This paper provides a comprehensive review of the federal laws governing employment relationships in the United States. Beginning with the historical origins of labor law during the New Deal era, it examines the two-track system of labor and employment regulation, the foundational statutes enacted in the 1930s, and landmark Supreme Court decisions that expanded federal regulatory power. The paper then surveys the major anti-discrimination laws currently in force — including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Equal Pay Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Civil Rights Act of 1991 — detailing the protections each provides and the enforcement role of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Specific laws exist that govern employers. One of these is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Additionally, the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA) protects men and women who perform substantially equal work in the same workplace from sex-based wage discrimination. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) protects individuals who are over the age of forty. Titles I and V of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) prohibit employment discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities in the private employment sector and in state and local governments. Discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities who work in the federal government is addressed in Sections 501 and 505 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The Civil Rights Act of 1991 provides monetary damages in cases of intentional employment discrimination.
These laws are all enforced by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which also provides oversight and coordination of all federal equal employment opportunity regulations, practices, and policies. In addition, the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA) contains several prohibitions — referred to as "prohibited personnel practices" — which promote fairness in federal personnel actions. (The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, n.d.; paraphrased)
The work of Stone (2008), entitled "The Future of Labor and Employment Law in the United States," relates that the system of employment regulation in the United States "is a two-track system. Labor law provides the mechanism for collective bargaining and other forms of employee collective action, while employment law sets minimal employment standards for all employees." (Stone, 2008, p. 2) Employment law also establishes minimum wages, safety and health standards, old-age assistance, unemployment insurance requirements, compensation for industrial injuries, mandates for child care and medical leave, and other minimal terms of employment. (Stone, 2008, paraphrased)
Stone relates that the "basic framework of today's labor and employment law originated in the New Deal period and was tailored to the job structures of that era." (2008) The New Deal era is referred to by Stone (2008) as the "industrial era" — one in which "large firms organized their workforces into a set of practices that has come to be termed 'internal labor markets.'" Stone states that the "internal labor market" is a term used to "distinguish these practices from the neoclassical ideal of a large impersonal external labor market in which buyers and sellers contract freely and repeatedly for jobs of all types." (2008)
Jobs in the internal labor markets are described by Stone (2008) as being "organized along rigidly defined lines of promotion, called job ladders." Within this framework, a worker hired in at the lowest rung and advanced in a series of steps throughout their career. Stone states that the internal labor market job structure "assumed a long-term relationship between the employee and the firm," and that job tasks "were minutely delineated and carefully arranged so that each job provided the training for the job on the next rung. Workers tended to stay within a particular department and on a single promotion line, and had little lateral mobility within or between firms." (Stone, 2008) Workers were rewarded with longevity-based pay and benefits, and their seniority defined both their bidding rights for higher-level jobs and their bumping rights in the event of reductions in force. (Stone, 2008)
By the 1930s, internal labor markets had "become prevalent in large industrial firms." (Stone, 2008) During that decade, Stone notes that "the three most significant labor statutes were enacted and two major Supreme Court opinions were issued that together established a framework for governing labor relations that persists to this day." (2008) Stone relates that this framework "was based upon assumptions rooted in the employment relationship that often prevailed during the New Deal period" — a framework described as "appropriate to long-term employment relations in stable work environments, but one that is becoming increasingly out of date." (Stone, 2008)
The Norris-LaGuardia Act was enacted by Congress in 1932 and "declared it to be the public policy of the United States to support workers' right to organize and engage in collective bargaining." (Stone, 2008) This Act "made it unlawful for federal courts to issue injunctions in many types of labor disputes." (Stone, 2008, p. 2) The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was enacted in 1935 and provided workers an "enforceable right to engage in concerted action for mutual aid and protection, to organize unions of their own choosing, and to engage in collective bargaining." (Stone, 2008, p. 3) The National Labor Relations Board was established to enforce the rights conferred by the NLRA. In 1937, the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed by Congress, establishing the federal minimum wage and maximum hours for employment.
Stone (2008) states that these three statutes, "taken together, established a two-tiered system in which labor and management were encouraged to bargain to establish the terms of the employment relationship, while at the same time, individual employees not covered by collective bargaining were guaranteed certain minimal employment terms." (Stone, 2008, p. 3)
The work of Benjamin I. Sachs entitled "Employment Law as Labor Law" states that more than seventy years ago, the United States Congress "centralized nearly all of American labor law into a single federal statute." (2008) The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) "was designed to be sweepingly broad, dictating the kinds of employees who could organize, the types of organizations workers could form, and the subjects over which labor and management had to negotiate." (Sachs, 2008, p. 2684) Sachs additionally relates that this statute was "aggressively exclusive: neither other federal laws, nor state and local enactments were to interfere with the operation of the NLRA or its administrative agency, the National Labor Relations Board." (Sachs, 2008, p. 2685)
Present-day scholars view this as a "failed regime," and identify two primary diagnoses:
(1) Although Congress intended the law to facilitate worker organizing and collective action — declaring it to be the "policy of the United States" to protect the "full freedom of association [and] self-organization" among workers — the statute has proven too weak to fulfill this mission; and
(2) The regime is too rigid, and the NLRA's attempt to govern the organizing process and the labor-management relationship from cradle to grave has disabled it from keeping pace with changes in the composition of the U.S. workforce and the structure of U.S. production systems. (Sachs, 2008, p. 2685)
"NLRA centralization, critiques, and reform debates"
"Detailed review of Title VII, ADA, ADEA, EPA, and CRA 1991"
"Recap of major employment statutes reviewed"
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