| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Monopsony | A market situation where there is only one buyer. |
| Labor Union | An organization of workers that tries to improve working conditions, wages, and benefits for its members by negotiating as a single unit. |
| Strike | A collective refusal by workers to do their jobs until their demands are met. |
| Collective Bargaining | A process by which management and labor reach agreements through negotiation and compromise. |
| Discriminatory Discharge | The firing of prounion workers, with or without cause. |
| Blacklisting | Sharing lists of prounion workers in an attempt to assist other firms from hiring prounion workers. |
| Injunction | A court order preventing some activity (as related to this chapter - a court order to "cease and desist" ordered against union activities.) |
| Criminal Conspiracy Doctrine | The idea that workers could legally unionize, but could not participate in any activities that infringed upon the existing rights of the business owner to conduct his business as he saw fit. |
| Paternalism | A policy of treating subject people as if they were children, providing for their needs but not giving them rights. Example - allowing mill workers to live in company houses, as long as the workers did exactly as the mill told them to do. |
| Company Union | A labor organization that is controlled by management - workers basically have no real rights. |
| Lockout | When management closes the doors to the place of work and keeps the workers from entering until an agreement is reached. |
| Closed Shop | A company in which all employees must be members of a union prior to being employed. (Outlawed by the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947.) |
| Union Shop | A company allowed to hire nonunion workers on the condition that they will join the union within a specified time. |
| Open Shop | A company where the employee is not required to join or financially support a labor union as a condition of hiring or employment. |
| Yellow Dog Contract | An agreement between an employer and employee in which the employee agrees, as a condition of employment, not to join a labor union. (Outlawed in 1932 with passage of the Norris-LaGuardia Act.) |
| Craft Union | A union representing skilled workers in a single occupation - electricians, carpenters, plumbers, etc. - regardless of the industry in which the worker is employed. |
| Industrial Union | A union representing all workers in a specific industry - automobile workers, textile workers, etc. - regardless of their skill or occupation. |
| Samuel Gompers | American labor union leader who founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Focused on wages and working conditions. |
| John L. Lewis | Organized workers in specific industries, regardless of skills to create the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). |
| AFL-CIO | Labor union forged by the 1955 merger of the AFL and the CIO. |
| Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932 | First major piece of prolabor legislation - outlawed Yellow Dog Contracts. |
| Wagner Act of 1935 | Also called the National Labor Relations Act. Established National Labor Relations Board; protected the rights of most workers in the private sector to organize labor unions, to engage in collective bargaining, and to take part in strikes and other forms of concerted activity in support of their demands. |
| NLRB | National labor Relations Board: (established by Wagner Act) Guaranteed the "twin rights" of unions - the right to organize and the right to collectively bargain. Greatly enhanced power of American labor by overseeing collective bargaining, forced management to bargain in good faith; continues to arbitrate labor-management disputes today |
| Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 | Also called the Labor Management Relations Act. This act was Congress' response to the abuse of power. Outlawed closed shops; prohibited unions' unfair labor practices, and forced unions to bargain in good faith. |
| Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959 | Also called the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act was passed in reponse to allegations of criminal activity in unions, to safe guard union members from the union. Required detailed reporting of union finances, etc. |
| Civil Rights Act of 1964 | In relation to the American Labor movement, this act required that unions adopt affirmative action policies within the unions themselves, to guard against institutionalized union power. |
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