The National Labor Relations Act in the Non-unionized Workplace: Workers’ Mobilization of Section 7

• In Event: 358 - Section on Labor and Labor Movements Paper Session. A Question of Scale: Where and How to Mobilize Worker Rights

Abstract

Abstract: Contemporary socio-legal scholars argue that deunionization has resulted in the increased salience of individual—versus collective—rights in the workplace. While some scholars have focused on the increased importance of non-union organizations in helping individuals to mobilize their rights, others argue that workplace rights are still largely inaccessible. I suggest here that deunionization also has resulted in new attention to another form of collective legal mobilization in the workplace: the "protected concerted activity" rights provided by the National Labor Relations Act's Section 7, which apply to all private-sector workers regardless of their union membership. I argue that the non-union mobilization of the NLRA sheds light upon other forms of legally defensible resistance for workers, as well as the existence of overlooked possibilities within the law. I use both quantitative and qualitative analyses to examine whether and where non-union workers have mobilized the law. I find that direct and indirect ties to unions are the strongest predictors of this variety of legal mobilization, and that new labor movement strategies are being built with the human and legal resources of the old system.

Author

• Jessica Garrick, University of Michigan