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Full-Text Articles in Labor and Employment Law
Initiative And Referendum: A Maine Odyssey, Charles A. Scontras
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 …
Sharing The Prosperity: Why We Still Need Organized Labor, Angela B. Cornell
Sharing The Prosperity: Why We Still Need Organized Labor, Angela B. Cornell
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Today economic inequality is greater in the United States than in any other advanced nation. Bringing the minimum wage up to a true living wage is a crucial step forward, as are other employment-related benefits like broadening access to overtime and instituting paid sick leave. But employment statutes such as minimum-wage regulations cannot replace the broad-based benefits that come from organized labor. Unionization places the ability to influence what happens in the workplace directly in workers’ own hands, even as it creates institutions that can advocate for working people at the community, state, and national level. Under an effective labor-law …
Uncontrolled Experiments From The Laboratories Of Democracy: Traditional Cash Welfare, Federalism, And Welfare Reform, Jonah B. Gelbach
Uncontrolled Experiments From The Laboratories Of Democracy: Traditional Cash Welfare, Federalism, And Welfare Reform, Jonah B. Gelbach
All Faculty Scholarship
In this chapter I discuss the history and basic incentive effects of two key U.S. cash assistance programs aimed at families with children. Starting roughly in the 1980s, critics of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program argued that the program -- designed largely to cut relatively small checks -- failed to end poverty or promote work. After years of federally provided waivers that allowed states to experiment with changes to their AFDC programs, the critics in 1996 won the outright elimination of AFDC. It was replaced by the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program, over which …