Labor Law

• Semester: Spring 2026
• Course ID: 294H
• Credit Hours: 2
• Unique: 29754

Description

Taught by Glenda Pittman

This course will examine selected labor law topics, with the primary aim of providing an overview of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, as amended, which, after many decades of American working people’s struggles to devise and establish collective means for improving their wages and the conditions in which they worked, committed the United States to fostering collective bargaining in the private sector.  The course will take a look at some tools Congress put in the tool box it set up for workers and unions, including enforcement tools, and whether those tools have yielded as much encouragement of collective bargaining as the Act said that Congress intended.  This look will include topics such as the history leading up to the Act’s passage; what, when and how workers and employers are allowed to communicate about working terms and conditions; the Act’s prohibition against company unions; its prohibition against discrimination for exercising the Act’s rights; the ways in which workers can form unions and compel collective bargaining; and enforcement of collective bargaining agreements.  The course also will touch on the implications for achieving the Act’s stated purpose that arise from recent Supreme Court and Appellate Court decisions, from cases pending before the Supreme Court in its 2025-2026 term, and from a recent Executive Order.

A secondary aim will be to provide a look at some of the laws and tactics public sector unions rely upon to represent workers, particularly public sector unions in Texas where collective bargaining is statutorily forbidden for most public sector workers.

An underlying objective will be to give students a glimpse of what union representatives and labor lawyers actually do. To this end, there will be some guest speakers.