(a) Under prevailing economic conditions, individual employes do not possess full freedom of association or actual liberty of contract. Employers in many instances, organized in corporate or other forms of ownership associations with the aid of government authority, have superior economic power in bargaining with employes. This growing inequality of bargaining power substantially and adversely affects the general welfare of the State by creating variations and instability in competitive wage rates and working conditions within and between industries, and by depressing the purchasing power of wage earners, thus--(1) creating sweat-shops with their attendant dangers to the health, peace, and morals of the people; (2) increasing the disparity between production and consumption; and (3) tending to produce and aggravate recurrent business depressions. The denial by some employers of the right of employes to organize and the refusal by employers to accept the procedure of collective bargaining tend to lead to strikes, lock-outs, and other forms of industrial strife and unrest, which are inimical to the public safety and welfare, and frequently endanger the public health.

(b) Experience has proved that protection by law of the right of employes to organize and bargain collectively removes certain recognized sources of industrial strife and unrest, encourages practices fundamental to the friendly adjustment of industrial disputes arising out of differences as to wages, hours or other working conditions, and tends to restore equality of bargaining power between employers and employes.

(c) In the interpretation and application of this act and otherwise, it is hereby declared to be the public policy of the State to encourage the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and to protect the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection, free from the interference, restraint or coercion of their employers.

(d) All the provisions of this act shall be liberally construed for the accomplishment of this purpose.

(e) This act shall be deemed an exercise of the police power of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for the protection of the public welfare, prosperity, health, and peace of the Commonwealth.