The Labor Policy of the Free Society by Sylvester Petro

Author:Sylvester Petro [Sylvester Petro]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-1-6101-6276-0
Publisher: The Ronald Press Company
Published: 1957-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING, THE LAW, AND THE FREE MARKET

Law in the United States today is not concerned as a general rule with establishing the exact wages and conditions of employment of the working population. In regard to the large number of workers whose wages and working conditions are established by means of direct negotiations between them and their employers, without the intervention of labor unions, the law is relevant, indeed, in only the same general and minimal rule-making way that it applies to all private contracts.

The role of the law is notably different, notably greater, however, in connection with collective bargaining, the process by means of which the wages and working conditions of more than fifteen million workers are directly established and those of an indeterminately larger number indirectly affected. Collective bargaining is a process governed at almost every stage, procedurally and substantively, by a code of laws which stops short only of establishing quantitatively exact wages and conditions of employment.

Law governs the manner in which employee representatives are selected, establishes procedures which unions and employers must follow in the actual process of negotiation, indicates permissible and prohibited subjects of collective bargaining. Perhaps most important of all, it regulates and defines the economic techniques available to and used by unions and employers as means of enforcing their respective bargaining positions. In a somewhat less detailed way, the law also defines the juridical status of the collective agreement and is even concerned, although on a very general level, with the manner in which collective agreements are administered by unions and employers.

Any legal structure can be effectively applied, intelligibly described, or fruitfully understood only in terms of the principles and social goals which determine its content. The more complicated legal structures are the most difficult to apply, to describe, or to understand; and largely for this reason it is both more difficult and more necessary to deal carefully with the principles and goals of a complicated legal structure.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.