Rights Not Interests: Resolving Value Clashes under the National Labor Relations Act by James A. Gross

The proportion of workers in the United States represented by a union in the private sector is now lower than before the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was passed. Since the mid-1970s, we have watched a steady decline of the labor movement that has lately accelerated, arguably to a collapse. The causes of this collapse are many — changes in our economy from a predominantly industrial character to a service-oriented character; evolving business models, particularly the fissuring of those models, that make traditional organizing strategies ineffective; and US trade policy that puts tremendous downward pressure on wages for American workers. There also is a set of causes that are more clearly intrinsic to the National Labor Relations Act — weaknesses there from enactment and others introduced over the years. Professor James A. Gross has produced some of the most insightful and important chronicles and analyses of those intrinsic factors for...