The Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) of 1959—known as the Landrum-Griffin Act after its sponsors, U.S. Reps. Phillip Landrum (D-Georgia) and Robert Griffin (R-Michigan)—is a piece of federal labor, transparency, and anti-corruption legislation targeting improper practices in labor-management relations. The Landrum-Griffin Act instituted a bill of rights for union members, which included protections of members’ right to speak out on union matters without interference from union officers, to run for local union offices in secret ballot elections, and to a fair internal union discipline process. ¹

Congress passed the Landrum-Griffin Act with bipartisan support in response to revelations of widespread financial corruption and racketeer influence in labor unions, especially the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The U.S. Senate established the Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor-Management Field—better known as the McClellan Committee after its chairman, U.S. Sen. John McClellan (D-Arkansas), or the Rackets Committee—in 1957 to investigate allegations of corruption within the labor movement; the Committee’s investigation contributed to the downfall of Teamsters president Dave Beck for embezzlement and tax offenses and implicated Beck’s successor, James R. “Jimmy” Hoffa, in racketeering activities. ²

In addition to the bill of rights for union members, the Landrum-Griffin Act established financial reporting requirements for labor unions, made union financial reports subject to public review,³ expanded the Taft-Hartley Act’s prohibition on secondary strikes to prohibit “hot cargo” contract provisions,⁴ and regulated internal union governance. ⁵ In the early 2000s, the George W. Bush administration and Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao set out new rules to increase the transparency of unions’ annual financial reports (known as the “LM-2” after the federal form on which large labor unions file with the Labor Department) by requiring unions to itemize their spending in excess of $5,000 and by publishing the annual reports online. ⁶

The law’s financial transparency rules apply to private-sector unions (typically defined as unions with at least one member in the private sector). Numerous municipal and state-level government worker unions are not required to file annual reports with the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS), the division of the Labor Department that handles compliance with most provisions of the Landrum-Griffin Act. ⁷

Prior Union Corruption Investigations

New York Waterfront Racketeering

Congress had investigated labor corruption before the creation of the Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor-Management Field. Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-Tennessee), later the 1956 Democratic nominee for Vice President of the United States, chaired the Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce holding nationwide, televised hearings that introduced Americans to the Mafia and organized crime, which then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had denied existed. ⁸

Kefauver’s committee heard testimony in New York City about mob infiltration in the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), which was also investigated by the New York State Crime Commission. ⁹ After Republicans took control of the Senate majority in 1953, the Interstate Commerce Committee under Sen Charles Tobey (R-N.H.) redoubled the investigations into the ILA,¹⁰ which culminated in the American Federation of Labor (predecessor to the modern AFL-CIO) expelling the ILA. ¹¹

The New York waterfront labor union rackets would be immortalized in the 1954 Academy Award-winning motion picture On the Waterfront, which was inspired by the 1948 New York Sun reports that led to the investigations. ¹²

Early Investigations of the Teamsters

In the Republican-controlled 83^rd United States Congress, a House subcommittee chaired by Rep. Wint Smith (R-Kansas) investigated allegations that Teamsters in Detroit were involved in corruption through the jukebox and vending machine industries. The committee took testimony alleging that Teamsters organizers had used violence and other intimidation tactics, but did not press the matter. ¹³

The House Labor Committee hired a former FBI accountant, Carmine Bellino, to investigate broader union corruption; the investigation implicated Teamsters president Dave Beck and the Western Conference of Teamsters. The Committee did not press the matter. ¹⁴

Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor-Management Field

Origin

In 1956, Robert F. Kennedy, chief counsel for the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, began inquiring about racketeering corruption in New York centering on the mobster Giovanni Ignazio Dioguardi, known by the nickname Johnny Dio. Dio was suspected of orchestrating an attack on labor journalist Victor Riesel, allegedly on the orders of Detroit-based Teamsters officer Jimmy Hoffa. ¹⁵

Clark Mollenhoff, a reporter for the Des Moines Register and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, tipped Kennedy off to Mollenhoff’s investigations of Hoffa, which started after allegations of “brutal tactics by Teamsters officials in Minneapolis.” ¹⁶ Kennedy would resist Mollenhoff’s entreaties until after the 1956 Democratic National Convention, when Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-Tennessee) defeated Kennedy’s brother, U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), for the party nomination for Vice President. After Dio’s arrest for the Riesel attack, Robert Kennedy agreed to take Mollenhoff’s challenge to Hoffa to his boss, U.S. Sen. John McClellan (D-Arkansas). One of Robert Kennedy’s biographers claimed that Kennedy hoped Kefauver’s rise to prominence with his televised hearings on mob activities could be a model for his brother John. ¹⁷

Riesel had alleged that Dio and his mob associates had received charters for “paper locals” of the Teamsters union—nominal divisions of the union that had no members but had officers who could vote in Teamsters internal elections. Union officers on the make (like Hoffa) could charter paper locals under control of mobsters to gain loyal supporters in union power struggles; the mob men could use the racketeer-controlled unions to secure extortion payments or kickbacks for sweetheart contracts. ¹⁸

Mollenhoff connected Kennedy with Ed Guthman, a Seattle Times reporter who had investigated the financial dealings of Dave Beck, then the president of the Teamsters Union, in fall 1956. Guthman’s sources connected Kennedy with Beck’s fixer, a Chicago-based labor-management consultant named Nathan Shefferman. Carmine Bellino, the ex-FBI forensic accountant who had worked on the House investigation and was now one of Kennedy’s top researchers, identified numerous irregularities in financial information related to Beck and Shefferman’s business arrangements, concluding that Shefferman was operating as Beck’s “personal shopper.” Kennedy would write that “We had come to the startling but inescapable conclusion that Dave Beck, the president of America’s largest, most powerful labor union, was a crook.” ¹⁹

Kennedy would confront Beck, who stonewalled asserting that the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations lacked jurisdiction to inquire about labor union governance. (Teamsters officials hoped to move any inquiry to the Labor Committee, which was seen as more pro-union.) Kennedy’s boss, Sen. McClellan, authorized informing Beck that the Senate intended to hold hearings on his misuse of union funds as early as January 1957. ²⁰

Creation of the Subcommittee

The Senate resolved the jurisdictional dispute between the Labor Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations after the seating of new Senators in January 1957 by establishing a special bipartisan Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor-Management Field, better known as the Rackets Committee. Sen. McClellan would chair the committee with Sen. Irving Ives, a liberal Republican from New York, as vice-chair. ²¹

The AFL-CIO executive council voted 26-1 in favor of ordering its member unions to remove from office any official who refused to testify on union matters. ²²

Hoffa Bribery Arrest

After the formation of the Rackets Committee, Jimmy Hoffa sought to infiltrate Robert Kennedy’s investigative staff. Hoffa offered John Cheasty, a lawyer and ex-Secret Service agent who had applied to join the committee staff, $2,000 ($18,000 in 2019 dollars) per month to report back to Hoffa on the Kennedy team’s progress. Cheasty informed Kennedy of the offer, and Kennedy, Sen. McClellan, and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover turned Cheasty into a double agent against Hoffa. ²³

Cheasty would supply information to Hoffa about the committee’s activities on two occasions under FBI surveillance; the second time, Hoffa paid Cheasty the agreed $2,000. Hoffa was then arrested by federal agents in the lobby of the Dupont Plaza Hotel and charged with bribery. ²⁴

Robert Kennedy joked to reporters that he would “jump off the Capitol” if Hoffa were acquitted. ²⁵ Hoffa sought to have the trial delayed until after the Teamsters convention in October, at which he would challenge for the union’s national presidency. While Hoffa was unsuccessful in that effort, his legal team was able to challenge Cheasty’s credibility and tied him to segregationists; the jury ultimately acquitted the Teamsters boss. ²⁶

Fall of Dave Beck

Dave Beck, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, first sat to testify before the Rackets Committee on March 26, 1957. Beck had sought to avoid testifying by methods including taking foreign travels and claiming ill health. ²⁷

The Rackets Committee and its investigators questioned Beck alleging he had misappropriated $322,000 (approximately $3 million in 2019 dollars) in union funds. Beck repeatedly invoked his privileges under the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. ²⁸

Kennedy and the Rackets Committee investigators had identified other six-figure (in 1957 dollars) money movements by Beck, perhaps most prominently a scheme by which the Teamsters Union paid $163,000 for Beck’s house and then allowed him to live in the home rent-free for life. ²⁹ The AFL-CIO labor federation, which counted the Teamsters as a member union, suspended Beck from its executive council on March 29. ³⁰

The revelations and public scrutiny led Beck to announce he would not seek re-election as Teamsters president in 1957, and the government later charged him and his son with tax evasion. ³¹ Beck would be convicted, but the former “Republicans’ labor statesman” would be pardoned by President Gerald Ford in 1975. ³²

Hoffa’s Ascendancy and the AFL Response

Beck’s de facto ouster raised the profile and eased the path to the top of the Teamsters Union for the controversial James R. “Jimmy” Hoffa. Kennedy sought to keep Hoffa from winning the Teamsters presidency by bringing him before the Rackets Committee and challenging him. ³³

Unlike Beck, Hoffa did not exercise his Fifth Amendment privileges in testimony in late August 1957. The Committee challenged Hoffa on his relationship with Test Fleet, a trucking company owned by Hoffa’s wife and the wife of the head of Teamsters Local 337. Sen. John Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) further challenged Hoffa on his wife’s alleged no-show job with a jukebox servicemen’s local of the Teamsters Union. While Hoffa’s answers were evasive (he told Sen. Kennedy: “I can’t answer that, except for the fact I can’t answer that” when questioned about his wife’s no-show job³⁴), he avoided pleading the Fifth. ³⁵

Robert Kennedy then pressed Hoffa on his relationship to Johnny Dio, the mobster who had orchestrated the attack on labor journalist Victor Riesel. Hoffa denied speaking to Dio about bringing New York City cab drivers into the Teamsters; Kennedy then played recorded wiretaps clearly demonstrating that Hoffa had done so. Under further questioning, Hoffa employed language indicating faulty memory over 100 times. ³⁶ Committee vice chair Sen. Irving Ives (R-N.Y.) quipped that Hoffa had “one of the most convenient forgettery of anybody I have ever seen.” ³⁷

In mid-September, the AFL-CIO Ethical Practices Committee issued seven charges against the Teamsters Union for the various corrupt activities of Beck, Hoffa, and other union officers. A week later, the government filed charges against Hoffa for perjury in a wiretapping case and the AFL-CIO issued an ultimatum that the federation would expel the Teamsters if the union did not clean itself up in a month. ³⁸

On September 30, the Teamsters delegates convened to elect a new union president. Thanks in part to the support of dubious delegates chosen by paper locals, Hoffa won a three-to-one majority. Kennedy attempted to subpoena the delegate credentials; they were destroyed under suspicious circumstances. ³⁹ In October, the AFL-CIO expelled the Teamsters Union; the union would not be readmitted to the federation until 1987. ⁴⁰

In mid-1958, Hoffa was brought before the Rackets Committee to testify again. Sen. McClellan and chief counsel Kennedy pressed Hoffa on his relationships with a number of Teamsters hard men with criminal records for offenses including perjury, bribery, robbery, assault, and attempted vehicular homicide. ⁴¹

Investigations of Other Unions

While the Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor-Management Field spent most of its efforts targeting the Teamsters Union—34 of the 58 compiled volumes of testimony to the committee concerned the IBT—the Committee also identified corrupt practices in other arms of the labor movement. Kennedy found that James G. Cross, leader of the Bakery and Confectionery Workers Union, had connived to give himself near-dictatorial power, giving himself full control with depositing union funds and placing his own salary under the control of the union’s executive council rather than the full national convention. He was also allegedly spending union funds on personal entertainments and to maintain a mistress. ⁴² The AFL-CIO expelled the Bakers Union and created a rival American Bakery and Confectionery Workers’ International Union; the two would merge in 1969, forming a predecessor to the modern Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco, and Grain Millers’ International Union (BCTGM). ⁴³

The Rackets Committee also pursued corruption in the Carpenters Union. A Carpenters vice president who was involved in a land deal with Jimmy Hoffa was implicated in a kickback scheme through which companies targeted by the union would buy from the officer’s “Penn Products” company. ⁴⁴

Legislative Remedies

In March 1958, the McClellan Committee issued its interim report identifying legislative approaches to correct the problems of labor racketeering the hearings had unearthed. The Committee proposed placing pension, health, and welfare funds under federal oversight; requiring that union financial reports be accurate and complete and holding union officers accountable for holding union funds in trust for the membership; setting minimum standards for union democracy and regulating trusteeships, a procedure that allowed corrupt unions (especially the Teamsters) to centrally control member-led insurgencies; regulating management-side consultants (targeting the likes of Nathan Shefferman, the Chicago consultant who was involved with ousted Teamsters president Dave Beck); and resolving a jurisdictional question between state labor relations agencies and the National Labor Relations Board. ⁴⁵

Senators John Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and Irving Ives (R-N.Y.) advanced a pension reform measure to enact the first prong of the Rackets Committee recommendations in 1958. The House of Representatives substantially watered down the measure; it would be signed by President Dwight Eisenhower as the Welfare and Pension Plans Act of 1958. ⁴⁶

Kennedy-Ives Bill 1958

Kennedy and Ives then advanced the Labor-Management Reporting Act to address the other proposals of the McClellan Committee. The bill, reportedly written by liberal legal icon Archibald Cox and AFL-CIO special counsel Arthur Goldberg, was backed by the AFL-CIO and opposed by business groups that wanted a stronger bill and dissident labor unions (the United Steelworkers, the United Mine Workers, and the Teamsters) that wanted no increase in regulation. ⁴⁷ U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, the arch-conservative Republican from Arizona, called the Kennedy-Ives proposal a “sweetheart proposal” designed to win support from labor unions. ⁴⁸

The Eisenhower administration found the Kennedy-Ives bill too weak, with Labor Secretary James Mitchell stating that it “would delude the workers of this country and the American public into believing they had protection they did not in fact have.” ⁴⁹ After the administration’s criticism, the Senate adopted a number of amendments toughening the bill’s transparency requirements; the amended measure passed the Senate overwhelmingly. House Democrats, fearing that amendments that would make the bill less palatable to labor would pass, bottled Kennedy-Ives in committee before failing to pass it without amendment using the suspension of the rules procedure.⁵⁰

Kennedy-Ervin Bill 1959

The 1958 elections returned substantially increased Democratic Congressional majorities. Public opinion continued to seek a remedy to the McClellan Committee-identified racketeering in the labor unions. Senator Kennedy reintroduced his 1958 bill, now co-sponsored by North Carolina Democrat Sam Ervin (Ives had retired before the 1958 elections). The Kennedy-Ervin bill, like Kennedy-Ives, contained a number of pro-union “sweetener” amendments to the Taft-Hartley Act; Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen (R-Illinois) and Sen. Goldwater sought to add a number of management-desired amendments or to strip the pro-union provisions and create a separate bill to revise Taft-Hartley. ⁵¹

While Dirksen and Goldwater’s amendments were defeated, Senator John McClellan (D-Arkansas) offered an amendment that was adopted over Kennedy’s objection. McClellan proposed a “bill of rights” for members of labor organizations; the amendment was adopted with the support of southern Democrats and mostly united Republicans. McClellan’s bill of rights would itself be amended by a bipartisan group led by moderate Republican Thomas Kuchel of California. ⁵² The ideas behind the union member bill of rights are often credited to longtime union democracy advocate and law professor Clyde Summers, who drafted a rights proposal in 1958 on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union. ⁵³

Kennedy-Ervin passed the Senate by a vote of 90-1, with only Sen. Goldwater opposed. ⁵⁴

Landrum-Griffin: The House Acts

After the Kennedy-Ervin bill cleared the Senate, the AFL-CIO decided to oppose the bill in the House. The union federation cited the members’ bill of rights; observers speculated that a heavy-handed lobbying campaign in Congress by Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa that had appeared to derail the bill’s prospects had its own influence on the AFL-CIO reversal. ⁵⁵

The Eisenhower administration, meanwhile, sought an aggressive counter to the racketeer influences identified by the McClellan Committee and prepared to push its agenda in the House of Representatives. Rep. Robert Griffin (R-Michigan) would head the administration’s effort; Rep. Phil Landrum (D-Georgia), a member of the southern “conservative coalition,” would be the lead Congressional sponsor. Neither Griffin nor Landrum was considered particularly pro- or anti-union. ⁵⁶ The Office of the Solicitor of Labor within the U.S. Department of Labor was deeply involved in helping draft the bill; one staffer prominently involved in the drafting was Howard Jenkins, Jr., later a John F. Kennedy-appointed member of the National Labor Relations Board. After the bill’s passage, Jenkins would become a Deputy Commissioner in the Bureau of Labor Management Reports,⁵⁷ the predecessor of the modern OLMS. ⁵⁸

The House Committee on Education and Labor reported an amended version of the Kennedy bill to the floor; House Republican Leader Charles Halleck (R-Indiana) sought to substitute the Landrum-Griffin measure for the Kennedy bill on the House floor. The Landrum-Griffin bill’s principal differences from the Kennedy bill and the House committee bill were in the bills’ revisions to Taft-Hartley: Landrum-Griffin had no union “sweeteners” and strict prohibitions on secondary boycott activity. ⁵⁹

In a public speech on the labor reform issue, President Eisenhower endorsed the Landrum-Griffin approach. ⁶⁰ The House adopted the Landrum-Griffin measure as an amendment in a tight 229-201 floor vote; it passed the House by a wider margin after labor cleared members to “vote your districts to get re-elected next year.” ⁶¹

As the House and Senate had passed different bills, a conference committee was needed to reconcile the versions. In the conference committee, the House prevailed on most of the disputed provisions; the sides compromised on exempting the garment industry from secondary boycott prohibitions. The conference report was adopted by both Houses of Congress and the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 was signed by President Eisenhower on September 14, 1959. ⁶²

Provisions of the LMRDA

Most provisions of the Landrum-Griffin Act are regulated and controlled by the Department of Labor. ⁶³ DoL administers these provisions through a subordinate division, the Office of Labor-Management Standards. ⁶⁴

Bill of Rights of Members of Labor Organizations

Title I of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act establishes a “bill of rights” for union members, assuring minimum democratic procedures within labor unions.⁶⁵ The bill secures for union members the equal right to nominate and vote for candidates for local union offices; freedom of speech and assembly within the union, including the right to criticize union officers; a secret ballot to vote on dues, fees, and assessments; the right to sue the union; and protection against improper union discipline including a guarantee of due process in disciplinary hearings. ⁶⁶ Union members were also guaranteed the ability to review collective bargaining agreements. ⁶⁷

Reporting by Labor Organizations, Officers and Employees of Labor Organizations, and Employers

Title II of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act requires unions to file annual financial reports to the U.S. Department of Labor.⁶⁸ Union officers must also file disclosures of potential conflicts of interest,⁶⁹ and employers must file reports disclosing the intervention of professional consultants who interact directly with employees on labor relations and unionization. ⁷⁰

Union financial disclosures were limited before the George W. Bush administration, when Labor Secretary Elaine Chao issued regulations making union annual reports far more detailed. The Bush-era regulations replaced reporting of expenditures on aggregate functional areas with a requirement that large labor unions itemize all spending over $5,000. ⁷¹

The disclosure rules enacted by the George W. Bush administration helped derail a corruption scheme involving Service Employees International Union official Tyrone Freeman. A Los Angeles Times reporter who reviewed the financial disclosures of SEIU United Long Term-Care Workers Union identified payments made by the union to businesses controlled by Freeman and his wife; the revelations prompted investigations that ultimately led to Freeman’s conviction. ⁷²

Trusteeship Regulations

The LMRDA instituted a number of regulations on labor union trusteeships, the procedure by which financially distressed local unions are placed under direct control of an appointee of the national union to restore stability.^{73 74} The McClellan Committee had identified a number of abuses, especially by the Teamsters Union, of the trusteeship process; the committee found that a full 12 percent of Teamsters locals were under trusteeships. According to Senator McClellan, the committee found that “In the Teamsters, at the time of the Select Committee’s investigation, trusteeship quite evidently was used as a device to control any locals that showed signs of independence [. . .] in some instances a trusteeship was regarded and treated as a license to steal most anything that wasn’t red-hot or nailed down.” ⁷⁵

Officer Elections

The LMRDA established minimum standards of union democracy in the election of union constitutional and executive officers.⁷⁶ Local union officers and delegates to conventions of national or intermediate-level union bodies with the power to elect intermediate and national-level union officers must be chosen by secret ballot of the members in good standing. The law also limited the length of allowable union officers’ terms, with local officials held to a maximum of three-year terms, intermediate body officials to four-year terms, and national-level officials to five-year terms, with union constitutions able to establish shorter term lengths. ⁷⁷

Safeguards for Labor Organizations

LMRDA established certain safeguards over union funds by creating a fiduciary duty of union officers to steward union funds “solely for the benefit of the organization and its members,” by barring persons convicted of certain offenses from holding union offices, and by requiring union officers to be bonded to protect the labor organization against “loss by reason of acts of fraud or dishonesty on his part directly or through connivance with others.” ⁷⁸

The law barred employers (and their agents) from providing money (other than bona fide wages and benefits), gifts, or other things of value to labor union officials. ⁷⁹ The McClellan Committee had heavily investigated one such agent, Nathan Shefferman, who had been an associate of disgraced Teamsters president Dave Beck; Shefferman had arranged management-friendly contracts on behalf of Sears, Roebuck, and Company with the Teamsters. ⁸⁰

Amendments to Taft-Hartley

The Landrum-Griffin Act made a number of changes to the National Labor Relations Act, which the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act had amended. Most of the changes curtailed or regulated abusive labor union practices, but the law did expand the ability of construction unions to require union membership and make collective bargaining agreements in advance of construction. ⁸¹

“Hot Cargo” Agreements

The Taft-Hartley Act had prohibited the so-called “secondary boycott,” a labor action through which a union involved in a dispute with one employer orders a strike against that employer’s customers or suppliers to coerce the original employer. ⁸²

The Taft-Hartley ban allowed unions to request so-called “hot cargo” provisions under which employers agreed not to handle goods produced by or intended for a struck shop, though the Supreme Court had ruled that under Taft-Hartley striking to enforce a hot cargo provision was prohibited. ⁸³ The Teamsters had used hot cargo provisions coercively; Senator McClellan expressed satisfaction that Landrum-Griffin would deal with the “evils” of such provisions. ⁸⁴

The Landrum-Griffin Act forbade hot cargo agreements, making them an unfair labor practice. ⁸⁵ The law exempted the garment industry, at the time a large employer in New York, because of subcontracting arrangements specific to clothes manufacturing. ⁸⁶ Landrum-Griffin also closed three other loopholes in the secondary boycott prohibition, extending the ban to airline and railroad unions, barring coercion of supervisory employees to carry out secondary boycotts, and forbidding single-worker secondary stoppages. ⁸⁷

Limits on Picketing

The Landrum-Griffin Act placed restrictions on picketing at workplaces by unions not recognized as the bargaining representatives of the workplace’s employees. President Eisenhower had targeted “blackmail picketing” in his public remarks supporting the Landrum-Griffin reform bill. ⁸⁸

While business interests had sought to prohibit all picketing for recognition (picketing by a union seeking to enter collective bargaining but not yet recognized by the employer or certified by a National Labor Relations Board-administered secret-ballot election),⁸⁹ the final act barred picketing only when an employer lawfully recognized another union in good faith, the workplace had conducted an NLRB-sanctioned unionization election within the past year, or the union conducted organizational picketing without petitioning to unionize the workplace “within a reasonable period of time not to exceed thirty days.” ⁹⁰ Picketing to encourage a consumer boycott was also prohibited, though unions could distribute materials informing consumers that a firm was using struck or non-union goods. ⁹¹

National Labor Relations Board

The Landrum-Griffin Act made a number of changes to the National Labor Relations Board’s procedures and jurisdictions. The law resolved the “No Man’s Land” issue created when the NLRB refused to adjudicate a labor dispute under its jurisdiction; after Landrum-Griffin, state labor boards and state courts were permitted to adjudicate unfair labor practices declined by the NLRB. ⁹²

The law also changed the rules governing voting rights in NLRB elections for “economic strikers,” defined as workers striking for reasons other than protest of unfair labor practices by their employer who are subject to permanent replacement. Under pre-Landrum-Griffin rules, only employees with a right to reinstatement could vote in a representation election, thus excluding economic strikers who had been permanently replaced; the law permitted replaced economic strikers to vote in a representation election held within 12 months of the strike’s beginning. ⁹³

The NLRB was also authorized to delegate certain decision-making to regional directors, subject to review by the national-level Board. ⁹⁴

1. “Union Member Rights and Officer Responsibilities under the LMRDA.” U.S. Department of Labor Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS). Accessed March 20, 2018. https://www.dol.gov/olms/regs/compliance/members.htm.
2. Lee, R. Alton. “Enter Mr. Beck . . . and Mr. Hoffa.” In Eisenhower and Landrum-Griffin: A Study in Labor-Management Politics, 45-73. University Press of Kentucky, 1990. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt130jqnj.6.
3. Hunter, Robert P., Paul Kersey, and Shawn Miller. “Current Disclosure Rules.” Mackinac Center for Public Policy. December 15, 2001. Accessed August 16, 2019. https://www.mackinac.org/3980.
4. “1959 Landrum-Griffin Act.” NLRB. Accessed August 16, 2019. https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/who-we-are/our-history/1959-landrum-griffin-act.
5. “Union Member Rights and Officer Responsibilities under the LMRDA.” U.S. Department of Labor Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS). Accessed March 20, 2018. https://www.dol.gov/olms/regs/compliance/members.htm.
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9. Otis, Ginger Adams. “Inside New York’s ‘Waterfront’ Mob.” New York Post. June 20, 2010. Accessed August 16, 2019. https://nypost.com/2010/06/20/inside-new-yorks-waterfront-mob/.
10. “Criminality in Labor Unions.” CQ Researcher by CQ Press. March 4, 1953. Accessed August 16, 2019. http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1953030400.
11. Raskin, A.H. “RYAN’S DOCK UNION EXPELLED BY A.F.L.” New York Times, September 23, 1953. Accessed August 16, 2019. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1953/09/23/83857307.html?pageNumber=1.
12. “On the Waterfront.” AFI CATALOG OF FEATURE FILMS. Accessed August 16, 2019. https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/51286.
13. Lee, R. Alton. “Enter Mr. Beck . . . and Mr. Hoffa.” In Eisenhower and Landrum-Griffin: A Study in Labor-Management Politics, 45-73. University Press of Kentucky, 1990. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt130jqnj.6.
14. Lee, R. Alton. “Enter Mr. Beck . . . and Mr. Hoffa.” In Eisenhower and Landrum-Griffin: A Study in Labor-Management Politics, 45-73. University Press of Kentucky, 1990. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt130jqnj.6.
15. Neff, James. Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy versus Jimmy Hoffa. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015.
16. Neff, James. Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy versus Jimmy Hoffa. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015. pp. 23.
17. Neff, James. Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy versus Jimmy Hoffa. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015.
18. Neff, James. Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy versus Jimmy Hoffa. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015.
19. Quoted in Neff, James. Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy versus Jimmy Hoffa. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015. Pp. 34-36.
20. McClellan, John L. Crime without Punishment. New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1962.
21. McClellan, John L. Crime without Punishment. New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1962.
22. “Labor Investigation.” CQ Almanac Online Edition, 1957. https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal57-1346140.
23. Neff, James. Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy versus Jimmy Hoffa. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015.
24. McClellan, John L. Crime without Punishment. New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1962.
25. Quoted in Neff, James. Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy versus Jimmy Hoffa. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015. pp. 62.
26. Neff, James. Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy versus Jimmy Hoffa. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015.
27. McClellan, John L. Crime without Punishment. New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1962.
28. Sullivan, Ronald. “Dave Beck, 99, Teamsters Chief, Convicted of Corruption, Is Dead.” The New York Times. The New York Times, December 28, 1993. https://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/28/obituaries/dave-beck-99-teamsters-chief-convicted-of-corruption-is-dead.html.
29. Neff, James. Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy versus Jimmy Hoffa. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015.
30. “Labor Investigation.” CQ Almanac Online Edition, 1957. https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal57-1346140.
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