THE STATE LEGISLATURES AND UNIONISM: A SURVEY OF STATE LEGISLATION RELATING TO PROBLEMS OF UNIONIZATION AND COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

'There ought to be a law!" So declared labor and its friends in the early days of the New Deal, and the Wagner Act and "little" Wagner acts (the "labor relations acts") were the legislative response. Now, some five years later, with Utopia in labor relations not yet at hand, the hue and cry goes up for still more law, both state and federal. In part this is the typical American reaction to particular irritations and assumes with the usual naiveté that there is a single legislative specific for every isolated ailment. In part it is the equally typical reaction to chronic disturbances which assumes that a complete legislative code is the proper prescription for all ills.

Each point of view, whether valid or not, can usefully inform itself concerning past and present legislative curatives. It is the authors' purpose herein to present a panoramic survey of the work of those useful laboratories for experimentation, the state legislatures.