Taking Back the Workers' Law: How to Fight the Assault on Labor Rights

Prolabor critics often question the effectiveness of the National Labor Relations Board. Some go so far as to call the Board labor's enemy number one. In a daring book that is sure to be controversial, Ellen Dannin argues that the blame actually lies with judicial decisions that have radically "rewritten" the National Labor Relations Act. But rather than simply bemoan this problem, Dannin offers concrete solutions for change.

Dannin calls for labor to borrow from the strategy mapped out by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the early 1930s to eradicate legalized racial discrimination. This book lays out a long-term litigation strategy designed to overturn the cases that have undermined the NLRA and frustrated its policies. As with the NAACP, this strategy must take place in a context of activism to promote the NLRA policies of social and industrial democracy, solidarity, justice, and worker empowerment. Dannin contends that only by promoting these core purposes of the NLRA can unions survive―and even thrive.

Read what Dennis P. Walsh, former member of the National Labor Relations Board, has to say about Taking Back the Workers' Law by clicking here.

To watch a lecture by Ellen Dannin about how established labor law―particularly the NLRA―can be used to strengthen workers' rights and revive the union movement in America, click here.

Read an interview with Dannin about Taking Back the Workers' Law conducted by Michael D. Yates for the Monthly Review's web site by clicking here.

Ellen Dannin is Professor of Law at the Dickinson School of Law, Penn State University. She is also the author of Working Free: The Origins and Impact of New Zealand's Employment Contracts Act. Former congressman David E. Bonior is currently Chair of American Rights at Work.