Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

The Case For Waivable Employee Rights: A Contrarian View, William R. Corbett

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Proposed Framework For A Federal Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine Under The Defend Trade Secrets Act, Michael J. Garrison, Dawn R. Swink, John T. Wendt

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Conflict Of Laws? Tensions Between Antitrust And Labor Law, Matthew Dimick

Journal Articles

Not long ago, economists denied the existence of monopsony in labor markets. Today, scholars are talking about using antitrust law to counter employer wage-setting power. While concerns about inequality, stagnant wages, and excessive firm power are certainly to be welcomed, this sudden about-face in theory, evidence, and policy runs the risk of overlooking some important concerns. The purpose of this Essay is to address these concerns and, more critically, to discuss some tensions between antitrust and labor law, a more traditional method for regulating labor markets. Part I addresses a question raised in the very recent literature, about why antitrust …

Workplace Anonymity, Jayne S. Ressler

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Nun, A Synagogue Janitor, And A Social Work Professor Walk Up To The Bar: The Expanding Ministerial Exception, Patrick Hornbeck

Buffalo Law Review

Some employees who hold significant positions within some religious organizations fall outside the protections of certain laws, especially employment discrimination laws. But which employees, which organizations, and which laws? In its 2020 decision in Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the “ministerial exception” doctrine, a constitutional immunity that is “extraordinarily potent” where applicable.1 The doctrine exempts religious employers from liability for nearly all forms of discrimination, some torts, and some breaches of contract, even when an employer does not act for religious reasons.

This Article argues that Our Lady of Guadalupe School marks a …

A New Paradigm: Rideshare Drivers, Collective Labor Action, Andantitrust, Thomas W. Joo, Leticia Saucedo

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Review Of Philosophical Foundations Of Labour Law, Edited By Hugh Collins, Gillian Lester, And Virginia Mantouvalou, Matthew Dimick

Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

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

The Docket

No abstract provided.

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 …

New Frontiers In Empirical Labour Law Research, Edited By Amy Ludlow And Alysia Blackham, Matthew Dimick

Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Finding A Better Way Around Employment At Will: Protecting Employees’ Autonomy Interests Through Tort Law, William R. Corbett

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Problem Of Wage Theft, Nicole Hallett

Journal Articles

Wage theft inflicts serious harm on America's working poor but has received little attention from policymakers seeking to address income inequality in the United States. This Article provides a comprehensive analysis of the causes of the wage theft crisis and the failure of the current enforcement regime to address it. It argues that existing policy reforms will fail, because they misunderstand the nature of the crisis and the incentives that employers face when deciding to steal workers' wages. It then proposes series of reforms that could work, while arguing that changing the economic calculus alone will be unlikely to solve …

Ncaa Division I Transfers “Are Now Basically Screwed”: The Battle Against The Ncaa’S Year In Residence Rule In The Seventh Circuit, Joseph W. Schafer

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Better Than Basic Income? Liberty, Equality, And The Regulation Of Working Time, Matthew Dimick

Journal Articles

Basic income has attracted the attention of academics, policy makers, and politicians around the globe. Basic income—a no-strings-attached cash transfer made to all citizens of a country, rich or poor—has been lauded as a plan to eliminate poverty, reduce income inequality, redress imbalances in the labor market, remedy the impending problem of mass technology-induced unemployment—the “robot apocalypse”—and make possible meaningful lives for those otherwise dependent on menial work in the labor market. It has also been proposed as an efficient, nonpaternalistic, and stigma-free alternative to existing welfare state policies. This Article compares basic income to an alternative policy proposal: the …

Wage-Setting Institutions And Corporate Governance, Matthew Dimick, Neel Rao

Journal Articles

Why do corporate governance law and practice differ across countries? This paper explains how wage-setting institutions influence ownership structures and investor protection laws. In particular, we identify a nonmonotonic relationship between the level of centralization in wage-bargaining institutions and the level of ownership concentration and investor protection laws. As wage setting becomes more centralized, ownership concentration within firms at first becomes more, and then less, concentrated. In addition, the socially optimal level of investor protection laws is decreasing in ownership concentration. Thus, as wage-setting institutions become more centralized, investor protection laws become less and then more protective. This explanation is …

The Customer Is Not Always Right: Balancing Worker And Customer Welfare In Antitrust Law, Clayton J. Masterman

Journal Articles

A natural consequence of employer restraints of trade that decrease wages is lower prices. Under antitrust law, courts evaluate most such restraints of trade under the rule of reason. This Note argues that the rule of reason’s focus on consumer welfare and the natural price decrease that follows from employer restraints of trade cause underenforcement of antitrust law against anticompetitive employer conduct. Such a result is anomalous, because the consumer welfare standard that permeates antitrust law should protect employees as much as customers that purchase goods.

To solve the under-enforcement problem, this Note proposes that courts analyzing a restraint of …

Protecting The Compromised Worker: A Challenge For Employment Discrimination Law, Peter Siegelman

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Political Decision-Making At The National Labor Relations Board: An Empirical Examination Of The Board's Unfair Labor Practice Disputes Through The Clinton And Bush Ii Years, Amy Semet

Journal Articles

Does partisan ideology influence the voting of members of multi-member adjudicatory bodies at “independent agencies”? In studying the federal circuit courts of appeals, scholars have found that results of cases vary depending upon the partisan composition of the particular panel hearing a case. Few scholars to date, however, have systematically studied whether partisan panel effects occur in administrative adjudication. In this Article, I explore the impact that partisan ideology and panel composition have on the vote choices of an administrative agency rumored to be one of the most partisan: the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”). Employing an original dataset of …

My Coworker, My Enemy: Solidarity, Workplace Control, And The Class Politics Of Title Vii, Ahmed A. White

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Stemming The Hobby Lobby Tidal Wave: Why Rfra Challenges To Obama's Executive Order Prohibiting Federal Contractors From Discriminating Against Lgbt Employees Will Not Succeed, Kayla A. Higgins

Buffalo Journal of Gender, Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

An Employer's Conscience After Hobby Lobby And The Continuing Conflict Between Women's Rights And Religious Freedom, Sarah M. Stephens

Buffalo Journal of Gender, Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Productive Unionism, Matthew Dimick

Journal Articles

Do labor unions have a future? This Article considers the role and importance of labor union structures, in particular the degree of centralization in collective bargaining, to the future of labor unions. Centralization refers primarily to the level at which collective bargaining takes place: whether at the plant, firm, industry, or national level. The Article examines the historical origins of different structures of bargaining in the United States and Europe, the important implications that centralization has for economic productivity, and the ways that various labor law rules reinforce or reflect different bargaining structures. Most critically, the Article contends that greater …

Child Labor In America: A History By Chaim M. Rosenberg, Joel E. Black

Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Womenomics For Nursing Growth: Making The Case For Work Time Flexibility And Mother-Friendlier Workplaces, Gabriela Steier

Buffalo Journal of Gender, Law & Social Policy

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.

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? …

Compensation, Employment Security, And The Economics Of Public-Sector Labor Law, Matthew Dimick

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Working On Immigration: Three Models Of Labor And Employment Regulation, Rick Su

Journal Articles

The desire to tailor our immigration system to the economic interests of our nation is as old as its founding. Yet after more than two centuries of regulatory tinkering, we seem no closer to finding the right balance. Contemporary observers largely ascribe this failure to conflicts over immigration. Shifting the focus, I suggest here that longstanding disagreements in the world of economic regulations — in particular, tensions over the government’s role in regulating labor conditions and employment practices — also explains much of the difficulty behind formulating a policy approach to immigration. In other words, we cannot reach a political …

Actionable Acts: "Severe" Conduct In Hostile Work Environment Sexual Harassment Cases, James Concannon

Buffalo Journal of Gender, Law & Social Policy

This paper examines the significant weight that courts accord proof of especially "severe" conduct in hostile work environment sexual harassment cases. Such conduct is often found by courts to satisfy the "severe or pervasive" test established by the Supreme Court in Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., even if the plaintiff does not present proof that the harassing conduct occurred with great frequency.' Part I provides an introduction to the Supreme Court's hostile work environment jurisprudence and the origins of the severe or pervasive test. Part II begins the exploration into the disjunctive nature of the severe or pervasive test. …

Unilateral Alteration Of Public Sector Collective Bargaining Agreements And The Contract Clause, Stephen F. Befort

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.