Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

Work Made For Hire – Analyzing The Multifactor Balancing Test, Ryan G. Vacca

Ryan G. Vacca

Authorship, and hence, initial ownership of copyrighted works is oftentimes controlled by the 1976 Copyright Act’s work made for hire doctrine. This doctrine states that works created by employees within the scope of their employment result in the employer owning the copyright. One key determination in this analysis is whether the hired party is an employee or independent contractor. In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court, in CCNV v. Reid, answered the question of how employees are distinguished from independent contractors by setting forth a list of factors courts should consider. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court did not give further ...

Alt-Labor, Secondary Boycotts, And Toward A Labor Organization Bargain, Michael C. Duff

Michael C Duff

Recently, workers led by non-union labor advocacy groups, popularly labelled “ALT-Labor,” have been staging strikes and other job actions across the low wage economy. Some observers see this activity as the harbinger of a reinvigorated labor movement or, more generally, as audacious dissent by low wage workers with nothing to lose. Others view the activity cynically as an exercise in futility, a struggle against inexorable market forces that refuse to pay $15 per hour to a fast food or big box retail worker. This article takes a different tack, presuming (implicitly using history as its guide) that employers will respond ...

Whether A Standard Legislated Framework Should Govern Public-Private Partnerships For Finance And Maintenance Of Public Infrastructure In The Modern Economy?, Anika Guevara

Anika Guevara

No abstract provided.

Veiled Discrimination, Sahar F. Aziz

Sahar F Aziz

Should employees have the legal right to “be themselves” at work? Most Americans would answer in the negative because work is a privilege, not an entitlement. An employer’s workplace rules that define professionalism, therefore, are his prerogative and defined by the demands of the marketplace. Underlying this conclusion is the false premise that objective and neutral factors shape modern notions of professionalism. To the contrary, professionalism is a subjective concept dependent on the decision makers’ worldview, norms, values, and definitions of propriety.

Employees who belong to the employer’s social group or fall within society’s majority are advantaged ...

The False Claims Act Creates A 'Zone Of Protection' That Bars Suits Against Employees Who Report Fraud Against The Government, Joel D. Hesch

Joel D. Hesch

May employees copy internal company documents and turn them over to the U.S. Department of Justice as part of applying for a whistleblower reward for reporting fraud against the Government? This is one of the most hotly contested issues facing whistleblowers and employers, and the answer will affect the future of the Government’s primary whistleblower reward program.

Each year, companies are cheating the military and Medicare by billions of dollars. To combat fraud, Congress enacted the federal False Claims Act (FCA), which is the primary anti-fraud tool used by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the fastest growing ...

Bounties For Bad Behavior: Rewarding Culpable Whistleblowers Under The Dodd-Frank Act And Internal Revenue Code, Jennifer M. Pacella

Jennifer M. Pacella, Esq.

In 2012, Bradley Birkenfeld received a $104 million reward or “bounty” from the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) for blowing the whistle on his employer, UBS, which facilitated a major offshore tax fraud scheme by assisting thousands of U.S. taxpayers to hide their assets in Switzerland. Birkenfeld does not fit the mold of the public’s common perception of a whistleblower. He was himself complicit in this crime and even served time in prison for his involvement. Despite his conviction, Birkenfeld was still eligible for a sizable whistleblower bounty under the IRS Whistleblower Program, which allows rewards for whistleblowers who ...

Client Trust Account Fraud: Analyzing State, Federal, And International Rules And Regulations While Developing Effective Solutions For Prevention, Daniel H. Smith

Daniel H Smith

CLIENT TRUST ACCOUNT FRAUD: ANALYZING STATE, FEDERAL, AND INTERNATIONAL RULES AND REGULATIONS WHILE DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE SOLUTIONS FOR PREVENTION

Daniel Hooper Smith

Abstract

Client Trust Account Fraud: Analyzing State, Federal, and International Rules and Regulations While Developing Effective Solutions for Prevention examines client trust accounts and fiduciary duties associated with them and categorizes three types of client trust account fraud (“CTA fraud”). In addition, this Article compares four states’ client trust account rules and regulations and discusses how fraudsters attempt to circumvent the law in each jurisdiction. This Article then analyzes state, federal, and international agency regulation with respect to client ...

Navigating The Turbulence: The First Circuit Clarifies The Preemptive Scope Of The Airline Deregulation Act In Brown V. Unived Airlines, Michael Welsh

Boston College Law Review

On July 9, 2013, in Brown v. United Airlines, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that the Airline Deregulation Act (“ADA”) preempted skycaps’ common law tortious interference and unjust enrichment claims. In so holding, the First Circuit articulated a two-pronged test in an attempt to provide clarity to the relationship between the savings clause and the preemption clause of the ADA. This Comment argues that the First Circuit’s two-pronged test is faithful to U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence and should serve as a model for other federal appeals courts until the Supreme Court ...

Freedmen And Day Laborers: Why Enforcement Matters, Raja Raghunath

Raja Raghunath

As the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Emancipation approaches, there is a cautionary lesson for modern workers from the period that followed the abolition of chattel slavery. Reconstruction, after the Civil War, was the moment when the promise of universal liberty to work first became part of the American state’s covenant with its people. But this promise was quickly lost, as the rights that the federal government extended to the freed slaves – the freedmen – were contested and eventually nullified by vehement opposition in the working fields and cities of the South. In this sense, workers’ rights were the ...

A Nation At Waste: The Long-Term Unemployed And Job Discrimination, Hina Shah

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Hidden Ball Trick: How Major League Baseball Endured Through Its Tumultuous Labor History, Derek Carrillo

DEREK CARRILLO

No abstract provided.

Participation As A Theory Of Employment, Matthew T. Bodie

Notre Dame Law Review

The concept of employment is an important legal category, not only for labor and employment law, but also for intellectual property law, torts, criminal law, and tax. The right-to-control test has dominated the debate over the definition of “employee” since its origins in the master-servant doctrine. However, the test no longer represents our modern notion of what it means to be an employee. This change has played itself out in research on the theory of the firm, which has shifted from a model of control to a model of participation in a team production process. This Article uses the theory ...

Is Labor Union Corruption Special?, James B. Jacobs

New York University Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

Labor racketeering has attracted a good deal of attention from law enforcement agencies, legislators, and journalists, but surprisingly little attention from corruption scholars. While the origin of the term “labor racketeering” is obscure, it has come to be associated with a type of corruption perpetrated by union officials under the direction of, or in conjunction with, organized crime (Cohen 2003, 575–76, 587–91; Jacobs 2006, 11–12). Organized crime bosses exploit unions and union members through alliances with corrupted or intimidated union officials (Jacobs 2006, 234). In return, union officials provide mobsters access to the union treasury, pension and ...

Legislating Incentives For Attorney Representation In Civil Rights Litigation, Sean Farhang, Douglas M. Spencer

Douglas M. Spencer

In this paper we investigate whether, when Congress relies upon private lawsuits to implement a law, the details of the legislation can importantly influence the extent to which the private bar is mobilized to carry out the prosecutorial function. We ask: In statutes with private rights of action, can Congress substantially affect the degree to which plaintiffs are represented by counsel? Using an original and novel dataset based upon review of archived litigation documents for cases filed in the Northern and Eastern Districts of California over the two decades spanning 1981 to 2000, we examine the effects of the Civil ...

Weathering Wal-Mart, Joseph A. Seiner

Notre Dame Law Review

In Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2531 (2011), the Supreme Court held that a proposed class of over a million women that had alleged pay and promotion discrimination against the nation’s largest retailer could not be certified. According to the Court, the plaintiffs had failed to establish a common thread in the case sufficient to tie their claims together. The academic response to Wal-Mart was immediate and harsh: the decision will serve as the death knell for mass employment litigation, undermining the workplace protections provided by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title ...

No Surfing Allowed: A Review And Analysis Of Legislation Prohibiting Employers From Demanding Access To Employees’ And Job Applicants’ Social Media Accounts, Robert Sprague

Robert Sprague

This article examines recent state legislation prohibiting employers from requesting username and password information from employees and job applicants in order to access restricted portions of those employees’ and job applicants’ personal social media accounts. This article raises the issue of whether this legislation is even needed, from both practical and legal perspectives, focusing on: (a) how prevalent the practice is of requesting employees’ and job applicants’ social media access information; (b) whether alternative laws already exist which prohibit employers from requesting employees’ and job applicants’ social media access information; and (c) whether any benefits can be derived from this ...

Need I Prove More: Why An Adverse Employment Action Prong Has No Place In A Failure To Accomodate Disability Claim, Megan I. Brennan

Hamline Law Review

abstract

What Is A "Religious Institution"?, Zoë Robinson

Boston College Law Review

Change in the First Amendment landscape tends toward the incremental, but the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion two terms ago in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC—holding that religious institutions enjoy a range of First Amendment protections that do not extend to other individuals or organizations—is better understood as a jurisprudential earthquake. And yet, it could be that the biggest aftershock has yet to be felt, with the Court leaving open the most important functional question that exists in scenarios where there will be constitutional winners and losers: what, or who, is a “religious institution ...

Organizing For The Modern Workforce, Danielle Y. Blanks

Danielle Y Blanks

No abstract provided.

Negotiating For Curriculum & Class Size, 2011-13: One Faculty Union’S Perspective, Steve Hicks, Amy L. Rosenberger

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

The article walks the reader through the process of proposing, revising, and finally accepting by both sides of a new clause in the APSCUF-PASSHE collective bargaining agreement covering curriculum and class size. The clause took multiple forms over the course of over two years of negotiations and reveals the evolving priorities of the two sides over time.