Worker-Protection

WARN Act Passes with Corporate Loopholes, Toothless Plant Closing Protection

| Importance: 7/10

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act becomes law on August 4, 1988, requiring employers with 100 or more workers to provide 60 days advance notice before plant closings or mass layoffs. Congress passes the bill over President Reagan’s veto threats, responding to the …

U.S. Congress Ronald Reagan U.S. Chamber of Commerce AFL-CIO labor plant-closings deindustrialization corporate-loopholes worker-protection
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Adamson Act Establishes Eight-Hour Workday for Railroad Workers

| Importance: 8/10

Congress passed the Adamson Act on September 2, 1916, and President Woodrow Wilson signed it the following day, establishing a standard eight-hour workday with additional pay for overtime for interstate railroad workers. Named for Georgia Representative William C. Adamson, this was the first federal …

President Woodrow Wilson Representative William C. Adamson Railroad Labor Brotherhoods Austin B. Garretson U.S. Congress labor-rights progressive-era worker-protection regulatory-enforcement
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Supreme Court Strikes Down Labor Protections in Lochner v. New York

| Importance: 9/10

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision in Lochner v. New York on April 17, 1905, striking down a New York law that limited bakery workers to a 60-hour work week as unconstitutional. Justice Rufus Peckham’s majority opinion held that the law violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due …

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Rufus Peckham Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Justice John Harlan Joseph Lochner supreme-court labor-rights corporate-power judicial-capture progressive-era +1 more
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