The Reagan Administration entered office with an agenda. An important part of this agenda was a restructuring of the labor-management relationship in the United States (Ritter, 1990, pp. 12-14). The three principal approaches to gaining this objective that were implemented by the Reagan Administration were to reconstitute the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) through the appointment of members sharing Reagan Administration philosophies, recasting labor relations law at the federal level, and establishing a dominant control by the Reagan Administration of federal-sector labor relations (Schmidt, 1994, pp. 133-147). This research examines the initiatives of the Reagan Administration in relation to this third approach--establishing a dominant level of Administration control over federal-sector labor relations.
The two federal organizations that provided the Reagan Administration with opportunities to establish control over federal-sector labor relations were the United States Postal Service (USPS) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The impact of the Reagan Administration on federal-sector labor relations is assessed through an examination of the Administration's actions in relation to labor relations at these two organizations. The examination of the Administration's actions in relation to these two organizations is preceded by a brief review of federal labor law.
In the United States, labor law is essentially a federal matter, and the government arbiter between management and labor is the NLRB (Calvert, 1990, pp. 19-26). One result of this approach is a uniform application across the country of rules governing labor-management relations. The states are able to exercise little original jurisdiction in labor-management relations (the most notable example of state jurisdiction are the so-called right to work laws, which effectively outlaw the closed shop in some states).
Labor unions gain the right to represe...