National Industrial Recovery Act
United States 1933
Synopsis
The National Recovery Administration, or NRA, was instituted in the wake of the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) into law in 1933. The NIRA was one of the earliest efforts by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his administration to ease the economic depression into which theUnited States had been plunged when the stock market crashed in 1929. The purpose of the NIRA was to encourage the formation of industrial cartels. Supposedly, the existence of cartels would put a stop to the cutthroat price-cutting that was integral to competitive business practices at the time yet would still allow businesses a reasonable profit; with these profits, they could afford to employ greater numbers of workers. In exchange, however, businesses had to set up a code, one of whose provisions, Section 7a, granted workers in that industry the right to bargain collectively "with representatives of their own choosing." Once the government cracked the door on collective bargaining, it was soon knocked down by labor organizers, who convinced workers that the president was essentially calling on them to join unions.
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