Abstract
Excerpted From: Andrew Hull, “Prisoners of the Union”: Emporium Capwell and the Decline of Concerted Activity Against Racial Discrimination, 22 UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice 211 (January, 2025) (199 Footnotes) (Full Document)
The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), while representing perhaps the greatest legislative achievement of the American labor movement and one that still steers labor organizing today, was also a product of legislative horse-trading and capitulations to white supremacy. This background of the NLRA is mainly referenced in the context of section §152(3), which excludes domestic and agricultural labor from the Act's protections. The New Deal, while still offering a number of benefits for Black workers, also contained numerous exclusions, and the legislative debates are riddled with racist articles. The NLRA's exclusion of sectors with predominately Black workforces is but one example of the New Deal's accommodations for Jim Crow.
However, the NLRA has other provisions which, in application and judicial interpretation, have also had deleterious effects on the ability of Black workers to combat discrimination in the workplace. This article will focus on one provision in particular: §9(a), codified as 29 U.S.C.S. §159(a), which provides for a labor union to operate as the “exclusive representative” in bargaining with the employer for a designated group of workers:
Representatives designated or selected for the purposes of...
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