A yellow dog contract is an agreement between an employer and employee in which the employee agrees not to join a union. It was used to prevent unionization and was banned in the US in 1932. The term is now used to refer to non-disclosure and noncompete agreements.
In American parlance, a yellow dog contract is a contract between an employee and an employer in which the employee agrees not to join a union. This is seen as a working term; if the employee joins or organizes a union, he can be fired. In the United States, this practice is now illegal, but was once quite common, used as a tool to force people to give up their right to organize in exchange for job security. Labor organizers strongly protested the practice of drawing up yellow dog contracts as a working condition, and as a result, the practice was banned in 1932 under the Norris-LaGuardia Act.
The yellow dog contract began appearing in the late 1800s as employers became increasingly concerned with the power of unions and the union’s influence on American workplaces. Many prospective employees were willing to sign yellow dog contracts to get jobs and to ensure their jobs were safe, and employers used this to effectively lock the union out of their workplaces. People referred to contracts as “yellow dogs” to refer to the idea that employees who signed such contracts were “worth little more than a yellow dog.”
Unions naturally vigorously opposed the yellow dog contract, arguing that it inhibited employee freedoms and made it substantially more difficult for unions to advance workplace protections. Employers suggested that employees had the choice not to sign such contracts, although the unions believed that a high degree of coercion was involved, since employees would not be hired without signing a yellow dog contract. For people in financially stressed positions, very little actual choice has been made in the face of a yellow dog contract.
Unions finally succeeded in overthrowing the practice in 1932, and the freedom to organize and join a union was enforced in 1935 with the Wagner Act, effectively ending the yellow dog contract. With the freedom to organize, unions became much stronger, lobbying for their members to ensure American workers had safe working conditions and fair wages.
Some people use the term “yellow dog contract” to refer to non-disclosure agreements that many people sign when they enter jobs that deal with sensitive information. A noncompete agreement may also be referred to as a yellow dog agreement in some circles. Both of these types of agreements are common in many industries.
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