United States labor law case decided by the United States Supreme Court on the rights of unionized workers to sue their employer for age discrimination. In this 2009 decision, the Court decided that whenever a union contract "clearly and unmistakably" requires that all age discrimination claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) be decided through arbitration, then employees subject to that contract cannot have those claims heard in court.
Tunstall v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, 323 U.S. 210 (1944), is a 1944 Supreme Court case. It involved a black man, Tom Tunstall, who was unfairly dismissed from his job because of his race.
Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, No. 16-1466, 585 U.S. ___ (2018), abbreviated Janus v. AFSCME, is a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court on US labor law, concerning the power of labor unions to collect fees from non-union members. Under the Taft–Hartley Act of 1947, which applies to the private sector, union security agreements can be allowed by state law. The Supreme Court ruled that such union fees in the public sector violate the First Amendment right to free speech, overruling the 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education that had previously allowed such fees.
