Explain the importance of the Railway Labor Act to the development of national labor legislation.

The Railway Labor Act was the first piece of legislation to explicitly protect the rights of employees to form and choose labor unions to represent them in collective bargaining with employers over wages, hours, and working conditions. Its primary purpose was to avoid strikes and peacefully settle labor-management disputes. The Act established mediation as one alternative to strikes when disputes arose. Further, it provided a mechanism and process for resolving grievances. The Act focuses on preserving individual rights, rather than dictating specific terms of employment. As such, the Railway Labor Act set the groundwork for the later national legislation, the Wagner Act. Wagner was able to learn from the strengths and weaknesses and create a law that improved upon the experience in the rail industry. Further, it paved the way for national legislation by demonstrating that labor and management could work peacefully together through the collective bargaining process.