Definition of "unfair Labor Practice"
The NLRB has the authority to investigate and remedy unfair labor practices, which are defined in Section 8 of the Act. In broad terms, the NLRB makes it unlawful for an employer to:
- interfere with two or more employees acting in concert to protect rights provided for in the Act, whether or not a union exists
- to dominate or interfere with the formation or administration of a labor organization
- to discriminate against employees for engaging in concerted or union activities or refraining from them
- to discriminate against an employee for filing charges with the NLRB or taking part in any NLRB proceedings
- to refuse to bargain with the union that is the lawful representative of its employees
The Act similarly bars unions from:
- restraining or coercing employees in the exercise of their rights or an employer in the choice of its bargaining representative
- causing an employer to discriminate against an employee
- refusing to bargain with the employer of the employees it represents
- engaging in certain types of secondary boycotts
- requiring excessive dues
- engaging in featherbedding (requiring an employer to pay for unneeded workers)
- picketing for recognition for more than thirty days without petitioning for an election
- entering into "hot cargo" agreements (refusing to handle goods from an anti-union employer)
- striking or picketing a health care establishment without giving the required notice
Applying this general language to the real world requires, in the words of Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, "distinctions more nice than obvious". The substantive law applied by the NLRB is described elsewhere under specific headings devoted to particular topics.
Not every unfair act amounts to an unfair labor practice; as an example, failing to pay an individual worker overtime pay for hours worked in excess of forty hours in a week might be a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, but it is unlikely to amount to an unfair labor practice as well. Similarly, a violation of a collective bargaining agreement, standing alone, may not constitute an unfair labor practice unless the employer has not only violated the contract but repudiated all or part of it.
Read more about this topic: Unfair Labor Practice
Famous quotes containing the words definition of, definition, unfair, labor and/or practice:
“Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, not to find a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter.”
—Nadine Gordimer (b. 1923)
“It’s unfair of a circle to accuse the angle of being sharp.”
—Multatuli [Eduard Douwer Dekker] (1820–1887)
“Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that to-day is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“We black women must forgive black men for not protecting us against slavery, racism, white men, our confusion, their doubts. And black men must forgive black women for our own sometimes dubious choices, divided loyalties, and lack of belief in their possibilities. Only when our sons and our daughters know that forgiveness is real, existent, and that those who love them practice it, can they form bonds as men and women that really can save and change our community.”
—Marita Golden, educator, author. Saving Our Sons, p. 188, Doubleday (1995)