United States 1934

Synopsis

Elected in 1932 on a platform of relief, reform, and recovery, President Franklin D. Roosevelt formulated a series of New Deal measures to address the economic crises of the Great Depression. One of the first pieces of New Deal legislation was the 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA). A comprehensive initiative to create balance in the American economy, the NIRA suspended antitrust laws to allow businesses to coordinate production plans in return for a pledge to pay a minimum wage for a 40-hour workweek. Employers also had to allow their employees to form labor unions to engage in collective bargaining over labor contracts under Section 7(a) of the NIRA. Without an agency to oversee the collective bargaining process under the NIRA, however, employers routinely refused to recognize their employees' demands for representation through unions. Frustrated by the ambiguous federal response in enforcing the NIRA, workers...