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Full-Text Articles in Law

Domestic Worker Organizing: Building A Contemporary Movement For Dignity And Power, Hina Shah, Marci Seville Jan 2012

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 …


Plausibility Pleading And Employment Discrimination, Suzette M. Malveaux Jan 2012

Plausibility Pleading And Employment Discrimination, Suzette M. Malveaux

Publications

No abstract provided.


Where You Stand Depends On Where You Sit: Bureaucratic Politics In Federal Workplace Agencies Serving Undocumented Workers, Ming H. Chen Jan 2012

Where You Stand Depends On Where You Sit: Bureaucratic Politics In Federal Workplace Agencies Serving Undocumented Workers, Ming H. Chen

Publications

This Article integrates social science theory about immigrant incorporation and administrative agencies with empirical data about immigrant-serving federal workplace agencies to illuminate the role of bureaucracies in the construction of rights. More specifically, it contends that immigrants' rights can be protected when workplace agencies incorporate immigrants into labor law enforcement in accordance with the agencies' professional ethos and organizational mandates. Building on Miles' Law that "where you stand depends on where you sit," this Article argues that agencies exercise discretion in the face of contested law and in contravention to a political climate hostile to undocumented immigrants for the purpose …


The Second-Class Class Action: How Courts Thwart Wage Rights By Misapplying Class Action Rules, Scott A. Moss, Nantiya Ruan Jan 2012

The Second-Class Class Action: How Courts Thwart Wage Rights By Misapplying Class Action Rules, Scott A. Moss, Nantiya Ruan

Publications

Courts apply to wage rights cases an aggressive scrutiny that not only disadvantages low-wage workers, but is fundamentally incorrect on the law. Rule 23 class actions automatically cover all potential members if the court grants plaintiffs' class certification motion. But for certain employment rights cases--mainly wage claims but also age discrimination and gender equal pay claims--29 U.S. C. § 216(b) allows not class actions but "collective actions" covering just those opting in affirmatively. Yet courts in collective actions assume a gatekeeper role just as they do in Rule 23 class actions, disallowing many actions by requiring a certification motion proving …


Blue-Collar Crime: Conspiracy, Organized Labor, And The Anti-Union Civil Rico Claim, Benjamin Levin Jan 2012

Blue-Collar Crime: Conspiracy, Organized Labor, And The Anti-Union Civil Rico Claim, Benjamin Levin

Publications

This Article provides an historically-rooted analysis of a recent spate of civil RICO complaints arising from labor union organizing campaigns. The Article historicizes contemporary civil RICO suits against labor unions by analogizing to nineteenth century conspiracy prosecutions of unions. In tracing this history of organized labor’s social standing, the Article addresses the cultural framing of the union and its place in political and cultural discourse over the past century. The civil RICO complaints have received limited scholarly attention mainly focusing on issues of federal preemption; this Article argues for a broad reading of the cases as a way to understand …


Made In The U.S.A.: Corporate Responsibility And Collective Identity In The American Automotive Industry, Benjamin Levin Jan 2012

Made In The U.S.A.: Corporate Responsibility And Collective Identity In The American Automotive Industry, Benjamin Levin

Publications

This Article challenges the corporate-constructed image of American business and industry. By focusing on the automotive industry and particularly on the tenuous relationship between the rhetoric of automotive industry advertising and doctrinal corporate law, this Article examines the ways that social and legal actors understand what it means for a corporation or its products to be American. In a global economy, what does it mean for a corporation to present the impression of national citizenship? Considering the recent bailout of American automotive corporations, the automotive industry today becomes a powerful vehicle for problematizing the conflicted public/private nature of the corporate …