Newlands Labor Act

The Newlands Labor Act, was a 1913 United States federal law, sponsored by Senator Francis G. Newlands of Nevada and drafted by Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Charles Patrick Neill. It created the Board of Mediation and Conciliation (BMC). The BMC was a precursor to today’s National Mediation Board (NMB).

In response to railroad strikes during the 1870s and 1880s,Congress passed the Arbitration Act of 1888, which authorized the creation of arbitration panels with the power to investigate the causes of labor disputes and to issue non-binding arbitration awards. The Act was a complete failure: only one panel was ever convened under the Act, and that one, in the case of the 1894 Pullman Strike, issued its report only after the strike had been crushed by a federal court injunction backed by federal troops.

Congress attempted to correct these shortcomings in the Erdman Act, passed in 1898. This law likewise provided for voluntary arbitration, but made any award issued by the panel binding and enforceable in federal court. It also outlawed discrimination against employees for union activities, prohibited "yellow dog" contracts (employee agrees not to join a union while employed), and required both sides to maintain the status quo during any arbitration proceedings and for three months after an award was issued. The arbitration procedures were rarely used.

President Woodrow Wilson signed the Newlands Act on July 15, 1913. The law created the Board of Mediation and Conciliation, which was administered by U.S. Commerce and District Court Judge Martin Augustine Knapp and assisted by U.S. Alabama District Court Judge and Commissioner William Lea Chambers. The Board adjusted and arbitrated disputes between railroad companies and their operating employees, where those disputes threatened to interrupt operation of the carriers to the “serious detriment of the public interest." Voluntary arbitration was also provided for those disputes that could not be settled by mediation.

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