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The Wagner Act, also known as the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (29 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq.), is the most important piece of labor legislation enacted in U.S. history. It made the federal government the arbiter of employer-employee relations through the creation of the NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD (NLRB) and recognized for the first time the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively with their employers. The act overturned decades of court decisions that asserted that LABOR UNIONS violated an employee's liberty of contract.

Senator ROBERT F. WAGNER, a Democrat from New York, introduced the legislation in 1935, when the United States was in the midst of the Great Depression. President