Law Commons^™

Why We Need Interagency Merger Review In Labor Markets, Hiba Hafiz

Boston College Law School Faculty Papers

As empirical evidence of labor-market concentration mounts, academics and policymakers advance proposals to challenge or reverse its effects on workers’ wages and labor-market options. Prominent among these is more aggressive review of the labor-market effects of mergers by the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”). My forthcoming essay, Interagency Merger Review in Labor Markets, argues for an alternative intervention: N.

Increasing evidence of labor market concentration and mergers’ suppressive effects on wages has drawn attention to labor market regulation by antitrust scholars and enforcers, creating an unprecedented reform effort to apply antitrust law to employers. Proposals ...

Employee Mobility And The Low Wage Worker: The Illegitimate Use Of Non-Compete Agreements, Jacqueline A. Carosa

The Docket

No abstract provided.

Racial Prejudice In The Criminal Justice System, Tori Cooper

Jessie O'Kelly Freshman Essay Award

Racial prejudice against African Americans has been the leading cause of high incarceration rates amongst the African American community. Within the United States, the census reported that African Americans make up about 17.9 percent of the population, with one-third of the people making up the incarcerated population in America. The disparity in those numbers highlights the current situation that is plaguing the nation. Blatant cases of racial profiling that have received media attention are a true testament of the broken law enforcement system from coast to coast. Racial prejudice cases have affected the black American community since the beginning ...

Common Ownership And Executive Incentives: The Implausibility Of Compensation As An Anticompetitive Mechanism, David Walker

Faculty Scholarship

Mutual funds, pension funds and other institutional investors are a growing presence in U.S. equity markets, and these investors frequently hold large stakes in shares of competing companies. Because these common owners might prefer to maximize the values of their portfolios of companies, rather than the value of individual companies in isolation, this new reality has lead to a concern that companies in concentrated industries with high degrees of common ownership might compete less vigorously with each other than they otherwise would. But what mechanism would link common ownership with reduced competition? Some commentators argue that one of the ...

Assessing Sexually Harassing Conduct In The Workplace: An Analysis Of Bc Human Rights Tribunal Decisions In 2010–16, Bethany Hastie

Faculty Publications

Sexual harassment in the workplace was first recognized as a form of discrimination in the 1980s. Since that time, the concepts of sexual harassment and discrimination have evolved substantially. This article explores how human rights tribunals address complaints of sexual harassment in the workplace through a case analysis of BC Human Rights Tribunal decisions from 2010 to 2016. Focusing on an examination of how the tribunal determines what constitutes sexually harassing conduct, this article suggests that, while human rights tribunals are advancing in their understanding and analysis of sexual harassment claims, there remain inherent limitations associated with the individualized nature ...

“Not Yet A Priority:” The Intersectional Exploration Of Labor Market Access For People With Disabilities, Anona Neal

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Approximately one in four families in Morocco are affected by disability. Of those affected by disability, many are in vulnerable situations, because there is an explicit linkage between having a disability and likelihood of experiencing poverty. The primary reasons for this phenomenon include lack of access to education, employment and health care. Following the Arab Spring, the Moroccan government implemented Article 166 which explicitly banned workplace discrimination against people with disabilities (PWD); however, only 13% of those affected by disability of working age can find employment. In this paper, I investigate the obstacles PWD face that prevent them from accessing ...

Brief Of Amici Curiae Employment Law Professors In Support Of Respondents, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This Court should not interpret section 1981 to require proof of but-for causation, given that statute’s text, history, and purpose. Although Comcast invokes the canon of statutory construction that Congress intends statutory terms to have their settled common-law meaning, that canon does not apply here. Section 1981 has no statutory text that reflects a common-law understanding of causation. Indeed, in 1866, when Congress enacted the predecessor to section 1981, there was no well-settled common law of tort at all. Rather, just as courts have read 42 U.S.C. § 1982, which shares common text, history and purpose, this Court ...

Uncertainty In Employee Status Across Federal Law, Ryan G. Vacca

Law Faculty Scholarship

Numerous federal statutes rely on a distinction between employees and independent contractors. Based on a series of Supreme Court decisions from 1968 through 2003, courts and administrative agencies have used a common law multifactor test to draw this distinction. In an effort to enhance predictability and certainty within and across legislation, these cases have rejected a purposive approach in applying the test. But the Supreme Court has never said which, if any, of the factors are the most important in the analysis, nor has anyone determined whether the underlying purpose—enhancing predictability and certainty—has been attained.

This empirical Study ...

The Original Roofing Co., Llc V. Chief Admin. Officer Of The Occupational Safety And Health Admin., 135 Nev. Adv. Op. 18 (Jun. 6, 2019), Riley Coggins

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court held that supervisors’ knowledge that their own conduct, or that of an employee under their supervision, violates NOSHA safety laws cannot be attributed to the employer unless the impermissible actions were foreseeable.

City Of Mesquite V. Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., 135 Nev., Adv. Op. 33, Dylan Lawter

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The City of Mesquite asked the Court to determine which statute of limitations (“SOL”) applies to a local government employee's complaint alleging both that the employer breached the collective bargaining agreement and that the union breached its duty of fair representation. The City argued that the claims are subject to a six-month limitations period under Nevada’s Local Government Employee-Management Relations Act (“EMRA”). The Court declined to answer the question. Instead, it clarified that there is no private cause of action to enforce a claim against a union for breach of the duty of fair representation in the first ...

How Should Maid Abusers Be Punished?, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection School Of Law

We often see comments calling for offenders to be caned repeatedly, jailed for life, or even executed but a dispassionate view of issues is what is needed, says SMU’s Benjamin Joshua Ong.

Patush V. Las Vegas Bistro, Llc, 135 Nev. Adv. Op. 46 (Sep. 26, 2019), Katrina Weil

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court determined that (1) claims for wrongful termination are subject to the limitations period from NRS § 11.190(4)(e) for injuries or death caused by another person’s wrongful act or neglect; and (2) attorney fees were not warranted under § NRS 18.010(2)(b) as the issue was one of first impression.

Women And Men Graduates Of The University Of Michigan Law School: Career Patterns And Adjustments For Children, David L. Chambers

Bibliography of Research Using UMLS Alumni Survey Data

The University of Michigan Law School conducted mail surveys of classes of its alumni each year from 1966 and 2006. This memorandum builds upon the mail surveys conducted through 2006 and in particular survey questions asked about the sex of the respondent, the settings in which they have worked since law school, the hours they work and their earnings in their current settings, whether they have children and the various adjustments they have made in order to care for children, such as working part-time or leaving the work force altogether for periods of time. The memorandum has two principal focuses ...

The Effects Of Educational Debts On Career Choices Of Graduates Of The University Of Michigan Law School, David L. Chambers

Bibliography of Research Using UMLS Alumni Survey Data

In 1966, the University of Michigan Law School began an annual survey of selected classes of its graduates. Beginning in the early 1980s, annual surveys of those five and fifteen years after law school included questions about educational debts incurred during college and law school as well as about career plans at the beginning and end of law school and actual job held in the years since law school. This paper, written in 2009, examines the possible effects of debts on career decisions and job choices made before, during and after law school by the graduating classes of 1976 through ...

Retirement, Partial Retirement, And Working Into Old Age: Michigan Law School Graduates 45 Years Out Of Law School, David L. Chambers

Bibliography of Research Using UMLS Alumni Survey Data

In 1966, the University of Michigan Law School began an annual survey of selected classes of its graduates. For the first few decades of the survey, only the graduating classes five and fifeen years out of law school were included in the survey. Beginning in 1997, graduates 25, 35, and 45 years out of law school were added. This memorandum focuses primarily on surveys conducted between 1997 and 2006 of the living graduates of the classes of 1952 through 1961, who had by then been out of law school for 45 years. After 45 years, the great majority were 69 ...

Workplace Sexual Harassment: Assessing The Effectiveness Of Human Rights Law In Canada, Bethany Hastie

Faculty Publications

This report analyzes substantive decisions on the merits concerning workplace sexual harassment at each of the BC and Ontario Human Rights Tribunals from 2000-2018, with a view to identifying how the law of sexual harassment is understood, interpreted and applied by the Tribunals’ adjudicators. In particular, this report examines whether, and to what extent, gender-based stereotypes and myths known to occur in criminal justice proceedings arise in the human rights context.

This report examines substantive decisions on the merits for claims of workplace sexual harassment from 2000-2018 in BC and Ontario. The limitation to substantive decisions allows for a greater ...

Employer Losses And Deferred Compensation, David Walker

Faculty Scholarship

Most large public companies offer their executives the opportunity to defer the receipt and taxation of their salary or other current compensation until retirement or some other future date, and equity compensation, which also entails deferral of pay and taxation, constitutes a large fraction of the typical executive pay package. Conventional wisdom holds that employer net operating losses (NOLs) improve the joint economics of deferred and equity compensation (henceforth together "deferred compensation") for the parties. However, empirical studies provide little evidence of an association between employer NOLs and deferred compensation use. This paper focuses on two potential explanations for this ...

Notable Employee Benefits Articles Of 2018, 163 Tax Notes 1829 (2019), Kathryn J. Kennedy, Melissa Travis

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

Kathryn J. Kennedy and Melissa Travis summarize 10 noteworthy law review articles published in 2018.

Brief Of Brian Wolfman, Aderson B. Francois, And Eric Schnapper As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioner In Peterson V. Linear Controls Incorporated, No. 18-1401 (U.S. Supreme Court June 6, 2019), Brian Wolfman, Aderson B. François

U.S. Supreme Court Briefs

In Title VII disparate-treatment, employment-discrimination cases, the term “adverse employment action” originally developed as judicial shorthand for the statute’s text, which broadly prohibits any discriminatory conduct by an employer against an employee based on the employee's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. See 42 U.S.C. 2000e-2(a)(1). But what started simply as shorthand has taken on a life of its own and now improperly limits the statute’s reach. The Fifth Circuit’s version of the adverse-employment-action rule stands out as especially improper: Only an “ultimate employment decision”—a refusal to hire, a firing ...

Wage Boards For The 21st Century: Revisiting Sectoral Standard-Setting Mechanisms For The Workplace, Sara Slinn

Conference Papers

As existing labour relations and minimum standards regulatory systems have continued to struggle to ensure acceptable worker voice and workplace standards, attention has increasingly turned to whether broader-based or sectoral approaches can offer solutions. Broader-based or sectoral approaches can be understood as falling into three categories of models: multi-employer, juridical extension, and sectoral standard-setting models. A key difference among these is that the first two categories involve not only collective representation of workers but also collective bargaining; the third model – sectoral standard-setting – involves a form of collective representation, but does not involve collective bargaining, which is characterized by compelled recognition ...

Janus's Two Faces, Kate Andrias

Articles

In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus is the god of beginnings, transitions, and endings. He is often depicted as having two faces, one looking to the future and one to the past. The Supreme Court’s Janus v AFSCME case of last Term is fittingly named.1 Stunning in its disregard of principles of stare decisis, Janus overruled the forty-yearold precedent Abood v Detroit Board of Education. 2 The Janus decision marks the end of the post–New Deal compromise with respect to public sector unions and the FirstAmendment.Looking to the future, Janus lays the groundwork for further ...

Mitigating Risk, Eradicating Slavery, Ramona Lampley

Faculty Articles

For U.S. companies with forced labor or child labor in the supply chain, litigation is on the rise. This Article surveys the current litigation landscape involving forced labor in the supply chain. It ultimately concludes that domestic corporations that source from international suppliers should adopt the Model Contract Clauses drafted by the ABA Business Law Section Working Group to Draft Human Rights Protections in International Supply Contracts ("Working Group"). This Article traces the origins of cases involving supply chain forced labor, beginning with the early employee negligence cases that form the backdrop of existing case law and the cornerstone ...

Competition Policy For Labour Markets, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

Competition law in many jurisdictions defines its consumer welfare goal in terms of low consumer prices. For example, mergers are challenged when they threaten to cause a price increase from reduced competition in the post-merger market. While the consumer welfare principle is under attack in some circles, it remains the most widely expressed goal of antitrust policy.

We would do better, however, to define consumer welfare in terms of output rather than price. Competition policy should strive to facilitate the highest output in any market that is consistent with sustainable competition. That goal is in most ways the same as ...

Silos And First Movers In The Sharing Economy Debates, Diane M. Ring

Boston College Law School Faculty Papers

Over the past few years, a significant global debate has developed over the classification of workers in the sharing economy either as independent contractors or as employees. While Uber and Lyft have dominated the spotlight lately, the worker classification debates extend beyond ridesharing companies and affect workers across a variety of sectors. Classification of a worker as an employee, rather than an independent contractor, can carry a range of implications for worker treatment and protections under labor law, anti-discrimination law, tort law, and tax law, depending on the legal jurisdiction. The debates, at least in the United States, have been ...

Reforming Pensions While Retaining Shareholder Voice, David Webber

Faculty Scholarship

Public pension and labor union funds have been the driving force in diversified shareholder activism. They have also fended off attacks on jobs and proactively created jobs for fund contributors. These funds currently represent almost $4 trillion in assets over which workers have substantial control. That worker control - and the collective nature of defined benefit pension plans - is the necessary precondition for their shareholder activism. Both worker control and collective investment are directly threatened by the rise of defined contribution funds, particularly by well-funded efforts to promote the 401(k) in the public sector, the last bastion of the traditional ...

Recent Case Shows Flaws In Va Benefits, David E. Boelzner

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Paga Saves The Day Against Forced Arbitration, Letty Chavez

GGU Law Review Blog

Arbitration agreements are becoming increasingly common in the employment setting, with over 60 million Americans being bound by one. In the private sector, 56.2 percent of nonunion employees are bound by mandatory arbitration agreements. In California, 67.4 percent of workplaces are subject to mandatory arbitration. Employees are less likely to win their cases in arbitration than in court. The increase in PAGA lawsuits in recent years is likely associated to the increase in mandatory arbitration agreements. As more employees find themselves without access to the courts, PAGA claims offer the only remaining recourse for employees to have their ...

The Impact Of Epic Systems In The Labor And Employment Context, Lise Gelernter

Journal Articles

In Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 138 S. Ct. 1612 (2018), the Supreme Court ruled that an employer did not violate the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) when it required employees to agree to arbitrate all claims against the employer and also waive their rights to bring a class or collective action against the employer. The Court reasoned that class or collective actions were not the type of "concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection” that Section 7 of the NLRA protects. This comment, part of a three-part discussion on the impact of ...

California Wine Industry Feels The Effect Of Trump, Golden Gate University Law Review

GGU Law Review Blog

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” This was much of the tone about immigrants during Donald Trump’s speeches on his campaign trail. Since President Trump took office, it seems that immigration has propelled to the forefront of political debates and water cooler talk. Most of the headlines regarding immigration that have dominated our screens have been about children being separated at the border, Trump’s disapproval ...

Taxation Of Automation And Artificial Intelligence As A Tool Of Labour Policy, Vincent Ooi, Glendon Goh

Centre for AI & Data Governance

Rapid developments in automation technology pose a risk of massdisplacement of human labour, resulting in the need to support and retraindisplaced workers (a negative externality). We propose an “automation tax”that would slow the adoption of automation technology in appropriatecircumstances, giving workers and social support systems time to adapt. Thiscould be easily implemented through changes to the existing schedular systemof depreciation/ capital allowances, reducing the uncertainty of its applicationand implementation costs. Such a system would be flexible enough to keepup with rapid technological developments. Two main dimensions may beadjusted to produce intended distortionary effects: 1) accelerated depreciation,and 2) bonus ...