Robert F. Wagner

The New York Democrat was the New Deal's legislative engine in the Senate. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, still known as the Wagner Act, guaranteed private-sector workers the right to organise and bargain collectively and created the National Labor Relations Board; he also co-sponsored the Social Security Act and the Housing Act of 1937. Roosevelt was initially lukewarm on the labour bill, and Wagner drove it through. Employers' criticism of the act's one-sidedness led to the Taft-Hartley amendments of 1947.