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U.S. Labor Legislations in the Twentieth Century |
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| Legislation | Year Passed | Description of what the law covered | Amendments of previous law |
| The National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) | 1935 | The Wagner Act established the rights of the workers in the various parts of the US to organize and join trade unions ( Stabile, 2016) . The Act is the foundation of the employees from the private sector to take part in strikes to demand for the betterment of their working conditions ( Stabile, 2016) . The Wagner Act also required the employers to gain recognition of collective bargaining as a ruling principle in industry. | - |
| The Social Security Act (SSA) | 1935 | The SSA was signed into law to provide a system of insurance for the purposes of the old age of the workers, provide benefits to the victims of the industrial accidents that were rampant at the time, and provide insurance for the unemployed people across the US ( Gagnon, 2017) . Additionally, the SSA provided aid for the dependent mothers and their children. The Act extended their benefits to the blind and the physically handicapped people as well ( Gagnon, 2017) . In matters regarding reducing poverty and dependency in the US, and providing insurance for all people including the unemployed, the social security act of 1935 was considered a success. | - |
| The Labor Management Relations Act (Taft-Hartley Act) | 1947 | The Taft-Hartley Act was enacted to restrict the power that the labor unions had owing to the robust anti-labor sentiments that were spread across the US after the Second World War ( Lipold & Isaac, 2017) . The act illegalized closed shops and secondary boycott unlike the laws that had been passed earlier in the country. Furthermore, the Taft-Hartley act gave the President power to secure an injunction, which would postpone a strike for up to 80 days to avoid tampering with the national security ( Lipold & Isaac, 2017) . The law also required the officials of the unions to file affidavits, which claimed that they were not members of the communist party. | - |
| The Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (Landrum-Griffin Act) | 1959 | The Landrum-Griffin Act was enacted to manage the relationships between the labor union officials and the US employers ( Abraham, 2017) . The act was meant to reorganize the internal affairs of the labor unions to promote the reporting and disclosure of information to both the employers and the employees ( Abraham, 2017) . The Act was also meant to grant particular rights to the members of the unions and to protect the members by promoting democratic practices that characterize the activities that they undertook on a daily basis. | - |
| Civil Rights Act | 1964 | The civil rights act of 1964 was a pioneer of the changes in the civil rights and labor laws in the United States of America that outlawed discrimination based on gender, color, national origin, race, among other parameters of disparity ( Weiss, 2019) . The act was therefore a stepping-stone towards the achievement of a workplace that was free of all the forms of discrimination. | The civil rights act of 1964 was part of the fourteenth amendment to the US constitution. According to Weiss (2019), cases of discrimination in the US, especially based on race and skin color, had been reportedly growing and the constitution required having some of the amendments to protect workers in the US. |
| Age Discrimination in Employment Act | 1967 | Discrimination of the aged had begun being reported in the various workplace scenarios across the US ( Nikolaev & Pavlova, 2016) . Therefore, an act was passed by the federal government to forbid the discrimination against the members of the US workforce that were at least 40 years old ( Nikolaev & Pavlova, 2016) . The act covered the discrimination against both the employees and the applicants who have crossed the forty-years-old mark in age. | - |
| Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA Act) | 1970 | The OSHA Act was originally signed into law by President Nixon of the US in 1970 to cater for the occupational health and security issues of both the public and the private sectors of the US economy ( Wodka, 2018) . The law strongly advocated for the safety of the workplaces across the US to reduce the hazards that both the employers and the employees faced on a daily basis ( Wodka, 2018) . The act also developed the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) that was responsible of performing inspections at the US-based workplaces to set the desirable safety standards for the country’s workforce ( Wodka, 2018) . The act also touched on the protection of the human resources that helped both the employers and the employees. | - |
| The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) | 1974 | The ERISA was developed as a federal United States of America’s tax and labor legislation that establishes the minimum standards for the pension plans in the private industry of the company ( Russ, 2019) . The law also stipulates the rules on the effects of the federal income tax based on the transactions that are associated with the employees benefit plans. | - |
References
Abraham, S. E. (2017). The LMRDA. Another labor law that benefits firms?. International Journal of Law and Management , 59 (1), 2-20.
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Gagnon, J. (2017). The Redistributive Properties of the Social Security Act of 1935. ResPublica-Journal of Undergraduate Research , 22 (1), 10.
Lipold, P. F., & Isaac, L. W. (2017). Deadly Picket-Lines in US Labour History. International Union Rights , 24 (2), 20-28.
Nikolaev, B., & Pavlova, N. (2016). Age Discrimination in the US Higher Education and Employment. International Journal of Environmental and Science Education , 11 (18), 10875-10883.
Russ, E. L. (2019). The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974: An Outdated Regulatory Framework for Retirement Investors. Iowa L. Rev. , 105 , 399.
Stabile, D. (2016). A Useful and Remunerative Job: The National Labor Relations Act. In The Political Economy of a Living Wage (pp. 139-159). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Weiss, J. T. (2019). Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII. The Encyclopedia of Women and Crime , 1-3.
Wodka, S. (2018). OSHA 1971: Bringing Government to Protect the Lives of Industrial and Farm Workers.
