Curriculum Guide · Courses

Professors Harold Datz and Jonathan Fritts

J.D. Course 264 | 3 credit hours

This course will survey the National Labor Relations Act. We will cover the scope of employee rights to engage in concerted activity; the National Labor Relations Board procedures for elections and unfair labor practice charges; the collective bargaining process; the duties of successor employers; strikes and lockouts; grievance and arbitration procedures; and a union’s duty of fair representation. We will also cover secondary boycotts, federal/state pre-emption, and discuss how the Railway Labor Act (covering the railroad and airline industries) compares with the National Labor Relations Act. We will not cover such topics as jurisdictional disputes; connections with anti-trust law; employee benefits and benefit trusts; or internal union law. Those topics are important to labor practice, but are beyond our time limits. Our goal in a 13-week introductory course is to equip students, as new associates or staff lawyers, to spot incoming labor issues and give their client or firm initial guidance toward the right analytical approach. This is a foundation course for those wanting to advance their expertise in labor and employment law by later adding other offerings and gaining clinical experience. The focus of our course will be upon both the classic cases governing existing law and the potential impact of new case developments. Perhaps more than ever it is essential for students and practitioners to know where we have been in the law and where we may be headed.

Recommended: Prior coursework in economics; or the history of economic developments in the United States including the growth of trade unions and the economic legislation of the 1930s and 1940s.