Wagner Act Establishes Federal Protection for Union Rights and Collective Bargaining

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the National Labor Relations Act, known as the Wagner Act after sponsor Senator Robert Wagner (D-NY), establishing federal legal protection for workers’ rights to organize unions, engage in collective bargaining, and strike without employer retaliation. The act creates the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to enforce these rights, arbitrate labor disputes, guarantee democratic union elections, and penalize employers for unfair labor practices including blacklisting, strike-breaking, discriminatory firings, and maintaining “company unions.”

The Wagner Act represents the high-water mark of federal support for worker collective power, granting Section 7 rights for private sector employees to form and join unions and obligating employers to bargain in good faith with unions chosen by a majority of workers. The legislation outlaws the primary anti-union tactics employers had used to prevent organizing, including firing union supporters, refusing to recognize legitimately-elected unions, and creating sham company-controlled unions to prevent independent worker organization.

The Wagner Act’s protections contribute to a dramatic surge in union membership from approximately 12% of the workforce in 1935 to a peak of 35% in 1954, enabling rising wages that track with productivity growth for three decades (1948-1979). However, the act’s effectiveness is systematically undermined through subsequent legislative rollbacks (Taft-Hartley 1947), regulatory capture via NLRB underfunding (1980s-present), corporate strike-breaking using permanent replacement workers (PATCO 1981, Phelps Dodge 1983), state-level right-to-work coordination (ALEC 2010-2017), and judicial restrictions (Janus 2018). The 90-year arc from Wagner Act (1935) to 9.9% union membership (2024) demonstrates how initial legal protections can be systematically dismantled through coordinated corporate policy campaigns even while the original statute remains on the books.