Should We Scrap the National Labor Relations Act?

Josh Eidelson has a provocative piece at In These Times exploring the possibility of killing the National Labor Relations Act. Quoting several union leaders who note that the labor law enacted in 1935 now restricts labor terribly, Eidelson makes a plausible case. Partially because employers have both found ways around the law and lobby to not enforce its prohibitions on their actions and partially because the NLRA made illegal the very acts (like workplace occupations) that provided the momentum to pass the act, labor law does little for workers today.

Eidelson goes on to discuss how labor activists are starting to get around the law in their own right–by not organizing into “unions,” but rather to create organizations that do what unions do without the title. He also interviews labor scholars who think getting rid of the NLRA is insane.

I’m honestly not sure how I feel on the question. It does feel dangerous. On the other hand, even when unions successfully use the NLRA to crack down on unionbusting tactics, it often takes years for a court to decide in their favor and becomes nothing more than a cost of doing business for employers. Obviously, the ideal would be to have a government that actually enforced the law vigorously, but we are a long ways from that in 2012. And because the NLRA helped bring unions into the government and respectability during the 30s at the price of ending their radical disruptive tactics, when unions are no longer respectable pieces of government coalitions, we are left only with the labor restrictions.

At the very least, it’s an interesting discussion to have.