Wagner Act Cases NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. 301 U.S. 1 (1937) NLRB v. Fruehauf Trailer Co. 301 U.S. 49 (1937) NLRB v. Friedman-Harry Marks Clothing Co. 301 U.S. 58 (1937) Associated Press Co. v. NLRB 301 U.S. 103 (1937)

• Author: Robert L. Stern
• Pages: 2819-2821

Page 2819

The reinvigoration of the COMMERCE CLAUSE as a source of congressional power began with the first cases to reach the Supreme Court under the WAGNER (NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS) ACT. That statute had been passed in 1935 in an effort to preserve the rights of employees in interstate industries to choose their own representatives and to bargain collectively with their employers. In 1930 the Supreme Court had held that the Railway Labor Act gave such rights to railroad employees. The NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL RECOVERY ACT (NIRA) of 1933 sought to extend such rights to other employees by requiring all codes of fair competition for other industries to contain similar provisions. The code system collapsed when the NIRA was invalidated in SCHECHTER POULTRY CORP. V. UNITED STATES in May 1935. The President and Congress believed that the denial of COLLECTIVE BARGAINING rights would lead to industrial unrest and strikes, which would necessarily obstruct INTERSTATE COMMERCE, and would also aggravate the Great Depression by depressing wage rates and the purchasing power of wage earners. As a result the National Labor Relations Act became law less than six weeks after the Schechter decision.

The act authorized the newly created National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which succeeded similar boards created under the NIRA, to prevent employers from engaging in unfair labor practices "affecting [interstate] commerce," which was defined to mean "in commerce, or burdening or obstructing commerce," or which had led or might lead to a labor dispute burdening or obstructing commerce. These definitions were designed to embody the decisional law upholding the authority of Congress to regulate acts that "directly" obstructed interstate commerce. Congress assumed, correctly as it turned out, that the courts would construe the statute as "contemplating the exercise of control within constitutional bounds."

The NLRB's first cases were brought against employers engaged in interstate transportation and communication (bus lines and the Associated Press) and manufacturers who purchased their supplies and sold their products across state lines. Before these cases were decided, the

Page 2820

Supreme Court, in CARTER V. CARTER COAL CO. (1936), held that the substantially identical provisions of the Guffey-Snyder (Bituminous Coal Conservation) Act, enacted shortly after the Labor Relations Act, did not fall within the commerce power of Congress. In the Carter case the government had proved that coal strikes would burden not merely the interstate commerce of the immediate employers but also...