Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: How many members does the National Labor Relations Board have?
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is an independent agency of the Federal government of the United States with responsibilities for enforcing U.S. labor law in relation to collective bargaining and unfair labor practices. Under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 it supervises elections for labor union representation and can investigate and remedy unfair labor practices. Unfair labor practices may involve union-related situations or instances of protected concerted activity. The NLRB is governed by a five-person board and a General Counsel, all of whom are appointed by the President with the consent of the Senate. Board members are appointed to five-year terms and the General Counsel is appointed to a four-year term. The General Counsel acts as a prosecutor and the Board acts as an appellate quasi-judicial body from decisions of administrative law judges.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has five Members, each of whom serves for a five-year term. Terms are staggered so that one Member's term expires each year (although delays in nominations and confirmation, as well as the use of recess appointments, can upset this schedule). Members are nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate. Traditionally, a majority of the board belongs to the President's political party. The President designates the Chair from one of the existing Members. The Chair serves at the pleasure of the President, and may be demoted without cause or warning at any time.
Winpisinger was active in many efforts promoting cooperation between labor, management and government. He served as a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council; a member of the Finance Committee of the Democratic National Committee; co-chair of the Collective Bargaining and Group Relations Institute; a trustee of the National Planning Association; President of the Citizen/Labor Energy Coalition; a member of the Board of Governors of the National Space Institute; a board member of the Americans for Democratic Action; a board member of the Democratic Socialists of America; a member of the Executive Committee of the International Metalworkers' Federation; and an Executive Board member of International Guiding Eyes.
Card check (also called majority sign-up) is a method for employees to organize into a labor union in which a majority of employees in a bargaining unit sign authorization forms, or "cards", stating they wish to be represented by the union. Since the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) became law in 1935, card check has been an alternative to the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) election process. Card check and election are both overseen by the National Labor Relations Board. The difference is that with card sign-up, employees sign authorization cards stating they want a union, the cards are submitted to the NLRB and if more than 50% of the employees submitted cards, the NLRB requires the employer to recognize the union. The NLRA election process is an additional step with the NLRB conducting a secret ballot election after authorization cards are submitted. In both cases the employer never sees the authorization cards or any information that would disclose how individual employees voted.
Unionization never proved popular with the employees or the culture of the company. In 1976, the Oran factory voted to unionize with the Retail Clerks Union but the motion failed. In 1985, the National Labor Relations Board ruled against International Hat Company for allegedly violating elements of the National Labor Relations Act. The company was claimed to have infringed upon the right of Tex Barnes, a cutter at the International Hat factory in Piedmont, Missouri to organize a union. Barnes led the efforts for certification in April 1980 and was also a member the union's negotiating committee. However, as in previous instances, the union lost the election when put to an employee vote. The union was formally decertified on March 4, 1982. Barnes filed an unfair labor practice charge against the company nine months later. Although the National Labor Relations Board ruled in Barnes' favor, the United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit vacated and remanded the earlier decision.
The prospective for how the case would be resolved changed following the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, succeeding Barack Obama. During the Obama administration, the National Labor Relations Board agency had generally favored employees and helped to defend against unfair arbitration practices. The Board continued to support employees in its petition of "National Labor Relations Board v. Murphy Oil", stating "Resolving the question presented will have a direct and immediate effect on countless employees and employers throughout the nation because individual-arbitration agreements have become so widespread." By June 2017, the Board, now operating under the Trump administration, issued its amicus curiae for the case supportive of the employers' position. Further, following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, Trump's nominee for the vacant seat, Neil Gorsuch, had been confirmed in April 2017. The replacement of Justice Scalia helped retain a majority of conservative justices on the Court, which was expected to likely favor employers.
His three-volume history of the National Labor Relations Board has been called "authoritative" and "exhaustive". The second volume in the trilogy, "The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board: National Labor Policy in Transition, 1937-1947", won the prestigious Philip Taft Labor History Book Award in 1983.
Garrison took a leave of absence again from Wisconsin to serve on the National War Labor Board (NWLB) during World War II. The NWLB was established on January 12, 1942, by President Roosevelt to oversee war-related labor relations for the duration of the war and ensure that war-related production was not disrupted by labor disputes. Initially, Garrison was the War Labor Board's executive director and chief counsel. He was promoted to alternative public member in January 1944. A month later, he was elevated yet again to full public member. In the NWLB's final year of existence, he was its chairman.
The Economic Division was a critical one for the NLRB. Cause-and-effect was one of the fundamental assumptions of the National Labor Relations Act, and for the causes of labor unrest to be understood economic analysis was needed.[20] From the start, the Economic Division undertook three important tasks: 1) Gather economic data in support of cases before the courts; 2) Conduct general studies of labor relations to guide the board in formulating decisions and policies; and 3) Research the history of labor relations (the history of written agreements, whether certain issues were historically part of collective bargaining, how unions functioned internally, trends in employer activities, trends in collective bargaining, whether certain employer actions led to labor disputes, etc.) so that the board could educate itself, the courts, Congress, and the public about labor relations.[21] The first function proved critical to the survival of the NLRB. It was the Economic Division's data and analysis, more than then NLRB's legal reasoning, which proved critical in persuading the Supreme Court to sustain the Wagner Act in NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel.[22][23] The Court even cited several Economic Division studies in its decision.[24] In the wake of Jones & Laughlin Steel, many labor relations experts outside the agency concluded that economic analysis was "an accepted fact" essential to the proper functioning of the agency.[25] The Economic Division did, too. It asked Madden to pair an economist with an attorney in every important case,[26] and prepared outline of the economic data needed to support each case in case it went before the courts.[27]
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which was established in NLRA 1935 sections 3 to 6 (), is the primary enforcer of the Act. Employees and unions may act themselves in support of their rights, however because of collective action problems and the costs of litigation, the National Labor Relations Board is designed to assist and bear some of the costs. Under section 3, () the NLRB has two basic functions: overseeing the process by which employees decide whether to be represented by a labor organization and prosecuting violations. Those processes are initiated in the regional offices of the NLRB. The General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board give legal advice. Sections 4 () and 5 () set out provisions on the officers of the Board and their expenses. Section 6 () empowers the Board to issue rules interpreting the labor legislation. This will generally be binding, unless a court deems it to have acted outside its authority.
He was known as an arbitrator of even temperament, common sense, good humor, and exceptional judgment. He was a temporary board member of the National Recovery Administration. He was an associate member of the National War Labor Board during World War II. He also served on the Connecticut Labor Relations Board and the Alien Enemy Hearing Board of Connecticut. He was a special counsel for the Railroad Retirement Board from 1934 to 1936, and assisted in the arguing of Railroad Retirement Board v. Alton Railroad Co. before the Supreme Court.
Saposs left the Twentieth Century Fund to become Chief Economist of the newly established National Labor Relations Board in 1935. Saposs quickly built a staff, and began collecting information on the role labor unions played in interstate commerce and the social and economic impacts unions had. The research conducted under Saposs' leadership proved critical to winning over the Supreme Court of the United States, which held in "National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation", 301 U.S. 1 (1938) that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was constitutional. However, Saposs' tenure at the NLRB proved short. Although it had once supported the NLRA, the American Federation of Labor (AFL; which supported craft unionism) became convinced that the Board and its staff (including Saposs) were more supportive of the industrial unionism of its competitor, the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The AFL allied with anti-union Democratic Representative Howard W. Smith to attack the National Labor Relations Board. Saposs was a leader among anti-communist leftists. He had even been surreptitiously assessed by members of the Communist Party USA for membership, and rejected as a prospect. He had also tried to expose those individuals at the Board who he felt were communists. But Smith and others attacked Saposs as a communist, and the United States Congress defunded his division and his job on October 11, 1940.
JI Case Co v National Labor Relations Board 321 US 332 (1944) is a US labor law case, concerning the scope of labor rights in the United States.
US labor law Federal Labor Relations Authority Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (United States) List of Chairs of the National Labor Relations Board NLRB election procedures Subpoena ad testificandum Subpoena duces tecum Title 29 of the Code of Federal Regulations Union organizer USA.gov USAFacts
Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6763 on June 29, 1934. The new order abolished the NLB. In its place, it established the National Labor Relations Board. The new NLRB had only three members: Lloyd K. Garrison, dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School, was its chairman; Harry A. Millis, professor of economics at the University of Chicago, and Edwin S. Smith, Commissioner of Labor and Industry for the state of Massachusetts, were its members.
The Taft-Hartley Act required all officers and trustees of labor unions seeking the protect of the National Labor Relations Act to affirm that they were not members of the Communist Party USA. The anti-communist oath provision generated extensive controversy when it became effective on June 23, 1947. The Herzog board struggled to implement the anti-communist oath provisions, but it was the Farmer board which capped these efforts. Farmer publicly supported the Taft-Hartley Act. Although he felt it was not perfect, if properly implemented it would have a positive effect on labor relations.
In 2013, a former Bubba Gump employee claimed that the social media policy in the company's employee handbook had a restrictive effect on employees’ rights by prohibiting them from discussing their jobs online. In 2015, a National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge ruled that Bubba Gump did not violate employees’ rights as they did not explicitly prohibit employees from discussing job-related subjects, but only expected them to do so in a civil manner. There have been many cases in the last few years in which the National Labor Relations Board found companies social media policies to be overboard, and ruled in favor of the employee(s).
After the organization shutdown due to the charges brought by the Justice Department, many of its members formed together, along with members from other California-based anti-union organizations, to form the Employees Advisory Service in April 1939. In the case of NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD v. SUN TENT-LUEBBERT CO. et al., it is stated that the aforementioned organization worked to carry on much of the work promoted by TNT. The organization was later sued for partnering with TNT to create an employer-dominated union, which violated the National Labor Relations Act.
The NLRB recognizes a breach of the duty of fair representation as a violation of the National Labor Relations Act. However, because the duty of fair representation was originally created by judicial interpretation, rather than as an express statutory prohibition, employees covered by the National Labor Relations Act may sue their unions directly, without being required to first exhaust any administrative procedures provided under the National Labor Relations Board. The same is true for workers covered by the Railway Labor Act, which does not provide any administrative procedure for pursuing claims against a union. Employees' claims under either Act are governed by a six-month statute of limitations.
The NLRB was created by Executive Order on June 29, 1934 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to oversee labor related disputes for private companies, and later the United States Postal Service. The following year, 1935, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act or NLRA) giving the NLRB a statutory basis for labor policy. The NLRB is made up of a presidential-appointed General Counsel, who investigates and prosecutes unfair labor practices, and a quasi-judicial body known as the Board, which adjudicates unfair labor practices and representational issues involving labor organizations. At the time of its creation, the Board consisted of three members and required a two-member quorum to make decisions. In 1947, Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which increased the size of the Board from three to five members and required that members of the Board be confirmed by the Senate. It also raised the quorum needed for the Board to function from two to three members. Since 1993 there have been brief periods of time when the Board had only two members, but these have rarely extended beyond a few days and the two-member Board did not issue decisions.
In United States labor law, a jurisdictional strike is a concerted refusal to work undertaken by a union to assert its members' right to particular job assignments and to protest the assignment of disputed work to members of another union or to unorganized workers. (Labor unions use the term "jurisdiction" to refer to their claims to represent workers who perform a certain type of work and the right of their members to perform such work.) The Taft-Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act empowered the National Labor Relations Board to resolve such jurisdictional disputes and authorized the General Counsel of the NLRB to seek an injunction barring such strikes. 
The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (49 Stat. 449) (also known as the Wagner Act after New York Senator Robert F. Wagner) is a foundational statute of United States labor law which guarantees basic rights of private sector employees to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining for better terms and conditions at work, and take collective action including strike if necessary. The act also created the National Labor Relations Board, which conducts elections that can expect employers to engage in collective bargaining with labor unions (also known as trade unions). The Act does not apply to workers who are covered by the Railway Labor Act, agricultural employees, domestic employees, supervisors, federal, state or local government workers, independent contractors and some close relatives of individual employers.
The confusion worried both employer and employee. The situation was exacerbated by the certification process. The OLRB was taking time, and no one knew how this transnational association would work, or how it would be recognized by the US National Labor Relations Board. In fact, the NLRB asked the NHLPA to withdraw its unfair labor practices charge on November 20, 1957, arguing it did not have jurisdiction. This was followed by the Montreal Canadiens players rejection of the association in early January, 1958.
Fischer, Fredric H.; Brent, Garren; and Truesdale, John C., eds. How to Take A Case Before the NLRB. 8th ed. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of National Affairs, 2008. Gould IV, William B. Labored Relations: Law, Politics, and the NLRB. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001.
For more than two years, the NLRB had been under severe political pressure, and its chairman, J. Warren Madden, was seen as a political liability. The Board had issued three decisions ("Fansteel Metallurgical", 5 NLRB 930 (1938); "Inland Steel", 9 NLRB No. 73 (1938); and "Republic Steel", 9 NLRB No. 33 (1938)) in 1938 which drew widespread condemnation from businesses and certain members of Congress. The Board won ("In re Labor Board", 304 U.S. 486 (1938)) and then lost ("Ford Motor Co. v. NLRB", 305 U.S. 364 (1939)) cases before the Supreme Court regarding its internal decision-making processes. And in three cases in 1939 ("National Labor Relations Board v. Fansteel Metallurgical Corp.", 306 U.S. 240 (1939); "National Labor Relations Board v. Columbian Enameling & Stamping Co.", 306 U.S. 292 (1939); and "National Labor Relations Board v. Sands Manufacturing Co.", 306 U.S. 332 (1939)) the Supreme Court emasculated the Board's attempts to expansively use Section 10(g) of the NLRA to promote collective bargaining and labor peace. Media and public opinion turned strongly against what was perceived as an overreaching NLRB, and President Roosevelt announced the formation of a commission to study the Board's operations. By March 1939, 11 bills had been filed in Congress to amend the NLRA. The House of Representatives voted to create a special committee, the Special Committee to Investigate the National Labor Relations Board (popularly known as the "Smith Committee" after its chairman, conservative Democratic Rep. Howard W. Smith), in July 1939. The Smith Committee was substantially biased against labor unions and the NLRB, received testimony from hundreds of witnesses, conducted a nationwide survey regarding the impact of the NLRB, and questioned NLRB officials at length about the agencies alleged anti-business and anti-American Federation of Labor/pro-Congress of Industrial Organizations biases. Nathan Witt, the Board's Secretary (and highest-ranking career official), was also under fire from the Smith Committee for his communist sympathies. The Smith Committee proposed legislation to substantially alter the NLRA. The legislation easily passed the House, but was bottled up by Roosevelt's allies in the Senate and it died. The dispute over the Board's administration had even split the NLRB itself. Board members William S. Leiserson and Edwin S. Smith were at loggerheads (Leiserson having accused Smith of being biased toward labor and the CIO in particular), and Leiserson threatened to quit if Madden was reappointed. The Roosevelt administration now considered Madden a political liability, and resolved to replace him.