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Strikes (last updated January 25, 2002) Despite the high profile of some strikes in recent years, the number of major work stoppages and the number of workers involved in them has fallen considerably since the 1940s. The following chart shows the decline.   White House role in ending work stoppages (last updated January 25, 2002) The federal government has a variety of powers to force an end to work stoppages, but usually only in drastic situations. First, federal employees are prohibited by law from striking. The government has tolerated some unauthorized strikes by federal employees, but President Ronald Reagan responded in August 1981 to a strike by air traffic controllers by firing thousands of them once they walked off their jobs. Second, the president is authorized under the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 (commonly known as the Taft-Hartley Act) to prevent a strike or lockout affecting all or a substantial part of an industry for 80 days when such a stoppage would "imperil the national health or safety." Technically, the president appoints a board of inquiry to report on the dispute, and the president can then petition a federal court to issue the injunction; neither party is under any duty to settle after this 80-day period but employees must vote before the end of the period as to whether they wish to accept their employer's final offer. During the 15-day strike by the Teamsters against the United Parcel Service in August 1997, many urged President Bill Clinton to invoke Taft-Hartley to end the strike, but Clinton said that the situation did not arise to the level required under law. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin told reporters at the time that no president had invoked Taft-Hartley in the twenty years preceding the Teamsters strike. The strike involved a dispute over a two-tier wage system involving full-time and part-time workers. Third, the president can invoke the Railway Labor Act to stop strikes affecting rail and air carriers for 60 days when such a dispute threatens "substantially to interrupt interstate commerce to a degree such as to deprive any section of the country of essential transportation service." Similar to the Taft-Hartley Act, the president technically creates an emergency board that has 30 days to issue a report, and then the parties have a 30-day cooling-off period to consider the board's recommendations before resuming any stoppage. The Railway Labor Act allows the president to delay a stoppage affecting a commuter rail carrier for another 90 days if necessary. President George W. Bush invoked the Railway Labor Act twice in 2001, once with Northwest Airlines and once with United Airlines. President Clinton invoked the act 14 times, mostly with rail carriers. Finally, the president can try to invoke broader economic powers, such as trying to nationalize an industry. President Harold S. Truman tried this unsuccessfully in 1952, when he tried to prevent a nationwide steel mill strike by ordering the Secretary of Commerce to take possession of and operate most of the nation's steel mills (Executive Order 10340). Recognizing that statutes such as the Defense Production Act of 1950 did not authorize such an act, Truman issued his order in early April under his authority as commander-in-chief, and it was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court less than two months later. "There is no statute that expressly authorizes the President to take possession of property as he did here. Nor is there any act of Congress to which our attention has been directed from which such a power can fairly be implied," Justice Hugo Black wrote for the Court. "Even though 'theater of war' can be an expanding concept, we cannot with faithfulness to our constitutional system hold that the [Commander in Chief] has the ultimate power as such to take possession of private property in order to keep labor disputes from stopping production. This is a job for the Nation's lawmakers, not for its military authorities." Sources: David P. Twomey, Labor & Employment Law (South-Western Publishing Co., 8th ed., 1989). The National Mediation Board, which coordinates use of the Railway Labor Act, is on-line here. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 US 579 (1952), the Supreme Court case deciding Truman's seizure of the steel mill industry. Steelworkers v. United States, 361 US 39 (1959), a Supreme Court case upholding President Eisenhower's stopping a steel workers' strike under the Taft-Hartley Act. Part-time workers (last updated January 25, 2002) The number of people who work part-time for economic reasons (such as slack work, lack of full-time jobs, seasonal work) has risen and fallen over the past few decades, as tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number peaked in the early 1990s, and was about 3.7 million in 2001 (by contrast, the number of people who worked part-time for non-economic reasons such as family obligations or schooling was about 27.5 million in 2001).  Minimum Wage (last updated February 8, 2003) (back to top) Most workers must be paid at least a minimum wage of $5.15 per hour under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which was last modified in 1997 due to amendments the year before. The minimum wage was first set in 1938 and has been increased many times over the years, though the minimum wage has not kept up with inflation and has been worth less in real dollars since a high in 1968. Democrats in Congress have tried unsuccessfully in recent years to have the minimum wage increased gradually to $6.65 an hour, which would bring the minimum wage back up to its level around 1980. Child Labor in Developing Countries (last updated November 21, 2001) Statistics on child labor in developing countries are hard to come by, as the practice is often illegal and secret. Even so, surveys by the International Labour Office's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) have determined that there were about 250 million children aged 5-14 years old employed in economic activity in developing countries as of 1998, or about 20 percent of the total child population of the same age and region. About 120 million worked full-time. According to the IPEC, child labor is most concentrated in absolute terms in Asia, which is the most densely populated region and has about 61 percent of the world's working child population. However, Africa has the highest rate of child workers, where two out of every five children aged 5-14 (41.4 percent) work; one out of every five children (21.5 percent) work in Asia.  Child Labor in the United States (last updated November 21, 2001) In 1900, about one out of every six children between the ages of 10 and 15 years old was gainfully employed, not including those who were helping their parents in sweatshops and in farms. It would take decades before meaningful federal laws regulating child labor came into being. Child labor in the United States, for the most part, now means part-time work by full-time students. The first child labor law in the United States was passed by Massachusetts in 1836; it required that children under the age of 15 who were employed in manufacturing spend at least three months in school. By the end of the 19th century, most states had some kind of law regulating child labor, but the scope was limited and enforcement was lax. The national attitude towards child labor began changing in the early 1900s, in part as a moral issue, but also due to changes in the nation's economy: parents made more income, thus reducing the need for their children to work, and new immigrants drove children out of the market of unskilled workers. By 1913, all but nine states had fixed 14 as the minimum age for factory work. Nationally, Congress tried several times in the 1910s and 1920s to regulate child labor but ran afoul of the Supreme Court, which at the time interpreted the Constitution as against federal interference in the free market. The first federal child labor law, which barred from interstate commerce any goods made by factories employing children under 14 years old or employing children between 14 and 16 for more than eight hours a day, six days a week, or at night, was struck down as unconstitutional in 1918 (Hamer v. Dagenhart). The second child labor law was struck down in 1922 (Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co.). Reformers even sought to amend the Constitution to permit federal regulation of child labor. Congress approved the amendment in 1924 and sent it on to the states for ratification, where it withered away. By 1925, only four states had ratified the amendment, and 34 had rejected it. Finally, confronted by FDR's New Deal and his court-packing plan, the Supreme Court began approving a broader interpretation of the federal government's commerce power, and Congress could pass laws regulating the market, including child labor. The Fair Labor Standards Act become law in 1938 and established a minimum age of 16 years for nonagricultural employment, with some provisions for 14- and 15-year-olds under certain conditions. Today, child labor in the United States largely means teenagers who are generally full-time students and part-time employees, a very different scenario from that existing in developing countries. Still, the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division finds thousands of violations each year. A study sponsored by the Associated Press in 1997 found that about 1 percent of all minors was employed illegally either by working excessive hours or in hazardous occupations. The study found that illegal employment was concentrated geographically in the Midwest and in non-metropolitan areas, and occupationally in construction, manufacturing, and sales. Sources: U.S. Department of Labor, Report on the Youth Labor Force (June 2000), available on-line here. Douglas Kruse, Illegal Child Labor in the United States (Rutgers University, sponsored by the Associated Press, 1997). Viviana Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child (Princeton University Press, 1994). Walter I. Trattner, Crusade for the Children (Quadrangle Books, 1970). |
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