(This article was first published in New York Daily News on February 6, 2019.)

The advent of Amazon to New York City has brought focus upon that company’s attitude toward labor and the relevance of the rule of law. It was President Lincoln who first told us that capital could not exist without labor. FDR tried to make this a genuine reality by establishing a mechanism through which labor rights could be made a reality in the Great Depression.

But the National Labor Relations Act, which governs labor-management relations in the private sector, has proved ineffective and inadequate in its protection of workers against anti-union tactics which frequently border upon coercion or threats but sometimes escape prohibition through the law’s vagueness. (Continue reading this article on New York Daily News’ page here.)

William B. Gould IV is Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law, Emeritus, at Stanford Law School. A prolific scholar of labor and discrimination law, Gould has been an influential voice in worker–management relations for more than fifty years and served as Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB, 1994–98) and subsequently Chairman of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (2014-2017). Professor Gould has been a member of the National Academy of Arbitrators since 1970.