Landrum-Griffin Act

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Landrum-Griffin Act,

1959, passed by the U.S. Congress, officially known as the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act. It resulted from hearings of the Senate committee on improper activities in the fields of labor and management, which uncovered evidence of collusion between dishonest employers and union officials, the use of violence by certain segments of labor leadership, and the diversion and misuse of labor union funds by high-ranking officials. The act provided for the regulation of internal union affairs, including the regulation and control of union funds. Former members of the Communist party and former convicts are prevented from holding a union office for a period of five years after resigning their Communist party membership or being released from prison. Union members are protected against abuses by a bill of rights that includes guarantees of freedom of speech and periodic secret elections. Secondary boycotting and organizational and recognition picketing (i.e., picketing of companies where a rival union is already recognized) are severely restricted by the act. In the field of arbitration, an amendment to the Taft-Hartley Labor Act (1947) written into this 1959 act authorized states to process cases that fall outside the province of the National Labor Relations Board. Organized labor has, in general, opposed the act for strengthening what they consider the antilabor provisions of the Taft-Hartley Labor Act.

Landrum-Griffin Act

(Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959), a law passed in the USA on Sept. 14, 1959, pushed by the monopoly circles and aiming at weakening the trade unions and establishing control over them.

The Landrum-Griffin Act strengthens government interference in the internal affairs of the trade unions (it regulates the system of setting membership dues, holding elections, imposing disciplinary penalties, and so on) and compels the trade unions to present detailed accounts on all officers and their earnings, on the trade union bylaws, and on revenue and expenditures. The secretary of labor has the right to conduct an investigation against a trade union if the bylaws or the election procedures have been violated.

The Landrum-Griffin Act substantially curtails the ability of the trade unions to defend the economic interests of the working people: it prohibits certain types of picketing, including those aimed at the recognition of a trade union if the union is not registered with state agencies, and it completely prohibits the secondary boycott, which is an instrument of solidarity with strikers and a means of exerting pressure on the entrepreneurs. These provisions expand the entrepreneurs’ opportunities for disrupting strikes and erecting obstacles to the growth of trade union membership, and they even threaten collective bargaining itself. Violation of the statute is punishable by a fine of $10,000 or a prison term of up to one year.

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References in periodicals archive ?

Goldberg, Affirmative Action in Union Government: The Landrum-Griffin Act Implications, 44 OHIO ST.

The hundreds of reported cases under the Landrum-Griffin Act provide further examples of union officers' unlawful conduct.

In the cause of union democracy

Ironically, while labor's electoral strength at the state level was increasing, the prestige of its national leaders was waning because of the McClellan Committee investigations and the debate surrounding the passage in 1959 of the Landrum-Griffin Act.

The Politics of the Right to Work: the Labor Federations as Special Interests, 1943-1979

The same criticism applies to the treatment of the Landrum-Griffin Act, the emergency procedures of the Railway Labor Act, and the right-to-work controversy.

Labor Relations: Process and Outcomes

Under the Landrum-Griffin Act, a new election must be held if there is evidence of fraud.

A union divided against itself

The American government's campaign against union corruption launched in the 1950s with the Landrum-Griffin Act (Labor-Management Reporting & Disclosure Act)--the legal basis for today's receivership--has thus followed its course, and in the end the union has come full circle.

American workers and justice in the global order

Advocates of the bill call it an important reform, but it is just a slight adjustment to the Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959, which first injusted the Federal government deeply into union affairs.

Sounds nice, but it's antiunion: the labor racketeering bill

It became clear in the post-Second World War years, however, that Canadian unions depended less on government support for organizing and escaped the kind of repressive regulation the AFL-CIO experienced here under the Taft-Hartley and Landrum-Griffin Acts.

Working-class experience: the rise and reconstitution of Canadian labour, 1800-1980