Law Commons^™

Oklahoma, Maine, Migration And The "Right To Work:" A Confused And Misleading Analysis, Bureau Of Labor Education. University Of Maine

Bureau of Labor Education

The recent article released by the Maine Heritage Policy Center (MHPC), “The Case for Right-to-Work in Maine: Examining the Evidence in Oklahoma” (1/23/2012), attempts to make a case for the supposed benefits of a right-to-work (RTW) law in Maine, by discussing the case of Oklahoma’s RTW law, and then presenting a number of statistics on migration to Oklahoma, and from Maine to RTW states. However, a closer examination of this report reveals that it is based on highly questionable and misleading assumptions, and its assertions are based on incomplete data.

Institute Brief: Effective Training For Employment Consultants: Job Development And Support Strategies, Amy Gelb, Derek Nord, Alberto Migliore, John Butterworth

The Institute Brief Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

This Institute Brief summarizes the key elements of a training and support approach designed to improve job development practices. Employment Consultants who participated supported more individuals to enter employment, and supported people to achieve higher-quality jobs with more hours and higher levels of pay, than a control group who had not yet received training.

Placing British Employment Law In Context, Michael Harper

Faculty Scholarship

It is probably fair to generalize that the best American legal scholarship in the fields of labor, employment, and employment discrimination law has found little inspiration in the study of comparative law. Hugh Collins’s analytic and insightful but succinct overview of British employment law — republished in 2010 in a second edition to account for significant developments in response to European Union law — should teach any perceptive American reader that this need not be the case. This two hundred sixty page volume demonstrates that studying how other developed countries have addressed common issues presented by the employment relationship …

Workers On The Run: Recession And The Pressure On Workplace Rights - The 34th Annual Kenneth M. Piper Lecture, Katherine S. Newman, Martin J. Mulloy, Gwynne A. Wilcox

Institute for Law and the Workplace Lectures

This lecture discusses the impact of the recent recession, both directly and indirectly, on the rights of workers in the U.S. and internationally. Employers are increasingly relying on temporary/contingent workers, and even unpaid interns who have few jobs protections and no benefits. This practice negatively impacts the wages and bargaining power of the core labor force as well as overall job creation. Particularly pronounced is the misclassification of jobs and failure to pay minimum wage and/or overtime benefits contrary to contractual requirements. There is evidence that the recession has made it politically acceptable to re-write existing employment agreements, with federal …

A Religious Organization’S Autonomy In Matters Of Self-Governance: Hosanna-Tabor And The First Amendment, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

In Hosanna-Tabor, a teacher suing her employer, a church-based school, alleged retaliation for having asserted rights under a discrimination statute. The School raised the “ministerial exception,” which prohibits ministers from suing their religious employer. The Court held the exception was constitutionally required. Before giving the facts that convinced it that this teacher was a “minister,” the Court had to distinguish the leading case of Employ. Div. v. Smith. Plaintiffs in Smith held jobs as counselors at a drug rehabilitation center. They were fired for illegal drug use (peyote), and later denied unemployment compensation. The Native American Church ingests peyote during …

More Machines, Better Machines...Or Better Workers?, James Bessen

Faculty Scholarship

How much of the rapid growth in labor productivity in nineteenth century cotton weaving arose from capital-labor substitution and how much from technical change? Using an engineering production function and detailed information on inventions, I find that factor substitution accounts for little growth. However, much of the growth and most of the apparent labor-saving bias arose not from inventions, but from improved labor quality — better workers spent less time monitoring the looms. The inventions themselves were almost technically neutral because innovations in general purpose technologies were capital-saving. Labor quality played a critical role in the persistent association between economic …

Civil Rights Reform And The Body, Tobias Barrington Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

Discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression has emerged as a major focus of civil rights reform. Opponents of these reforms have structured their opposition around one dominant image: the bathroom. With striking consistency, opponents have invoked anxiety over the bathroom -- who uses bathrooms, what happens in bathrooms, and what traumas one might experience while occupying a bathroom -- as the reason to permit discrimination in the workplace, housing, and places of public accommodation. This rhetoric of the bathroom in the debate over gender-identity protections seeks to exploit an underlying anxiety that has played a role in …

Parallel Contract, Aditi Bagchi

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article describes a new model of contract. In parallel contract, one party enters into a series of contracts with many similarly situated individuals on background terms that are presumptively identical. Parallel contracts depart from the classical model of contract in two fundamental ways. First, obligations are not robustly dyadic in that they are neither tailored to the two parties to a given agreement nor understood by those parties by way of communications with each other. Second, obligations are not fixed at a discrete moment of contract. Parallel contracts should be interpreted differently than agreements more consistent with the classic …

Conference Bibliography: Democracy And The Workplace, Wiener-Rogers Law Library, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School Of Law

Lectures & Talks

A selected bibliography was prepared in connection with the Saltman Center Labor Law Symposium 2012: Democracy and the Workplace held at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, on February 23-25, 2012.

Labor, Industry Fighting Over Unemployment Benefits — Sounds A Lot Like The 1960s, Charles A. Scontras

Bureau of Labor Education

Current legislative efforts to reform the unemployment compensation law (LD1725) by increasing penalties for fraud and tightening qualifications for benefits, e.g., removal of the exemption of vacation time as a factor in assessing benefits and lengthening the search for employment after six weeks rather than the current requirement of twelve weeks, triggers some historical images.

The Need To Give Workers Protection From Forced Political Contributions To Corporations, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt

Public Testimony by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Looking South: Race, Gender, And The Transformation Of Labor From Reconstruction To Globalization By Mary E. Frederickson, Joel E. Black

Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Victoria’S Little Secret, Matthew Deem, Christopher Aiken, Matt Colleen, Matthew Rhoades

MICCSR Presentations

This mini-case outlines a series of articles that ran in Bloomberg outlining the use of child slave labor in the fair trade cotton fields of Burkina Faso that had been used exclusively in Victoria’s Secret products. Giving students and opportunity to develop strategies and tactics that respond to a real-world public relations issue, this case also lets students explore the CSR issues inherent in a firm’s supply chain. Although trying to do the “right thing” Victoria’s Secret got caught up in the certification dilemma that many firms face.

Part II of the video

Victoria's Little Secret: Addressing Child Labor, Andrea Cerna, Michael Lawrence, Eileen Smith, Nicole Winjum

MICCSR Presentations

This mini-case outlines a series of articles that ran in Bloomberg outlining the use of child slave labor in the fair trade cotton fields of Burkina Faso that had been used exclusively in Victoria’s Secret products. Giving students and opportunity to develop strategies and tactics that respond to a real-world public relations issue, this case also lets students explore the CSR issues inherent in a firm’s supply chain. Although trying to do the “right thing” Victoria’s Secret got caught up in the certification dilemma that many firms face.

Part II of video

Data Note: Vr Outcome Trends And The Recent Decline In Employment For Vr Customers With Intellectual Disabilities, Frank A. Smith, John Butterworth, Daria Domin, Allison Cohen Hall

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

Most people with intellectual disabilities (ID) aspire to gainful employment. To assist them with this goal, state vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies offer employment services based upon Individualized Plans for Employment (IPEs). A commonly used measure of outcomes is the rehabilitation rate, defined as the percentage of individuals who achieve employment out of all individuals whose cases were closed after receiving services. This indicator, however, neglects to consider that not all eligible individuals progress to receive services. This Data Note explores trends in VR closure status for individuals with ID.

Labor Law, New Governance, And The Ghent System, Matthew Dimick

Journal Articles

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) was the most significant legislation proposed for reforming the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in over a generation and the centerpiece of the American labor movement’s revitalization strategy. Yet EFCA hews closely to the particular regulatory model established by the NLRA at the peak of the New Deal, now over seventy-five years ago. Further, recent scholarship suggests that traditional regulatory approaches are giving way to new kinds of governance methods for addressing social problems. Rather than reviving an old regulatory model, should “New Governance” approaches instead be sought for addressing problems in employment representation? …

Working Conditions And Patient Safety: Safe Staffing In Maine's Hospitals, Bureau Of Labor Education. University Of Maine

Bureau of Labor Education

A growing body of research is now documenting how serious problems in the work environments of nursing care in American hospitals are posing a threat to patient safety, as well as contributing to shortages of nurses working in hospital settings and in greater job stress and burnout among nurses. A major factor in this picture, according to a major report by the National Institute of Medicine, is the issue of chronic understaffing among direct care nurses.

What You Need To Know About Worker's Compensation, Bureau Of Labor Education. University Of Maine

Bureau of Labor Education

Annual data compiled by the U.S. Department of Labor consistently reveal that for too many workers the result of their employment is a job-related injury, illness, and in a number of cases, death. These data document the ongoing need and importance of workers’ compensation. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview on: • workers’ compensation, how it evolved in the U.S., and the impact of this history today; • developments with Maine’s law, and resources for accessing information on this statute; and • the need to reform workers’ compensation for Maine workers.

Victoria's Little Secret, Joe Lawless

MICCSR Case Studies

This mini-case outlines a series of articles that ran in Bloomberg outlining the use of child slave labor in the fair trade cotton fields of Burkina Faso that had been used exclusively in Victoria’s Secret products. Giving students and opportunity to develop strategies and tactics that respond to a real-world public relations issue, this case also lets students explore the CSR issues inherent in a firm’s supply chain. Although trying to do the “right thing” Victoria’s Secret got caught up in the certification dilemma that many firms face.

Employees Versus Independent Contractors: Why States Should Not Enact Statutes That Target The Construction Industry, James Kwak

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

The Legislative Upheaval In Public-Sector Labor Law: A Search For Common Elements, Martin H. Malin

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Sifting Through The Wreckage Of The Tsunami That Hit Public Sector Collective Bargaining, Martin H. Malin

All Faculty Scholarship

Beginning in December 2010, a virtual tsunami of legislative change hit public sector labor law. The change was fueled by a view that public employee unions were exercising outsized power and a privileged position of exclusive access to public decision-makers to extract excessive wages and benefits, protect employees who were poor performers, stifle incentive to excel and stifle innovation. This article evaluates these reforms which increased public employer power to act unilaterally in light of my prior work on collective representation of public employees. That prior work focused on how public sector labor law doctrine channels union representation into narrow …

To Cloak The Within: Protecting Employees From Personality Testing, Elizabeth De Armond

All Faculty Scholarship

Employees and job applicants are often subjected to personality tests that seek sensitive, internal information. These tests can intrude on individual privacy simply by their inquisition, and disclosure of their results can pigeonhole and stigmatize people. The work of sociologist Erving Goffman offers insights into the nature of these harms. Furthermore, the personality tests often do not reliably and accurately measure personality traits, and employers may not have accurately identified traits that enhance performance in specific jobs. Current legal structures, including the federal and state constitutions and the Americans with Disabilities Act, may apply to such tests, but are inadequate …

The Union As Broker Of Employment Rights, Stewart J. Schwab

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Most employment-law rights are mandatory. Individual workers cannot decline the protections the law gives them. For example, a nonexempt worker must get at least $7.25 per hour and time-and-a-half for overtime, even if she would agree to less. A worker’s pension must vest within five years. If she is injured on the job, a worker is entitled to compensation through a state system and cannot opt out in advance.

Interestingly, in these examples and others like them, the law forces its protection only on nonunionized workers. Unions in a collective bargaining contract can bargain away these rights, acting as broker …

Title Vii Works - That's Why We Don't Like It, Chuck Henson

Faculty Publications

In response to the universal belief that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is not fulfilling its purpose, this Article presents a different perspective on the reality of this federal employment discrimination law. Title VII is fulfilling the purpose of the Congress that created it. The purpose was not the eradication of all discrimination in employment. The purpose was to balance the prohibition of the most obvious forms of discrimination with the preservation of as much employer decision-making latitude as possible. Moreover, the seminal Supreme Court decision, McDonnell Douglas v. Green, accurately implemented this balance. This Article …

Sarbanes-Oxley's Whistleblower Provisions: Ten Years Later, Richard Moberly

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

Whistleblower advocates and academics greeted the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act's whistleblower provisions in 2002 with great acclaim. The Act appeared to provide the strongest encouragement and broadest protections then available for private-sector whistleblowers. It influenced whistleblower law by unleashing a decade of expansive legal protection and formal encouragement for whistleblowers, perhaps indicating societal acceptance of whistleblowers as part of a broader law enforcement strategy. Despite these successes, however, Sarbanes-Oxley's greatest lesson derives from its two most prominent failings. First, over the last decade, the Act did not sufficiently protect whistleblowers who suffered retaliation. Second, despite the massive increase in …

Domestic Worker Organizing: Building A Contemporary Movement For Dignity And Power, Hina Shah, Marci Seville

Publications

The success of domestic worker organizing in the twenty-first century may seem like an anomaly against the backdrop of increased hostility towards unionized labor and an overall decline in wages and benefits for workers. The contemporary domestic worker movement, beginning in the 1990s, builds upon centuries of organizing and agitation by domestic workers and others for a cultural shift that values domestic labor as real work. The current movement fundamentally alters past organizing models, linking the struggle to a broader movement for social justice. Unlike past organizing efforts, domestic workers are at the helm of the contemporary movement. They have …

Kasten V. Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics: Protecting Oral Complaints At The Expense Of Workplace Complaints, Shaun O'Donnell

Proxy

No abstract provided.

Wal-Mart Stores V. Dukes: Lessons For The Legal Quest For Equal Pay, Deborah Thompson Eisenberg

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s decision in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes provides a unique opportunity to reflect on whether and how the legal system should address unjustified pay disparities between men and women who perform similar jobs. This Article describes the Court’s decision and analyzes the insights it offers about the legal quest for equal pay. First, Wal-Mart demonstrates the tension between Title VII’s focus on the employer’s intent and the economic realities of how pay discrimination happens in the modern workplace. As the women at Wal-Mart experienced and research confirms, pay disparities tend to be the greatest when employers delegate …

Brief For Prof. Leslie C. Griffin As Amica Curiae In Support Of Neither Party, Cannata V. Catholic Diocese Of Austin, Leslie C. Griffin

Supreme Court Briefs

No abstract provided.