National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)

Basic Principles of the NLRA

The collective bargaining system in the United States as governed by the NLRA has five basic principles: employee choice, majority rule, exclusive representation, the “appropriate bargaining unit,” and labor and management determination of terms and conditions of employment. The principle of employee choice means that employees in an “appropriate bargaining unit” (to be discussed below) choose whether they wish a union to represent them for collective bargaining purposes, and if so, which union. The principle of majority rule means that the choice of whether employees choose to be represented is made by a majority of the employees in the “bargaining unit.” If a majority of the employees in the bargaining unit do not select representation, the employees in the unit are not represented by a union.

If a majority of the employees in the bargaining unit choose union representation, the principle of “exclusive representation” comes into play. Under this principle, the union selected by a majority of the employees in a bargaining unit represents all the employees in the unit, regardless of whether the employees supported unionization. The employer, in turn, has a legal obligation to bargain with the union in good faith over terms and conditions of employment for the represented employees.

The fourth principle is that the selection process for unionization takes place among the employees in an “appropriate bargaining unit.” An appropriate bargaining unit is a grouping of employees who work for a single employer and have a “community of (employment) interest” or common employment interests. They may be the employees who work in a company facility or the employees in an occupational group or a department or within a particular craft. Employees who have a community of interest are employees with similar supervision, pay structures, tasks, hours of work, responsibilities, and work location.

The fifth principle is union and management determination of terms and conditions of employment. The employer has an obligation to bargain in good faith with the union representing its employees, and the union has an obligation to bargain in good faith with the employer. Neither party has an obligation to agree, however. Terms and conditions of the employment are [Page 531]determined by the parties' negotiations influenced or affected by the bargaining power of the parties as manifested by their use of economic weapons, such as a strike, a lockout, or employer replacement of strikers. The purpose of these economic weapons is to move the parties toward agreement, even if one party concedes. The law does require that the parties reduce an agreement to writing. An agreement in writing is generally enforced through a grievance procedure ending in binding arbitration.

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