• Agricultural workers are excluded from most labor management laws.Labor of love image by Siew Yee Lee from Fotolia.com
  
  The most significant laws on labor management relations are federal laws. Interestingly, according to an article published at the 'Lectric Law Library, most of these laws were passed as part of the New Deal legislation of the 1930s. State laws vary and some of these expand the protections granted under federal laws.
  
  

The Clayton Act

• Passed in 1914 by the U.S. Congress, the Clayton Act declared that human labor is not a commodity or article of commerce. This act also provided that labor unions were not illegal restraints of trade under anti-trust laws. The practical result of this act was to spur the growth of labor unions and collective bargaining.
  
  

Railway Labor Act

• This act required railroads to recognize labor unions and bargain collectively with those that represented its employees. The act also prohibited employers from discriminating against labor unions and their members. Initially passed by the U.S. Congress in 1926, the act was amended in 1936 to extend the law to the airlines industry.
  
  

Davis-Bacon Act

• Passed in 1931, the Davis-Bacon Act mandated that the minimum wages for employees of companies that entered into construction contracts with the federal government be stated in those contracts. The practical effect of this act was to empower the U.S. Department of Labor to set the minimum wages for construction workers working on federal projects.
  
  

Norris-Laguardia Act

• In 1932, Congress passed the Norris-Laguardia Act to prohibit courts from issuing injunctions against union activities and to abolish the practice of “yellow-dog” agreements that were entered into between management and workers, the latter of which promised not to join a union or to withdraw from union membership. The act also empowered labor unions to strike and to take other kinds of actions against management.
  
  

National Labor Relations Act

• According to the 'Lectric Law Library, the National Labor Relations Act, sometimes referred to as the Wagner Act, is the most significant legislation of the 1930s affecting labor management relations. The act was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1935 and authorized the formation of labor unions in all private industries affecting interstate commerce, with the exception of agricultural workers and domestic workers in private homes. The act also established the National Labor Relations Board with broad powers to enforce collective bargaining agreements and to take actions against employers who violated federal labor laws. Most significant of these broad powers were the powers to order a fired employee reinstated and to order an employer to pay that reinstated employee's back pay and benefits. As a result of this legislation, membership in labor unions tripled from 1935 to 1941.
  
  

The Byrnes Act of 1936

• Often referred to as the "Anti-Strikebreaker Law," this legislation prohibited the transportation in interstate commerce of any person for the purpose of using threats or violence to break up a strike or otherwise interfere with union activities or collective bargaining.
  
  

Curtail of Labor Unions Powers

• Following the conclusion of World War II, the U.S. Congress determined there was a need to curtail what it considered were abuses of the powers of labor unions. To redress these abuses, Congress passed two laws to limit the power of labor unions. The first was the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 which, among its many provisions, excluded supervisory employees from union membership and allowed the federal government to delay or avert labor union strikes which posed what the act defined as a “national emergency.” Additionally, the act prohibited a key labor union tactic of the “closed shop,” which meant that a person had to belong to a labor union before he could work at an employer whose employees were part of the labor union's bargaining unit and forbade other activities which the act declared to be unfair labor practices.
  
  The other piece of federal legislation that sought to curtail the power of labor unions was the Landrum-Grifln Act passed in 1959. This act expanded the list of unfair labor practices that labor unions were prohibited from engaging in and allowed state labor relations boards to assume jurisdiction over cases that fell under the National Labor Relations Act, but which the National Labor Board declined to consider.
  
  

Fair Labor Standards Act

• This act, passed in 1938, is known commonly as the wage-hour law because it establishes minimum wages and maximum working hours in certain industries affecting interstate commerce.