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Structural Labor Rights, Hiba Hafiz
Structural Labor Rights, Hiba Hafiz
Michigan Law Review
American labor law was designed to ensure equal bargaining power between workers and employers. But workers’ collective power against increasingly dominant employers has disintegrated. With union density at an abysmal 6.2 percent in the private sector—a level unequaled since the Great Depression— the vast majority of workers depend only on individual negotiations with employers to lift stagnant wages and ensure upward economic mobility. But decentralized, individual bargaining is not enough. Economists and legal scholars increasingly agree that, absent regulation to protect workers’ collective rights, labor markets naturally strengthen employers’ bargaining power over workers. Existing labor and antitrust law have failed …
Are Unions A Constitutional Anomaly?, Cynthia Estlund
Are Unions A Constitutional Anomaly?, Cynthia Estlund
Michigan Law Review
This term in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Ass’n, the Supreme Court will consider whether ordinary public employees may constitutionally be required to pay an “agency fee,” as a condition of employment, to the union that represents them in collective bargaining. The Court established the terms of engagement in the 2014 decision Harris v. Quinn, which struck down an agency fee on narrower grounds while describing the current doctrine approving agency fees, blessed many times by the Court itself, as an “anomaly.” This Article asks whether labor unions are themselves anomalies in our legal system, particularly in their constitutional entitlements. Its …
The Continuing Relevance Of Section 8(A)(2) To The Contemporary Workplace, Michael C. Harper
The Continuing Relevance Of Section 8(A)(2) To The Contemporary Workplace, Michael C. Harper
Michigan Law Review
After embarking on his illustrious career as a legal academic, Theodore St. Antoine, through a multitude of roles, including those of scholar, teacher, administrator, pragmatic law reformer, and arbitrator, made innumerable contributions to the practice and development of many parts of American law. For most of us, however, as a scholar he will be associated primarily with the system of collective bargaining established and encouraged by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and its progeny. During the first part of Professor St. Antoine's years as an academic, this system continued to flourish in America, as he, along with other legal …
Are Trojan Horse Union Organizers "Employees"?: A New Look At Deference To The Nlrb's Iterpretation Of Nlra Section 2(3), Jonathan D. Hacker
Are Trojan Horse Union Organizers "Employees"?: A New Look At Deference To The Nlrb's Iterpretation Of Nlra Section 2(3), Jonathan D. Hacker
Michigan Law Review
This Note takes a different approach to interpreting section 2(3). Although this Note agrees that section 2(3) neither clearly includes nor clearly excludes trojan horse organizers, it also argues that the definition of employee under section 2(3) must be determined by looking to common law principles of agency. In other words, the question whether courts should defer to the Board's interpretation of section 2(3) does not turn on statutory ambiguity. Rather, courts have a continuing duty to ensure that the Board interprets employee consistently with common law agency principles. Nevertheless, the correct interpretation of employee under agency principles ultimately turns …
Collective Bargaining Or "Collective Begging"?: Reflections On Antistrikebreaker Legislation, Samuel Estreicher
Collective Bargaining Or "Collective Begging"?: Reflections On Antistrikebreaker Legislation, Samuel Estreicher
Michigan Law Review
The strike is a necessary part of collective bargaining. Workers should not ordinarily lose their jobs by pressing their disputes in this manner. But neither should strikes be viewed as a risk-free means of empowering unions to lock employers into uncompetitive contracts.
Collective Bargaining In The Federal Public Sector: Disclosing Employee Names And Addresses Under Exemption 6 Of The Freedom Of Information Act, Trina Jones
Michigan Law Review
This Note examines the application of FOIA and the Privacy Act to union requests for employee names and addresses under the Fed. LM Statute. Part I briefly explores the importance of employee names and addresses to collective bargaining. This Part also examines the increasingly significant role of public sector unions due to the growth in federal public sector employment and the decline of private sector unionization. Part II analyzes the various circuit court decisions supporting disclosure in the federal public sector. Part III examines Reporters Committee and Department of the Treasury and discusses the potential policy implications resulting from the …
Labor Law's Alter Ego Doctrine: The Role Of Employer Motive In Corporate Transformations, Gary Alan Macdonald
Labor Law's Alter Ego Doctrine: The Role Of Employer Motive In Corporate Transformations, Gary Alan Macdonald
Michigan Law Review
This Note examines the differing judicial approaches for reviewing NLRB alter ego findings, and concludes that a fundamental problem with all of the current approaches is the unwarranted consideration of motive in varying degrees. This Note proposes a modified "reasonably foreseeable benefit" standard which does not depend in any degree on the employer's motive for changing its corporate form. Part I discusses the origin and evolution of the alter ego doctrine, including its genesis in Southport Petroleum, the well-settled Crawford Door factors, and the related "successorship" doctrine. Part II analyzes the conflict among the federal courts of appeals over …
Employer Postcertification Polls To Determine Union Support, James D. Dasso
Employer Postcertification Polls To Determine Union Support, James D. Dasso
Michigan Law Review
This Note evaluates these competing standards in light of the two major policy objectives of the NLRA: industrial stability and employee free choice. It concludes that the courts of appeals properly apply a less stringent standard. Part I considers employer polling in the larger context of the general law of employer interrogation. This section concludes that the Board's standard for postcertification polling deviates significantly from the general law of employer interrogation as well as the more specific rules established for precertification polling. The remainder of this Note demonstrates that the Board's distinctions between pre- and postcertification polling do not justify …
Title Vii And Nlra: Protection Of Extra-Union Opposition To Employment Discrimination, Michigan Law Review
Title Vii And Nlra: Protection Of Extra-Union Opposition To Employment Discrimination, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act guarantees freedom from employment discrimination based on race, religion, sex, or national origin and establishes remedial procedures for aggrieved employees. A nondiscrimination clause in a collective bargaining agreement may also protect employees from discriminatory treatment; typically, the contract will also contain grievance machinery through which the employee, with the aid of his union, can present his complaint. The question remains: When both title VII and contract grievance procedures are available, can an individual employee or a group of employees take direct action against an allegedly discriminatory employer independently of the union and …
Organized Labor, The Environment, And The Taft-Hartley Act, James C. Oldham
Organized Labor, The Environment, And The Taft-Hartley Act, James C. Oldham
Michigan Law Review
The legal issues inherent in treating out-plant pollution under the Taft-Hartley Act cannot be fully evaluated without a realistic appreciation of practical considerations and industrial experience. For this reason, considerable empirical information has been collected from a variety of sources. The examination and evaluation of this data will precede the legal analysis. The data, it is hoped, will resolve two questions: What is the effect of out-plant pollution on the workers, and what has been the response of labor unions to date?
Labor Law--Until Congress Acts, Secondary Picketing By Unions Subject To The Railway Labor Act Is Protected Against State Proscription--Brotherhood Of Railroad Trainmen V. Jacksonville Terminal Company, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
In a major labor dispute between the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen and the Florida East Coast Railway Company (FEC), the parties, having exhausted all the procedures of the Railway Labor Act (RLA) for resolving a major dispute, resorted to self-help remedies. FEC unilaterally changed its operating employees' rates of pay, rules, and working conditions; and the union, in turn, called a strike and picketed peacefully at locations where FEC operated, including the premises of the Jacksonville Terminal Company, which served a number of other railroads. The avowed objective of the union's picketing was to cause the other carriers using the …
Collective Bargaining For Public Employees And The Prevention Of Strikes In The Public Sector, Michigan Law Review
Collective Bargaining For Public Employees And The Prevention Of Strikes In The Public Sector, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
In recent years, a number of states have enacted legislation providing collective bargaining rights for public employees. Almost invariably these statutes have reaffirmed the traditional prohibition against strikes by government workers. But the strike-or the threat of a strike-has been a key economic weapon for employees in the private sector, and some observers contend that without that weapon the new collective bargaining rights for public employees are illusory.
Labor Relations--Consumer Picketing Under Section 8(B) (4) (Ii) (B) Of The National Labor Relations Act--Honolulu Typographical Union, No. 37, I.T.U., A.F.L.-C.I.O. V. Nlrb, Michigan Law Review
Labor Relations--Consumer Picketing Under Section 8(B) (4) (Ii) (B) Of The National Labor Relations Act--Honolulu Typographical Union, No. 37, I.T.U., A.F.L.-C.I.O. V. Nlrb, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
The principal case is concerned generally with the problem of secondary activity by unions, and specifically with the application of a judicially created exception to the general prohibition against such activity. As originally written, section 8(b)(4) was intended to protect neutral employers from becoming involved in disputes between other employers and unions by prohibiting certain union activities. Among the practices forbidden was the traditional secondary boycott which arises when a union in a dispute with a primary employer brings pressure to bear on other employers (secondary employers), through their employees, to cease doing business with the primary. However, the statute …