Employment law

“ The injustice of this application of the common-law rule has been recognized, but the only way to avoid the difficulty was through specific legislation providing that under such conditions as those related, and similar ones, the doctrine of co-employment should not apply, and that the workman should have the same right to recover damages as a passenger upon a railway train. ”

“ After establishing a State commissioner of labor, a board of conciliation and arbitration, and free employment offices, all of which are usual in other States, there is an elaborate chapter on factory regulation and one upon mine regulations, and to protect persons working on buildings, railroads, steam boilers, etc., and a carefully drawn statute regulating the labor of children. ”

“ State organs, institutions and public organizations as well as labourers who form a labour contract relationship therewith shall be bound by this Law.
Article 3 Labourers shall have equal right to employment and choice of occupation, the right to remuneration for labour, to rest and vacations, to protection of occupational safety and health, to training in vocational skills, to social insurance and welfare, to submission of labour disputes for settlement and other rights relating to labour stipulated by law. ”

“ Workplace rights– The term workplace rights means rights guaranteed under Federal, State, or local labor or employment laws, including laws concerning wages and hours, benefits and employment standards, labor relations, workplace health and safety, work-related injuries, nondiscrimination, and retaliation for exercising rights under such laws. ”

“ Contracts for labor, unless for more than one year, need not be in writing. If, however, the service to be rendered is unusual, the agreement should be reduced to writing, because, in the absence of specific agreement, the law assumes that customary service and wages are implied.
Like all other employers of labor the farmer is under obligation to protect his workman from injury. He must not subject them to unusual and unreasonable risks. He must hire workmen suited to the employment. ”

“ Under the general head of Labour Legislation all American statute laws regulating labour, its conditions, and the relation of employer and employé must be classed. It includes what is properly known as factory legislation. Labour legislation belongs to the latter half of the 19th century, so far History. as the United States is concerned. Like England in the far past, the Americans in colonial days undertook to regulate wages and prices, and later the employment of apprentices. ”

“ For illustration, factory workers are customarily employed at will, without obligation of employer or employed to continue the relationship when the day's work is done; or, if there is an agreement fixing salary or wages per unit of service, at so much per day, week or month, there may be an indefinite employment terminable by either party at the end of any unit period. ”

“ The State has long afforded regular administrative and judicial protection to the work of industrial wage-service, and has even interfered in a special manner in the case of children, young men, young women and adult women; and for still longer in the case of adult men, by affording protection in the way of limitation of employment, truck protection and protection in occupation, and by affording protection of contract through the Industrial Regulations, applied to non-factory as well as to factory labour. ”

“ We have always taken the position that any legislation which will improve standards of working men and women,-to favor it and foster it and support it. Fundamentally, we are opposed to legislation that controls the daily wage and conditions of employment. We think that is a relationship that should exist between employer and employee.' This is in accord with the testimony of Mr. ”

“ Some of the states have now fairly complete statutory enactments concerning labour disturbances, while others have little or no legislation of this class. The Labour disputes. right of employés to strike for any cause or for no cause is sustained by the common law everywhere in the United States. Likewise an employer has a right to discharge any or all of his employés when they have no contract with him, and he may refuse to employ any person or class of persons for any reason or for no reason. ”

“ The act, it will be observed, provides that every employer (whether corporation, partnership, or individual) who employs more than five workers at any one time, 'regardless of kind or class of work, or sex of workers,' shall employ 'not less than 80 per cent qualified electors or native-born citizens of the United States or some subdivision thereof.' It thus covers the entire field of industry with the exception of enterprises that are relatively very small. Its application in the present case is to employment in a restaurant the business of which requires nine employees. ”

“ From the beginning the Board has recognized that a worker who has obtained equivalent employment is in a different position from one who has lost his job as well as his wages through an employer's unfair labor practice. In early decisions, the Board did not order reinstatement of workers who had secured such equivalent employment. ”

“ Section 7 (a) of the Fair Labor Standards Act requires employers to pay each employee covered by the Act not less than one and one-half times his regular pay rate for every hour worked in excess of a forty-hour week; § 11 (c) requires employers to keep appropriate employment records. [1] Employees covered are defined as those 'engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce'. We have held that employees repairing interstate roads or railroads are 'engaged in commerce' within the meaning of that clause of § 7 (a) . ”

“ On one view of the matter, it can be argued that the question whether there is to be a job is not a condition of employment; the question is not one of imposing conditions on employment, but the more fundamental question whether there is to be employment at all. However, it is clear that the Board and the courts have on numerous occasions recognized that union demands for provisions limiting an employer's power to discharge employees are mandatorily bargainable. ”

“ THE RIGHT TO WORK 10. All citizens able to work have the right to employment at their vocations and for remuneration fixed for such class of work.
Note. The District Exchange Bureaus of the Department of Labor Distribution may, by agreement with the respective unions, assign individual wage earners or groups of them to work at other trades if there is no demand for labor at the vocations of the persons in question. ”

“ Only a narrower concept of 'conditions of employment' will serve the statutory purpose of delineating a limited category of issues which are subject to the duty to bargain collectively. Seeking to effect this purpose, at least seven circuits have interpreted the statutory language to exclude various kinds of management decisions from the scope of the duty to bargain. [18] In common parlance, the conditions of a person's employment are most obviously the various physical dimensions of his working environment. ”

“ The Company, however, turns to the Act's definition of employer, which it contends reads foremen out of the employee class and into the class of employers. Section 2 (2) reads: 'The term 'employer' includes any person acting in the interest of an employer, directly or indirectly * * *.' 49 Stat. 450. The context of the Act, we think, leaves no room for a construction of this section to deny the organizational privilege to employees because they act in the interest of an employer. Every employee, from the very fact of employment in the master's business, is required to act in his interest. ”

“ The first class includes factory and workshop acts, laws relating to hours of labour, work on Sundays and holidays, the payment of wages, the liability of employers for injuries to their employés, &c. Factory acts have been passed by nearly all the states of the Union. These may be Factory and workshop acts. considered in two groups—first, laws which relate to conditions of employment and affect only children, young persons and women; and second, laws which relate to the sanitary condition of factories and workshops and to the safety of employés generally. ”

“ Sec. 8 affords employees protection against unfair labor practices of employers including employer interference with the rights secured by § 7. Sec. 9 affords machinery for providing appropriate collective bargaining units. ”

“ But Congress did not restrict the provision to employers and workingmen in their employ. By including 'employers and employees' and 'persons employed and persons seeking employment' it showed that it was not aiming merely at a legal relationship between a specific employer and his employees. Furthermore, the plaintiff's contention proves too much. If the words are to receive a strict technical construction, the statute will have no application to disputes between employers of labor and workingmen, since the very acts to which it applies sever the continuity of the legal relationship. ”

“ The Court seizes on ambiguous materials to impute to Congress approval of that philosophy. I would resolve the ambiguity in favor of the employees. I would read the proviso as meaning that nothing less than four-year employment protection to every employee would satisfy the Act, though not necessarily a four-year protection in his old job. In a realistic sense a man without a job is 'in a worse position with respect to' his 'employment,' though he receives some compensation for doing nothing. Many men, at least, are not drones; and their continued activity is life itself. ”

“ The respondent employer was directed to refrain from performing, maintaining or giving effect to such an agreement with the respondent unions, 'or any other labor organization,' and from otherwise unlawfully encouraging membership in the respondent unions, 'or any other labor organization,' by discrimination as to hire, tenure, or terms or conditions of employment ”

“ A worker is privileged under congressional enactments, acting either alone or in concert with his fellow workers, to associate or to decline to associate with other workers, to accept, refuse to accept, or to terminate a relationship of employment, and his labor is not to be treated as 'a commodity or article of commerce.' Clayton Act, 38 Stat. ”

“ We find examples of both kinds alike in the legislation for restricting the time of working and in legislation for protecting intervals of rest.
Ordinary exceptions to prohibition of employment consist mainly of permission by legal enactment in certain specified kinds of industrial work, of a class of labour which is elsewhere prohibited, e.g. night work for women and young workers. The greater number of cases of prohibition of employment appear in the inverse form of exceptions to permission of employment. ”

“ In general we may conclude that by the passage of such legislation society has definitely decided that there are some conditions of employment that cannot be safely left to free contract or to collective bargaining between employer and employe, but that they must be regulated by society itself on the broad grounds of social welfare. ”

“ It is not easy to define precisely what constitutes a common employment in this sense, and there is peculiarly little judicial authority as to the limit at which work for the same employer ceases to be work in a common employment. It does not depend on difference in grade; all engaged in one business, from the manager to the apprentice, are within the rule. ”

“ The basic facts to be ascertained administratively are whether the prescribed wage as applied to an industry will substantially curtail employment, and whether to attain the legislative end there is need for wage differentials applicable to classes in industry. The factors to be considered in arriving at these determinations, both those specified and 'other relevant factors', are those which are relevant to or have a hearing on the statutory objective. ”

“ The foreman stevedore then selects from the 'shape' such men as he desires to hire, to work until 'knocked off', that is, told to quit. The selection of a man from the shape carries with it no obligation on the part of the employer concerning any specified length of employment, except for work requirements of the Collective Agreement relating to minimum hours under specified conditions. ”

“ The first agitation for legislation of this character occurred in England in 1880. A number of states in the Union have now enacted statutes fixing the liability of employers under certain conditions and relieving the employé from the application of the common-law rule. Where the employé himself is contributory to the injuries resulting from an accident he cannot recover, nor can he recover in some cases where he knows of the danger from the defects of tools or implements employed by him. ”

“ The term 'labor dispute' includes any controversy concerning terms or conditions of employment, or concerning the association, or representation of persons in negotiating, fixing, maintaining, changing, or seeking to arrange terms or conditions of employment, regardless of whether or not the disputants stand in the proximate relation of employer and employee. ”

“ He must risk union disfavor by dividing his efforts between a labor dispute and a search for a new job. He must realize, alth ugh his natural suppositions are otherwise, that he will probably not endanger seniority rights or chance of reinstatement by accepting other employment. He must be able to decide when he has made sufficient efforts to secure other employment notwithstanding that he is not told whether he can or must accept any job no matter where it is or what type of employment, wages, hours, or working conditions. ”