Wagner Act and Fair Labor Standards Act

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Week 7 readings and videos
The Wagner Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act are US laws, instrumental in protecting workers from various unfair workplace practices. Their enactment establishes the minimum wage, overtime, standards of work, and the legal rights workers should enjoy. The adoption of the Wagner Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act has influenced significant changes in the following cases, allowing employees to discuss their overtime, working hours, pay and improve their working conditions.
Butch Weldy reading by Edgar Masters
The reading, “Butch Weldy,” by Edgar Masters, describes events that led to Butch getting into an industrial accident. According to the poem, the character gets a job in the canning works, where he is charged with filling the yard tank with gasoline, which he has to do by climbing a ladder. The poem suggests that Butch conducted his duties without protective gear despite the dangerous gasoline, thereby exposing him to dangerous working conditions. Edgar wrote that while Butch was filling the tank, the air blew a blow-fire left unattended, which resulted in the tank exploding. As a result, Butch broke his legs, and his eyes burned, leading to blindness (Masters). The dangerous working environment was compounded by his failure to be compensated for his injuries.
The Wagner Act addresses the problem of dangerous working conditions by offering protection for workplace democracy. Democracy empowers all employees to fight for better working conditions through organized labor unions that negotiate collectively for specific safety provisions. Through these labor unions, the employees used Butch’s accident as the foundation of their push for a safer working environment that provides protective apparatus for workers handling potent chemicals (“National Labor Relations Act”). The law also forbids employers from engrossing in unfair labor practices of failing to bargain collectively with labor unions. With injuries and accidents imminent in the working environment, the ability to bargain allowed them to develop a compensatory agreement in case of a workplace accident like Butch’s.
Based on the reading, the Act might have protected ...