Mid-Life Crisis: The NLRB at Fifty

Fifty years ago next July, Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act, then better known as the Wagner Act after its chief sponsor, Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York. The act was termed “Labor’s bill of rights,” and indeed it was, declaring that American workers had a federally protected 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 activitie...