Business Commons^™

Whither The Wagner Act: On The Waning View Of Labor Law And Leviathan, Brandon R. Magner

Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal

The National Labor Relations Act’s (NLRA) well-documented weaknesses in substance and enforcement, combined with legislators’ inability to adapt the Act to the modern economy, have understandably created many cynics in the field of labor law. For several decades, legal scholars have almost unanimously derided the NLRA and the agency which administers it, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), for failing to prevent rampant anti-union conduct by employers and the collapse of the union formation process through the Board’s election machinery. This “ossification” of the law, as it has come to be known, is considered to be a key contributor to …

Undocumented Domestic Workers: A Penumbra In The Workforce, Abigail A. Roman

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Tackling Undeclared Work In The European Union: Policy Report, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Tackling Undeclared Work Across Europe: Effective Solutions For Policy-Makers, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Shadows: Tackling Undeclared Work In The European Union, Ioana Horodnic, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Future Role And Competence Profile Of Labour Inspectorates, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Preventative Approaches To Tackle Undeclared Work, With A Focus Upon Tax Rebates And Notification Letters: Executive Summary, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

No abstract provided.

Preventative Approaches For Tackling Undeclared Work, Focusing Upon Tax Rebates And Notification Letters: Learning Resource Paper For The European Platform Tackling Undeclared Work Seminar, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Tackling Under-Declared Employment In The European Union: Input Paper To Thematic Discussion Of European Platform Tackling Undeclared Work, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Elements Of A Preventative Approach Towards Undeclared Work: An Evaluation Of Service Vouchers And Awareness Raising Campaigns - Input Paper To Thematic Discussion, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Tackling Salary Under-Reporting In Croatia: Evidence From Employer And Employee Surveys, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

The Wagner Model And International Freedom Of Association Standards, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] I first met Pierre Verge just before beginning my service with the NAFTA labour commission in 1995. Not long after that, Pierre Verge and my own labour law professor at Yale in 1972, Clyde Summers, jointly wrote a penetrating evaluation of the first years of the NAFTA labour side accord, which still serves as the best single analysis of that seminal but flawed instrument linking labour standards and a trade agreement (Summers, Verge and Medina, 1998; Verge, 1999; Verge, 2002). Since then, my understanding of international labour standards and how they relate to labour law in North America has …

Convergence In Industrial Relations Institutions: The Emerging Anglo-American Model?, Alexander Colvin, Owen Darbishire

Alexander Colvin

At the outset of the Thatcher/Reagan era, the employment and labor law systems across six Anglo- American countries could be divided into three pairings: the Wagner Act model of the United States and Canada; the Voluntarist system of collective bargaining and strong unions in the United Kingdom and Ireland; and the highly centralized, legalistic Award systems of Australia and New Zealand. The authors argue that there has been growing convergence in two major areas: First, of labor law toward a private ordering of employment relations in which terms and conditions of work and employment are primarily determined at the level …

A Signal Or A Silo? Title Vii's Unexpected Hegemony, Sophia Z. Lee

All Faculty Scholarship

Title VII’s domination of employment discrimination law today was not inevitable. Indeed, when Title VII was initially enacted, its supporters viewed it as weak and flawed. They first sought to strengthen and improve the law by disseminating equal employment enforcement throughout the federal government. Only in the late 1970s did they instead favor consolidating enforcement under Title VII. Yet to labor historians and legal scholars, Title VII’s triumphs came at a steep cost to unions. They write wistfully of an alternative regime that would have better harmonized antidiscrimination with labor law’s recognition of workers’ right to organize and bargain collectively …

Lessons From The Nba Lockout: Union Democracy, Public Support, And The Folly Of The National Basketball Players Association, Matthew J. Parlow

Matthew Parlow

Unions, Markets, And Democracy In Latin America, Maria Lorena Cook

Maria Lorena Cook

[Excerpt] In the 1990s scholars of Latin America moved from a concern with democratization to a focus on the implementation of market economic reforms. With this shift, the appreciation of labor unions' value to society was lost. Whereas earlier analyses of democratic transitions recognized organized labor's important role in bringing an end to dictatorships, later studies of market reform viewed labor organizations as either obstacles to be overcome, "losers" to be compensated, or simply irrelevant.

Perhaps more important than scholarship's neglect of labor unions is the neglect that is reflected in policies toward labor in the region. Economic and labor …

The Striking Success Of The National Labor Relations Act, Michael L. Wachter

All Faculty Scholarship

Although often viewed as a dismal failure, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) has been remarkably successful. While the decline in private sector unionization since the 1950s is typically viewed as a symbol of this failure, the NLRA has achieved its most important goal: industrial peace.

Before the NLRA and the 1947 Taft-Hartley Amendments, our industrial relations system gave rise to frequent and violent strikes that threatened the nation’s stability. For example, in the late 1870s, the Great Railroad Strike spread throughout a number of major cities. In Pittsburg alone, strikes claimed 24 lives, nearly 80 buildings, and over 2,000 …

Rank-And-File Participation In Organizing At Home And Abroad, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt] We know that we need labor law reform. But it is also clear that this is not all we need; nor can we expect to achieve legal reform simply by electing Democrats. That strategy did not work in 1978-79 or in 1993-94, and it will not work in the future. In the face of inevitably powerful and well-organized business opposition, even the most well-financed and articulate lobbying campaign for labor law reform can fail. What was missing in 1978-79 and in 1993-94 and is urgently needed now is the pressure of a massive social movement, mobilized to transform and …

Workers’ Rights: Rethinking Protective Labor Legislation, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

This paper focuses on a few directions in which protective labor legislation might be expanded in the United States over the next decade and the implications of expansion in each area for labor markets. Specifically, it addresses the areas of hours of work, unjust dismissal, comparable worth, and plant closings. In each case, the discussion stresses the need to be explicit about how private markets have failed, the need for empirical evidence to test such market failure claims, the need for economic analysis of potential unintended side effects of policy changes, and the existing empirical estimates of the likely magnitudes …

[Review Of The Book Values And Assumptions In American Labor Law], Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

[Excerpt] Reading this book it is difficult not to think that the intent of the author was less to understand the origins and developments of the values and assumptions that gild the practice of labor law than it was to 'prove' that labor law in America is really capitalist law and thus it invalidates itself. This is not only circular reasoning, but it is unfortunate as well. For there is another book to be written that would analyze these questions through a serious and sustained reading in the history of industrial relations and then apply that knowledge to specific case …

Rethinking Bargaining Unit Determination: Labor Law And The Structure Of Collective Representation In A Changing Workplace, Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

[Excerpt] Arguably the leading issue for current labor law research is whether the existing system of law based on the Wagner Act model can continue to be relevant and appropriate for the contemporary workplace. Changes in the environment of work during the over half-century since this model was developed have brought pressures for re-evaluation and adaptation of key elements of its structure. Criticism of this system has focused on a number of areas, including: the reliance on the formal grievance procedure and arbitration; the separation of the realms of collective bargaining and business decision making; the limitations on employee participation …

A War Against Organizing, Kate Bronfenbrenner

Kate Bronfenbrenner

[Excerpt] Unless Congress passes serious labor law reform with real penalties, only a small fraction of the workers who seek union representation will succeed. If recent trends continue, there will no longer be a functioning legal mechanism to effectively protect the right of private-sector workers to organize and collectively bargain. Our country cannot afford to make workers defer their rights and aspirations for union representation any longer.

[Review Of The Book From Consent To Coercion: The Assault On Trade Union Freedoms], Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] Even in disagreement with some of its policy prescriptions, I find From Consent to Coercion a strong, meticulously documented, powerfully argued, thought-provoking work that serious scholars and practitioners of trade unionism and labour law should read and engage. We Americans can still look at Canadian labour law and practice as a model compared with our own, but thanks to Panitch and Swartz's work we can see it with eyes open, not eyes wide

A Moral Contractual Approach To Labor Law Reform: A Template For Using Ethical Principles To Regulate Behavior Where Law Failed To Do So Effectively, Zev J. Eigen, David S. Sherwyn

Faculty Working Papers

If laws cease to work as they should or as intended, legislators and scholars propose new laws to replace or amend them. This paper posits an alternative—offering regulated parties the opportunity to contractually bind themselves to behave ethically. The perfect test-case for this proposal is labor law, because (1) labor law has not been amended for decades, (2) proposals to amend it have failed for political reasons, and are focused on union election win rates, and less on the election process itself, (3) it is an area of law already statutorily regulating parties' reciprocal contractual obligations, and (4) moral means …

Workplace Consequences Of Electronic Exhibitionism And Voyeurism, William A. Herbert

William A. Herbert

The popularity of email, blogging and social networking raises important issues for employers, employees and labor unions. This article will explore contemporary workplace issues resulting from the related social phenomena of electronic exhibitionism and voyeurism. It will begin with a discussion of the international social phenomenon of individuals electronically distributing their personal thoughts, opinions, and activities to a potential worldwide audience while at the same time retaining a subjective sense of privacy. The temptation toward such exhibitionism has been substantially enhanced by the advent of Web 2.0. The article then turns to the legal implications of electronic voyeurism including employer …

Comparing The Naalc And The European Union Social Charter (Transcript), Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

This is a transcript of Professor Lance Compa’s presentation to the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation Conference held in Washington, DC on November 12, 1996 and published in the American University Journal of International Law and Policy. [Excerpt] After all of the excellent comments this morning and so far this afternoon, both from the panelists and from the floor, I am not sure that I can say anything new about the NAALC. So, what I want to do in this intervention is add some comparative discussion with respect to the European Union and the social charter of the European …

A Strange Case: Violations Of Workers’ Freedom Of Association In The United States By European Multinational Corporations, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] A central conclusion of this report is that firms’ voluntary principles and policies are not enough to safeguard workers’ freedom of association. They can be important initiatives, but only when they contain effective due diligence, oversight, and control mechanisms. Otherwise, as shown here, shortcomings in US labor law create enormous temptation - especially among US managers not sufficiently overseen by European parent company officials - to take advantage of them by acts inconsistent with international norms. The pattern that emerges in the examples presented here suggests inadequate due diligence and internal performance controls to prevent and correct US management …

Unfair Advantage: Workers’ Freedom Of Association In The United States Under International Human Rights Standards, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] Human Rights Watch selected case studies for this report on workers’ freedom of association in the United States with several objectives in mind. One was to include a range of sectors - services, industry, transport, agriculture, high tech – to assess the scope of the problem across the economy, rather than to focus on a single sector. Another objective was geographic diversity, to analyze the issues in different parts of the country. The cases studied here arose in cities, suburbs and rural areas around the United States. Another important goal was to look at the range of workers seeking …

Patterned Responses To Organizing: Case Studies Of The Union-Busting Convention, Richard W. Hurd, Joseph B. Uehlein

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] In June 1993, the Industrial Union Department (IUD) of the AFL-CIO initiated a project to gather cases from affiliated unions that would highlight aspects of the National Labor Relations Board process deserving attention from those shaping labor law reform proposals. Based on the cases submitted, we conclude that in its current form the National Labor Relations Act serves to impede union organizing. Particularly problematic are NLRB policies that allow employers to wage no-holds-barred antiunion campaigns. Even where there are legal restrictions on specific actions, the penalties for violations are so meager that they serve no deterrent effect. The cases …

Introduction: The Context For The Reform Of Labor Law, Sheldon Friedman, Richard W. Hurd, Rudolph A. Oswald, Ronald L. Seeber

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] It has become increasingly clear that the U.S. system of collective bargaining is no longer a realistic option for a large and growing proportion of American workers, and the situation will continue to worsen absent a major redirection of public policy. The decline in union density rates in this country is alarming to those who value and promote unionization. The extent to which this decline is due to management resistance and the failure of the law to promote collective bargaining is an important question that requires continued study and debate. Opinion polls reveal that for millions of nonunion American …