Labor Relations Commons^™

Initiative And Referendum: A Maine Odyssey, Charles A. Scontras

Bureau of Labor Education

Maine is no stranger to the nation’s battles involving the development of the tools of direct democracy and how to use them. Since the citizen initiative and referendum were passed in late 1908, Mainers have used “the power of the people” to vote directly on many laws, bypassing the Legislature. Now, after more than 100 years in use, the initiative process may be facing a test: Gov. Paul LePage is preparing blueprints to use the initiative in an attempt to change the state’s welfare system and reduce the income tax — victories denied to him in the Legislature. It’s a …

Shaping The Agenda 1: Exploring The Competencies, Skills And Behaviours Of Effective Workplace Mediators, Brian M. Barry, Margaret Bouchier, Alec Coakley, Deirdre Curran, James Dillon, Cyril Joyce, Treasa Kenny, Oksana Kokaylo, Louisa Meehan, Genevieve Murray

Reports

This report outlines what is currently known about workplace mediation: its benefits, styles and strategies, its expected outcomes and training challenges. It also identifies an urgent requirement for Irish research in light of the increased promotion of mediation at state level in Ireland. It outlines some international experiences of the difficulties faced in balancing high quality accreditation and regulation with innovation and growth.

Shaping The Agenda 2: Implications For Workplace Mediation Training, Standards And Practice In Ireland, Brian M. Barry, Margaret Bouchier, Alec Coakley, Deirdre Curran Dr, James Dillon, Cyril Joyce, Treasa Kenny, Oksana Meehan, Louisa Meehan, Genevieve Murray

Reports

The Report and its sister report, Shaping the Agenda 1, give a fascinating insight into the world of workplace mediation in Ireland and abroad. It identifies key issues in relation to mediator skills, competencies and behaviours in this sector of mediation. Of enormous significance is the application of this research to the Irish context and specifically to the setting and maintenance of standards of training and practice in relation to workplace mediation. This work has put the MII, as the professional association for mediators in Ireland, in a position to build standards and policies on solid, detailed and considered research, …

Better Work And Global Governance, Paul Alois

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a case study of Better Work, a program run by the International Labor Organization and the International Finance Corporation. It aims to improve working conditions and productivity in the apparel industry. The purpose of this case study is to examine the role that international organizations can play in global governance. The research presented here comes from interviews, document analysis, and an examination of quantitative data on factories’ working conditions. In-person interviews were conducted in the United States, Switzerland, Vietnam, and Indonesia; many phone interviews took place with individuals in other countries. Both publicly available documents and internal …

United In Diversity? The Political Implications Of Intra- Eu Migration, Isabel Monteleone

Senior Theses and Projects

Intra-EU migration is a phenomenon innate to the structure of the European Union. A politico-economic union of twenty-eight countries, the EU does what no other alliance of countries has endeavored before, serving as a unique product of globalization and integration, in every sense of the word. Bound almost entirely by a common currency, the European Union is established in the belief that economic cooperation in Europe can be achieved through the principle of free movement, despite each member states’ individual way of life, language, and political, religious, and cultural ideology.

Since intra-EU migration allows for the possibility of EU integration …

Supreme Court Tie In Teacher Case Delivers A Crucial Victory To Unions, Angela B. Cornell

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Pacific Lutheran On Collective Bargaining At Catholic Colleges And Universities, Maryann Parker, Saerom Park

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

In 1979, the Supreme Court found that teachers at a Catholic parochial school were exempt from the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) because of First Amendment religious infringement risks. Subsequently, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has faced controversy over its efforts to delineate an appropriate test for the religious exemption in the higher education context. This uncertainty over the NLRB’s test has resulted in time-consuming litigation and hampered faculty’s ability to organize at schools where Board jurisdiction would not present a significant risk of First Amendment infringement. This paper argues that the Board’s recent decision in Pacific Lutheran University …

Myth: Hard Work And Credentials Determine Employment Opportunities

Alev Dudek

When Federal Immigration Exclusion Meets Subfederal Workplace Inclusion: A Forensic Approach To Legislative History, Kati Griffith

Kati Griffith

What happens when a person is simultaneously viewed as an unauthorized immigrant without rights according to a federal regime and as an employee with rights according to a subfederal regime? In the wake of widespread and inconsistent adjudication of this issue, this Article sheds new light on this pressing question. To date, pertinent court battles and scholarship have led to a virtual stalemate and often focus exclusively on normative policy arguments. By contrast, this Article employs an empirically-grounded review of fifteen years of legislative history to analyze this paradox. This review illustrates that the denial of workplace protections to unauthorized …

Justice Or Just Between Us? Empirical Evidence Of The Trade-Off Between Procedural And Interactional Justice In Workplace Dispute Resolution, Zev Eigen, Adam Seth Litwin

Adam Seth Litwin

In this article, the authors examine the relationship between an employer’s implementation of a typical dispute resolution system (DRS) and organizational justice, perceived compliance with the law, and organizational commitment. They draw on unique data from a single, geographically expansive, U.S. firm with more than 100,000 employees in more than 1,000 locations. Holding all time-constant, location-level variables in place, they find that the introduction of a DRS is associated with elevated perceptions of interactional justice but diminished perceptions of procedural justice. They also find no discernible effect on organizational commitment, but a significant boost to perceived legal compliance by the …

Undocumented Workers: Crossing The Borders Of Immigration And Workplace Law, Kati Griffith

Kati Griffith

[Excerpt] This Article endeavors to comprehensively outline the emerging field of immployment law. As this Article specifies below, this field broadly includes empirical, legislative, administrative, judicial, and other analytical inquiries and trends involving workers who bridge the divide between immigration law and workplace law. This Article also proposes directions for future research in this area. Namely, it raises a broad array of compelling questions that merit intensive scholarly, judicial, and policy analysis moving forward. As this Article will show, a hybrid analytical lens reveals otherwise obscured areas of inquiry. It thereby encourages scholars, policymakers, enforcement agency officials, and courts to …

Perfecting Public Immigration Legislation: Private Immigration Bills And Deportable Lawful Permanent Residents, Kati Griffith

Kati Griffith

[Excerpt] This article examines why the historical relationship between immigration law and private bills has not continued following the enactment of the 1996 immigration laws for any of the affected immigrant groups. The article focuses on LPRs with criminal convictions in particular because their likelihood of deportation has increased dramatically as their access to executive discretion to avoid deportation has decreased. Since 1996, even if an LPR has lived in the United States since childhood, she can be subject to mandatory deportation for almost any criminal conviction – including misdemeanors, such as shoplifting or a bar fight. Since 1996, it …

Globalizing U.S. Employment Statutes Through Foreign Law Influence: Mexico’S Foreign Employer Provision And Recruited Mexican Workers, Kati Griffith

Kati Griffith

It is widely acknowledged that Mexican nationals comprise a growing portion of the U.S. workforce, both as authorized and unauthorized workers. The focus on Mexican workers who are currently within the United States overshadows the fact that U.S. employers—typically with the help of their Mexico-based agents—are regularly recruiting and hiring low-wage Mexican workers in Mexico to work in the United States (hereinafter referred to as “recruited Mexican workers”). For instance, it was reported in January 2008 that “Iowa meatpackers actively recruited workers in Mexico” to have enough workers so that they could ship pork “from Iowa slaughterhouses to the rest …

Laborers Or Criminals? The Impact Of Crimmigration On Labor Standards Enforcement, Kati Griffith

Kati Griffith

[Excerpt] As we examine the criminalization of immigration, commonly referred to as “crimmigration” (Stumpf, 2006), it is essential to consider its impact on other areas of law and policy that involve immigrants but are not traditionally thought of as formal elements of either criminal law or immigration law. Why? As Hortensia’s story illustrates, crimmigration may unexpectedly affect protections and rights that relate to immigrants’ experiences but come from other areas of law and policy. This chapter explores the impact of crimmigration on labor standards enforcement. By labor standards enforcement, the chapter refers mainly to the wage and hour, health and …

U.S. Migrant Worker Law: The Interstices Of Immigration Law And Labor And Employment Law, Kati Griffith

Kati Griffith

The work visa program for temporary foreign workers in the United States is “not only the longest-running, but also the largest such program in the world.” Close to one million foreign workers receive work visas each year for both skilled and unskilled temporary jobs in the United States. Nevertheless, the number of foreign workers laboring in the United States that do not have the legal documentation necessary to work in the United States (“undocumented migrant workers”) dwarfs the number of temporary foreign workers that receive visas to work in the United States (“documented migrant workers”). As of 2008, there were …

Immigration Advocacy As Labor Advocacy, Kati Griffith

Kati Griffith

[Excerpt] In this Article, we call for a comprehensive analytical framework that views immigration advocacy as labor advocacy. This framework has implications for the existing scholarship described above and for doctrinal analyses of legal cases relating to employees.’ immigration advocacy efforts.

Discovering “Immployment” Law: The Constitutionality Of Subfederal Immigration Regulation At Work, Kati Griffith

Kati Griffith

[Excerpt] This Article develops two general preemption frameworks that feature federal employment law. It first devises and applies an implied-preemption analysis of subfederal employer-sanctions laws based on the preemptive force of FLSA and Title VII. In doing so, this Article reveals that the four subfederal employer-sanctions laws that have produced conflicting court decisions are unconstitutional because they stand as obstacles to fundamental policies underlying FLSA and Title VII. Specifically, these four subfederal laws, along with other subfederal laws that share their qualities, conflict with core federal employment policy goals of protecting employees from employment discrimination and encouraging valid employee-initiated complaints …

The Nlra Defamation Defense: Doomed Dinosaur Or Diamond In The Rough, Kati Griffith

Kati Griffith

[Excerpt] This Article explores an underappreciated and promising NLRA protection of collective activity. It elaborates the NLRA’s role as a defense in state defamation cases. Specifically, this Article explains how the “NLRA defamation defense” frees defendants from some forms of defamation liability when the allegedly defamatory statements are made during labor disputes. The defense has no effect on defamation liability in what this Article refers to as “more egregious” state defamation law cases. However, the defense forecloses liability in “less egregious” state defamation law cases. It makes it harder for defamation plaintiffs to win their cases because it requires them …

A Supreme Stretch: The Supremacy Clause In The Wake Of Irca And Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Kati Griffith

Kati Griffith

[Excerpt] Recently, the issues of immigration and immigration policy have garnered intense debate in the United States. Much of what Americans have discussed relates to border security, sanctions against employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers, and temporary and permanent paths to legalization for undocumented workers. This debate often overshadows a meaningful discussion about the future of workplace rights for undocumented workers who, despite their undocumented status, currently work in the United States and at times suffer labor and employment law violations in their workplaces. Unfortunately, the national immigration debate has not incorporated this discussion. Moreover, the current proposed federal immigration …

Saturns And Rickshaws Revisited: What Kind Of Employment Arbitration System Has Developed?, Alexander Colvin, Kell Pike

Alexander Colvin

[Excerpt] In this article, we examine a new, more detailed dataset of employment arbitration cases administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA), which includes information on many important aspects of these cases that are not included in the California Code of Civil Procedure disclosure requirements. With the availability of this new data, we are able to revisit Estreicher's argument and look at the question of whether employment arbitration has become a new Saturn system of justice providing better access to employees and to what degree it is different from the Cadillac-Rickshaw system of justice in employment litigation. We begin by …

Disability Rights And Labor: Is This Conflict Really Necessary?, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Indiana Law Journal

In this Essay, I hope to do two things: First, I try to put the current labor-disability controversy into that broader context. Second, and perhaps more important, I take a position on how disability rights advocates should approach both the current contro-versy and labor-disability tensions more broadly. As to the narrow dispute over wage-and-hour protections for personal-assistance workers, I argue both that those workers have a compelling normative claim to full FLSA protection—a claim that disability rights advocates should recognize—and that supporting the claim of those workers is pragmatically in the best interests of the disability rights movement. As to …

Statedata: The National Report On Employment Services And Outcomes, 2016, Jean Winsor, Jaimie Ciulla Timmons, John Butterworth, John Shepard, Cady Landa, Frank A. Smith, Daria Domin, Alberto Migliore, Jennifer Bose, Lydia Landim, Thinkwork! At The Institute For Community Inclusion At Umass Boston

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

This report provides statistics over 25 years from several national datasets that address the status of employment and economic self-sufficiency for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The authors use abbreviations for both intellectual disability (ID) and intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in this report. This is because data sources vary in the specific target groups that can be described. Please refer to each chapter for the disability definition used in that chapter. We provide a comprehensive overview that describes national trends in employment for people with IDD, and the appendices provide individual state profiles with data from several sources. …