Unfair labor practice

“ The case is therefore the classic jurisdiction conflict covered by § 8 (b) (4) (D) which makes 'forcing or requiring any employer to assign particular work to employees in a particular labor organization' an unfair labor practice. ”

“ Though the intent necessary for an unfair labor practice may be shown in different ways, proving it in one manner may have far different weight and far different consequences than proving it in another. When specific evidence of a subjective intent to discriminate or to encourage or discourage union membership is shown, and found, many otherwise innocent or ambiguous actions which are normally incident to the conduct of a business may, without more, be converted into unfair labor practices. National Labor Relations Board v. ”

“ The Court states that 'To leave the employee remediless' when the union wrongfully refuses to process his grievance, 'would * * * be a great injustice.' I do not believe the Court relieves this injustice to any great extent by requiring the employee to prove an unfair labor practice as a prerequisite to judicial relief for the employer's breach of contract. ”

“ One example is enough to show how Congress' policy of confining controversies over unfair labor practices to the Labor Board might well be frustrated by permitting unfair labor practice claimants to choose whether they will seek relief in the courts or before the Board. ”

“ The public right and the duty extend not only to the prevention of unfair labor practices by the employer in the future, but to the prevention of his enjoyment of any advantage which he has gained by violation of the Act, whether it be a company union or an unlawful contract with employees, as the means of defeating the statutory policy and purpose. ”

“ The language which saves the employee status for those who have ceased work because of unfair labor practices does not embrace also those who have lost their status for a wholly different reason-their discharge for unlawful practices which the Act does not countenance. ”

“ There is too commonly as little sense of identity with the employer's interests, or of concern that any equivalent in work should be rendered for the pay received. In forms irritating beyond expression employers are made to feel that their employees do not in the least mind wasting their material, injuring their property, and blocking their business in the most critical moments. Under what possible system, save in a grievous dearth of laborers, can such labor be well off, and incompetence and indifference draw high wages? ”

“ Another deplorable consequence of this inorganization is the disgust which workmen feel for their employment, in addition to the insufficiency of their wages. And this is quite conceivable, for nothing is done to render their labor attractive, either by variety of occupations, or by honorary rewards, or by proper care, or by remuneration proportionate to the benefits which their toil provides, or by the hope of rest after long years of industry. No—the country thinks not, cares not, either for their wants or their rights. ”

“ No longer may they claim the right to run their own business, to beat down the laborer's standard of living for the sake of increased profits, to dictate terms of employment to individual workers, to wax righteously indignant when organized labor takes a hand in their business. ”

“ Manufacturers and honest mechanics complain that the present system of hiring out convicts to contractors puts the labor of the untaxed criminals, housed at the expense of the State, without families to support, and free from all social and civil burdens, in unfair competition with the labor or industrial products of honest workmen who have families to maintain, taxes to pay, and social and civil duties to perform. ”

“ The notoriously unfair employer will find his workmen drifting away, his working-force reduced in number and quality at times of greatest need, and his evil reputation going abroad among workmen. A better realization of this fact has led many employers to pursue a farther-sighted policy that fosters a better understanding and a kindlier feeling on both sides of the labor-contract. ”

“ Question—Is it right to speak of wage-slavery, for instance, in cases where the hours of labor are so prolonged as to leave no time for higher interests, or where the relations of the laborer to his employer are such as to impair his moral independence? ”

“ Neither will it allow the employee to manage his employer’s business. The employer may occasionally find himself “in a hole,” where he must submit to any terms imposed by the only men who can help him out, but if he gets in any such fix a second time his bankers and customers will go back upon him, after which he will have no use for labor at any price.
Then can law and public opinion do more for laboring men than they have done? ”

“ Indeed, concerted activities by employees for the purpose of trying to protect themselves from working conditions as uncomfortable as the testimony and Board findings showed them to be in this case are unquestionably activities to correct conditions which modern labor-management legislation treats as too bad to have to be tolerated in a humane and civilized society like ours. ”

“ Yes, certainly, it is an evil; but in the same sense only in which servitude or hired labor is an evil. To gain one's bread by the sweat of one's brow, is a curse. But it is a curse attended with a blessing. It is an evil that shuts out a greater evil. Labor for wages, labor for subsistence, and subjection to the authority of employer or master, are the conditions on which alone the laboring masses, white or black, can live with advantage to themselves and to society."—De Bow's Review, Jan. ”

“ The sum and essence of every wrong and injustice that can hedge about the worker is found at this point, and remains a problem to every worker among the poor, the solving of which will mean the solution of the whole labor question. ”

“ Third.—Whenever labor organizations by reason of false leaders have made unfair demands or established conditions which were unfair to the employer, it has been because of the use of collective force against the individual employer, and this has been defeated whenever the employers have organized similar associations for their own defence. ”

“ Whoever works to make a living, has the same interest, that the wages-laborer has, and should assist the latter in his struggle for the right of labor against the encroachments of capital.
On the other hand, are the wages-laborers to be blamed, if they do, what all other people do, if they sell the only article they have for sale, their working power, as dear as they can? Occasionally they may raise a good price, and there may be instances, in which the petty manufacturer suffers. ”

“ It gains only depravation, only corruption, which now takes hold of it and sets workingman as an exploiting employer against workingman. The employers have changed in person; but labor, the only source of production, remains, as before, dependent upon the so-called wage—that is, the maintenance of existence. ”

“ This is also in large part the implied countercharge against organized labor. The most serious count in the wage-earner's indictment of other classes is not primarily that these classes draw too much pay, but that they are not doing the work that their revenues are supposed to represent. They are exploiting their fellows instead of serving them. ”

“ The fundamental truths cannot be too deeply impressed on both employers and employed. Let no employer busy himself in politics or jurisprudence, about unionist combinations or conspiracies. We have laws enough now, if we will obey and enforce them. If any striker or unionist trespasses on the rights at common law of his employer or brother laborer, punish him with humane haste and compassionate severity. One labor-leader says an employer has no more right to discharge a man than to dungeon him. ”

“ Now, it is not a very honorable proceeding for any government to pit its own so-called “pauper laborers”—or laborers that are on the verge of pauperism—against similar laborers in all other countries: and all for the sake of putting the principal proceeds of their labor into the pockets of a few employers. ”

“ It is very true that the laboring man often sees in free competition by a large number of men a possibility that he shall be deprived of his daily occupation. But whose fault is it? That of the competitor who will work for lower wages or of the man who has done so little outside of his daily stint of labor as to be obliged to stand in the position of a highwayman or bully toward any one who can do the same work for less money than he?
Can law improve the condition of the workingman? ”

“ How is it possible for laboring men on the outside, who have families depending upon them, to support themselves and families on an amount, that will enable business men, for whom they work, to engage in business and compete with this cheap convict labor? This is the great argument against convict labor. The convict must be given work or he will become insane. To bring this cheap labor into conflict with the toil of honest but poor men on the outside, is unjust and cruel. What to do with convict labor is one of the unsolved problems. ”

“ Socialists themselves are among the foremost in complaining of the competition of prison labour with honest labour, although they fail to see that precisely the same objection attends the competition of relieved labor in public workshops with unrelieved labour in regular private employment. ”

“ Suppose that an individual working man or woman went to an employer and said: "I make, in my capacity as wage worker in this factory, so many dollars worth of wealth every day and justice demands that you give me at least half." The employer would probably have him removed to the nearest lunatic asylum. He would consider him too dangerous a criminal to let loose on the community! It is neither sympathy nor justice that makes an appeal to the employer. But it is power. If a committee can go to the employer with this ultimatum: "We represent all the men and women in this shop. ”

“ He must be fought [239] and destroyed. There is no form of mediation or conciliation possible between the worker and his employer. Conditions must, therefore, be made intolerable for the capitalist. Work must be done badly. ”

“ The effort seems to be to compel men to compete in the use of their savings no matter how wasteful the competition, and to forbid men competing in the use of their labor, no matter what the idleness thereby caused. I think it a truism that whoever seeks to be exempted from the restrictions or liabilities he would impose on others, seeks not justice, but to do injustice. ”

“ They feared, of course, that if they were exposed to its effects—perhaps at the bargaining table with representatives of organized labor—their ability to exploit the workers for fantastic profits would be at an end. ”

“ To-day workmen employed to rectify it occasion cost and inconvenience by dawdling, and their low standard of work,
determined by the unionist principle that the better workers must not discredit the worse by exceeding them in efficiency, he may trace to the immoral belief" (well put!) "that the unworthy should fare as well as the worthy. ”

“ Employers under criticism behave like the rest of us. They put the best foot forward, call attention to the highest wages, direct the visitor to best conditions, precisely, as upon the other side, labor points to every haggard fact upon the scene; wretched housing, indecencies and abuse of foremen; petty personal discriminations, and every item of lowest and most uncertain labor income.
From socialist papers reporting the Lawrence strike, I cut for weeks their assertions about the wage scale. ”

“ The employer is bound by this act to pay the wages fixed and while the worker is not required to work, at the wages fixed, he is forbidden, on penalty of fine or imprisonment, to strike against them and thus is compelled to give up that means of putting himself on an equality with his employer which action in concert with his fellows gives him. ”

“ It cannot be said that the labor interests have always shown great wisdom in all their advocacy of new legislation, and too many acts, like those in reference to the employment of convict labor, show a lamentable retrogression. ”

“ So many laborers are at the mercy of the employing class, because of their ignorance, their lack of capital and necessity of work at any wage, and often their unfamiliarity with the language and customs of the country, that it has become possible in many cases to treat them like animals and give them less than enough to sustain life in decency, not to say in comfort. ”

“ The total absence of regard for justice or fairness in the relations between the two, is as marked on the side of the employed as on that of the employers. We look in vain among the working classes in general for the just pride which will choose to give good work for good wages; for the most part, their sole endeavour is to receive as much, and return as little in the shape of service, us possible. It will sooner or later become insupportable to the employing classes, to live in close and hourly contact with persons whose interests and feelings are in hostility to them. ”

“ The statute commences by abusing the labourers for taking advantage of the scarcity of hands to demand high wages—as if there ever were human beings, employed in the ordinary affairs of life, who would not take what wages or profits they could obtain ”

“ You are considered, rightly, the worst employer of labour here. You are greedy, unscrupulous, and tyrannical. It is men like you who discredit Capital in the eyes of Labour, and make conciliatory dealing between master and man almost an impossibility. We have bolstered you up through a very difficult crisis, sitting here and putting those poor fellows, five of whom are infinitely more honest than you are, quite undeservedly in the wrong, and imperilling our immortal souls by whitewashing such employers as you. ”