The Employee Free Choice Act of 2009, Labor Law Reform, and What Can Be Done About the Broken System of Labor-Management Relations Law in the United States

Details

Author(s):
  • William Gould
Publish Date:
February 1, 2009
Publication Title:
43 University of San Francisco Law Review
Format:
Journal Article
Citation(s):
  • William B. Gould IV, The Employee Free Choice Act of 2009, Labor Law Reform, and What Can Be Done About the Broken System of Labor-Management Relations Law in the United States, 43 University of San Francisco Law Review (Fall 2008).

Abstract

Abstract

The financial crisis and meltdown of 2008 and beyond poses the greatest economic challenge to the United States and the world economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The distress experienced by workers generally, and in the automobile industry in particular, has dramatized anew the widespread public hostility toward organized labor and some of its hard-fought gains. As in the 1930s, when a new legal framework for labor-management relations was created out of turmoil and dislocation, once again in this century, there are both direct protests and demands to change the law in the form of amendments to the National Labor Relations Act. Once again—this time as a direct result of the 2008 experience—the imperative is that regulation must trump the market. Now, as in the 1930s, the labor market cannot be immune from this policy shift.