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27 Emp. Rts. & Emp. Pol'y J. 1 (2024)

handle is hein.journals/emplrght27 and id is 1 raw text is: Whither the Wagner Act: On the Waning View of Labor Law and Leviathan By: Brandon R. Magner* Abstract The National Labor Relations Act's (NLRA) well- documented weaknesses in substance and enforcement, combined with legislators' inability to adapt the Act to the modern economy, have understandably created many cynics in the field of labor law. For several decades, legal scholars have almost unanimously derided the NLRA and the agency which administers it, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), for failing to prevent rampant anti-union conduct by employers and the collapse of the union formation process through the Board's election machinery. This ossification of the law, as it has come to be known, is considered to be a key contributor to the United States' private-sector unionization rate declining from its mid-century high of 35 percent to a mere six percent in recent years. While most scholars have generally lamented the diminishing relevance of the NLRA or the squandering of its transformational potential, others have questioned the labor movement's preoccupation with obtaining favorable federal legislation. This clustering of academics and activists are skeptical not only of unions' current reliance on the state for assistance in reversing its fortunes, but of the very decision of New Deal-era politicians to pass the NLRA amidst the high point of worker insurgency and radical organizing in the 1930s. This Article seeks to correct this narrative. It argues that Senator Robert Wagner was justified in crafting a national J.D. 2018, University of Kentucky College of Law. Member, Indiana Bar. The author is a field attorney in the National Labor Relations Board's Indianapolis Regional office. This Article represents the opinions and views of the author alone, and does not constitute, nor should it be construed as, representing the views of the National Labor Relations Board, its General Counsel, or any of its Regional offices.

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