LABOR UNION - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

LABOR UNIONAuthored

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Definition

A labor union is an organized association of workers formed to advance their collective interests in the employment relationship. Acting as a collective bargaining representative, a union negotiates with employers over wages, hours, working conditions, and other terms of employment. In the United States, recognized unions typically hold the exclusive right to represent a defined bargaining unit — a group of employees sharing a community of interest — and are legally obligated to represent all members of that unit fairly, regardless of individual union membership.

The term is functionally synonymous with "trade union" in American usage, though "trade union" carries stronger historical associations with craft-based organization. Both refer to the same legal entity under federal labor law.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment; a trade union.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately defined as a legal term; "union" in ordinary usage denoted simply a joining together or combination of persons or things for a common purpose.

The common and legal meanings are closely aligned today, but the gap matters historically. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, describing a workers' combination as a "union" carried no legal protection — it was a descriptive social term for an entity that courts might simultaneously recognize as a criminal conspiracy. The legal legitimacy now embedded in the common meaning is entirely a product of statutory development, not inherent in the word itself.

Common Confusion

Labor union is sometimes used interchangeably with trade union, employee association, or collective bargaining representative. These terms are largely coextensive in modern federal labor law, but the distinctions matter at the margins. An employee association in the public sector may lack full collective bargaining rights depending on state law. A professional association (a bar association, a medical society) is not a labor union even if it advocates for members' professional interests, because it does not function as an exclusive bargaining representative under labor statutes. Researchers using historical sources should also note that "combination" and "society of workmen" were the functional predecessors of the term "labor union" in English and early American legal writing.

Why It Matters in Research

The legal status of labor unions inverted dramatically between the mid-nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth century. Before the Norris-LaGuardia Act (1932) and the National Labor Relations Act (1935), unions operated in a hostile legal environment — their concerted activities were routinely challenged as common law conspiracies or restrained by injunction. Corpus research in cases and treatises from roughly 1800 to 1930 will find the term "labor union" treated with legal suspicion rather than legal legitimacy. Researchers must read sources from that period with that background assumption in place.

After 1935, federal law created an affirmative framework recognizing and regulating unions. The corpus therefore reflects two entirely different legal universes depending on the date of the source. Secondary materials that do not anchor their analysis to a specific statutory regime may conflate pre- and post-NLRA frameworks, producing misleading generalizations.

Additional layers of complexity arise from coverage gaps in federal law. The Railway Labor Act governs railroads and airlines under a separate statutory scheme. Public sector workers are covered — if at all — by state law, not the NLRA, and coverage varies widely. Research into public sector labor relations (including teachers, police, and government employees) requires state-specific analysis. Materials in the Law Mind corpus on public sector labor should be read with the understanding that there is no single federal floor governing those workers' organizing rights.

The duty of fair representation — the union's obligation to represent all bargaining unit members without arbitrary or discriminatory conduct — is an implied statutory obligation developed through case law, not explicit in the text of the NLRA. Researchers looking for this concept in early post-NLRA sources may not find it under that name.

Historical Dictionary Support

Bouvier's Law Dictionary defines a labor union as a combination or association of laborers for the purpose of fixing wages and hours, for mutual benefit and protection, and for the redress of grievances against employers. Bouvier then traces the English legal background, noting that when wages were fixed by law or magistrate, and statutes criminalized covenants among workmen to refuse work except at certain rates, a combination to withhold labor was treated as criminal conspiracy. This reflects the foundational tension in Anglo-American labor law: that collective action by workers, viewed through the lens of combination and conspiracy doctrine, was legally indistinguishable from a criminal plot.

Bouvier's entry, by focusing on the criminal conspiracy lineage, captures the pre-statutory common law posture accurately. What it cannot capture — given its era — is the subsequent statutory displacement of that framework. The entry is valuable precisely as a baseline for understanding how far the law moved: from treating unions as presumptively criminal combinations to treating them as legally protected and federally regulated institutions. Modern sources must supply the transformation Bouvier could not anticipate.

Jurisdictional Note

Federal labor law under the NLRA governs most private sector workers but expressly excludes agricultural workers, domestic workers, supervisors, and independent contractors. Public sector labor relations are governed entirely by state law, with wide variation — some states grant full collective bargaining rights, others permit only meet-and-confer arrangements, and a small number prohibit public sector collective bargaining altogether.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

The Law Mind Employment & Labor Law Encyclopedia:
— The Railway Labor Act and Transportation Industry Labor Law
— Public Sector Labor Relations

LABOR UNIONmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

A combination or association of laborers for the purpose of fixing the rate of their wages and hours of work, for their mutual benefit and protec- tion, and for the purpose of righting griev-

LABOR UNIONmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

ances against their employers. In England when the rate of wages was fixed by law or by the determination of a magistrate, and when there was a statutory provision that all conspiracies and cove- nants among workmen not to make or do their work except at a certain rate or price, it was held a criminal conspiracy for a com- bination of workmen to refuse to work for so much per diem, though the matter about which they conspired might be lawful for one of them or for any of them to do had they not conspired to do it; 8 Mod. 11; but in the United States, though this decision was followed in the case of the Boot and Shoemakers of Philadelphia; Pamphlet 1806; The Pittsburg Cordwainers; Pam- phlet, 1816; and in 14 Wend. 9, and 2 Wheel. Cr. Cas. 262; yet they were decided by in- ferior courts, and in the first case before the supreme court of Pennsylvania (Com. v. Carlisle) that court held that a combina- tion of employers to reduce the wages of their employes was not unlawful; Bright. 36. In the case of the Master Stevedores v. Walsh, Daly, J., upheld this principle and denied the authority of the English case; 2 Daly 1; as did Shaw, J., in 4 Metc. 111 ; and these cases may be considered as hav- ing definitely settled the law in this coun- try that a combination of laborers for a lawful purpose does not amount to a con- spiracy. In England, however, the Journeymen Tailors case, 8 Mod. 11, was followed as late as 1855, when it was held that a bond signed by eighteen employers to conduct their business as to rates of wages, time of work, etc., was a combination in restraint of trade and null and void at common law; 6 El. & Bl. 47; and in 1869 the court was divided as to whether a labor union whose by-laws countenanced strikes was not thereby rendered illegal; L. R. 4 Q. Β. 602. In 1824 the first act was passed in England which legalized the combination of workmen; 5 Geo. IV. c. 99; but this was repealed the following year, and by the re- pealing act the combination of workmen was made lawful for the purpose of agree- ing uporr the prices which they might de- mand and the hours during which they would work, but making punishable any attempt to enforce the laws of the com- bining workmen by violence and intimida- tion; 6 Geo. IV. c. 129. In 1871 two acts were passed for the purpose of consolidat- ing and settling the law; 34 & 35 Vict. c. 31; and these were supplemented by the Trades Union Amendment Act of 1876; these statutes going so far as to declare such combinations lawful even when act- ing (peaceably) in restraint of trade. The right of entering and leaving the serv- ice of an employer is one that every man possesses and is one of the corollaries of personal liberty, and it has almost uni- formly been held that the same right might be exercised by any number of men jointly, if conducted in a peaceable and orderly manner and attended with no infringement of the rights of others; 23 Fed. Rep. 748; 106 Mass. 1; 54 Minn. 223; 2 Daly 1:38 Pac. Rep. (Ore.) 547; contra, 32 N. J. L. 151; and labor unions have been recognized by act of congress authorizing their incor- poration; U. S. Rev. Stat. 1 Suppl. 498; and by the statutes of most of the states. It has been held that such unions have an entire right to seek to compel employers to deal solely with men belonging to their union by all proper means, as by persua- sion or even by a properly conducted strike; 60 How. Pr. 163; that if the means are not unlawful, they have a right to endeavor to persuade those who have been accustomed to deal with an employer to withdraw their trade; 77 Hun 215; that they may agree not to teach their trade to others; 113 Mass. 179; and that where the combina- tion is peaceable and without intimidation, employes may peacefully assemble to argue and persuade concerning a reduction of wages with the expectation of a strike, and the employes will not be charged with any loss resulting from their quitting work; 24 U. S. App. 240; and they may lawfully pay the expenses of those who leave their employment and may post in their places of assembly the names of those who have contributed to the fund for the support of the workmen who have left; 17 N. Y. S. 264. But other cases have held differently: A labor union may not prevent an employer from employing certain workmen; 59 Vt. 278; or from obtaining workmen; 54 Fed. Rep. 40; or prevent workmen from obtain- ing work; 5 Cox, С. С. 162; 110 Ν. Υ. 633; or threaten a boycott; 30 Atl. Rep. (N. J.) 881; 55 Conn. 46; 45 Fed. Rep. 185; 8 R. & Corp. L. J. 561; or carry out a boycott; 62 Fed. Rep. 808; 147 Mass. 212; or strike with the intention of forcing others to join the union; 10 N. Y. St. Rep. 730; or picket the premises of an em- ployer during a strike with the usual ac- companiments of insulting and threatening words and gestures to those who work for him; 10 Cox, С. С. 593; 84 L. T. N. S. 58; 152 Pa. 595; [1896] 1 Ch. 811; but the ille- gality of the action and the irreparable nature of the injury

labor unionnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

A continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment; a trade union.

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