Labor Management Relations Act Law and Legal Definition
The Labor-Management Relations Act is a federal statute, passed in 1947, that amended the Wagner Act of 1935. It is also referred to as the Taft-Hartley Act.
The Act's provisions include:
- a listing of unfair labor practices that unions are prohibited from engaging in;
- prohibition of the closed shop;
- setting time periods for notifying the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service of impending expiration of labor agreements;
- establishing a temporary injunction in a strike which imperils the nation's health and safety, along with specified impasse procedures;
- authorizing the states to pass "right to work" laws; 6) prohibits union dues from being used to support political candidates in national elections.
The act established control of labor disputes on a new basis by enlarging the National Labor Relations Board and providing that the union or the employer must serve notice on the other party and on a government mediation service before terminating a collective-bargaining agreement. The government was empowered to obtain an 80-day injunction against any strike that it deemed a peril to national health or safety. The act also prohibited jurisdictional strikes (dispute between two unions over which should act as the bargaining agent for the employees) and secondary boycotts (boycott against an already organized company doing business with another company that a union is trying to organize), declared that it did not extend protection to workers on wildcat strikes, outlawed the closed shop, and permitted the union shop only on a vote of a majority of the employees. Attempts to repeal it have been unsuccessful, but the Landrum-Griffin Act (1959) amended some features of the Taft-Hartley Labor Act.
