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Few Thoughts About Scalia's Dissenting Opinion In Rutan V. Republican Party Of Illinois And His View Of The Public Workplace, Rafael Gely Jan 2017

Few Thoughts About Scalia's Dissenting Opinion In Rutan V. Republican Party Of Illinois And His View Of The Public Workplace, Rafael Gely

Faculty Publications

I first became familiar with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Rutan v. Republican Party of Illinois, when I began teaching employment law a few years after the decision was issued. Having spent six years in Illinois while attending law school and graduate school, and returning to teach at Chicago-Kent College Law, the case was of particular interest to me, as the names and location of the case all seemed so familiar. I found the dissent by Justice Antonin Scalia particularly interesting in that it raised a number of fascinating issues and made various assertions that seemed to make sense. …


A Religious Organization’S Autonomy In Matters Of Self-Governance: Hosanna-Tabor And The First Amendment, Carl H. Esbeck Mar 2012

A Religious Organization’S Autonomy In Matters Of Self-Governance: Hosanna-Tabor And The First Amendment, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

In Hosanna-Tabor, a teacher suing her employer, a church-based school, alleged retaliation for having asserted rights under a discrimination statute. The School raised the “ministerial exception,” which prohibits ministers from suing their religious employer. The Court held the exception was constitutionally required. Before giving the facts that convinced it that this teacher was a “minister,” the Court had to distinguish the leading case of Employ. Div. v. Smith. Plaintiffs in Smith held jobs as counselors at a drug rehabilitation center. They were fired for illegal drug use (peyote), and later denied unemployment compensation. The Native American Church ingests peyote during …


Card-Check Laws And Public-Sector Union Membership In The States, Rafael Gely, Timothy D. Chandler Dec 2011

Card-Check Laws And Public-Sector Union Membership In The States, Rafael Gely, Timothy D. Chandler

Faculty Publications

We examine the impact of state card-check legislation on public-sector union membership. Based on an empirical analysis of data from 2000 to 2009, a time during which eight states enacted card-check legislation for public employees, we find significantly higher levels of public-sector union membership for states that passed card-check legislation in years after the laws were enacted relative to states that did not pass such laws. Moreover, average public-sector union membership increased for the states that passed card-check legislation after the laws were passed relative to their precard-check law union-membership levels.


Understanding Card-Check Organizing: The Public Sector Experience, Rafael Gely, Timothy D. Chandler Jan 2010

Understanding Card-Check Organizing: The Public Sector Experience, Rafael Gely, Timothy D. Chandler

Faculty Publications

The use of “card checks” as a method of union organizing has recently garnered considerable attention, much of it surrounding the proposed Employee Free Choice Act. The proposed legislation seeks to amend the National Labor Relations Act by requiring employers to recognize a union when the employer is presented with evidence of majority support for union recognition via card checks. Despite this recent interest in card checks, there is little empirical research on the topic due, in part, to the lack of available data. Although card-check organizing in the private sector is not rare, such organizing is voluntary, and does …


The Application Of Rfra To Override Employment Nondiscrimination Clauses Embedded In Federal Social Services Programs, Carl H. Esbeck Jun 2008

The Application Of Rfra To Override Employment Nondiscrimination Clauses Embedded In Federal Social Services Programs, Carl H. Esbeck

Faculty Publications

General federal employment nondiscrimination legislation permits religious organizations to take religion into account when making employment decisions. However, some federal social service programs have embedded in their authorizing legislation a nondiscrimination clause binding on recipients of program grants. And a few of these embedded clauses require that grantees (including religious grantees) not discriminate in employment on the basis of religion. This extended essay demonstrates how the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 overrides these employment nondiscrimination clauses when applied to faith-based social service grantees. Not only is this the conclusion of the U.S. Department of Justice in its policy announced …


The Pendulum Swings Again, Richard C. Reuben Oct 1999

The Pendulum Swings Again, Richard C. Reuben

Faculty Publications

Mandatory arbitration provisions in contracts of adhesion expose the difficult tension between individual contractual rights and collective contractual needs. The question is where we draw the line. The law of adhesion contracts has traditionally used the doctrine of unconscionability to draw that line, and cases like Graham v Scissor-Tail more precisely instruct us to draw it at the reasonable expectations of the parties. By presumptively refusing to enforce cram-down arbitration provisions for consumer claims, absent evidence of knowing and voluntary waiver, we will restore those reasonable expectations, and, in the words of the case law, ensure minimum levels of integrity …


Whose Team Are You On? My Team Or My Team?: The Nlra's Section 8(A)(2) And The Team Act, Rafael Gely Jan 1997

Whose Team Are You On? My Team Or My Team?: The Nlra's Section 8(A)(2) And The Team Act, Rafael Gely

Faculty Publications

This article analyzes employee participatory programs from the internal labor markets perspective. Internal Labor Markets (“ILM”) refer to the explicit or implicit agreements between employer and employees incorporating rules governing wages, working hours, promotion opportunities and grievance procedures. In order to function properly, ILMs require employees to learn skills that are valuable to the contracting firm, but are of much lesser value elsewhere. Employees agree to acquire such “firm-specific” skills and employers agree to subsidize the training needed to obtain these new skills. It is a mutually beneficial arrangement: employers expect to observe increases in productivity and efficiency and employees …


Through The Looking Glass: Can Title Vii Help Women And Minorities To Shatter The Glass Ceiling, Rafael Gely, Ramona L. Paetzold Jan 1995

Through The Looking Glass: Can Title Vii Help Women And Minorities To Shatter The Glass Ceiling, Rafael Gely, Ramona L. Paetzold

Faculty Publications

The employment patterns of “nontraditional” workers in the United States show two conflicting characteristics. On the one hand, researchers have observed a continuing increase in the rate of participation of nontraditional workers at multiple levels in the work force. For example, the proportion of women white collar workers increased from twenty-two percent in the late 1960s to forty-six percent in 1992. Similarly, the average job tenure for nontraditional workers has also increased. For example, although males in the thirty-five to forty-four year old age group have experienced a small decline in job tenure, women in the same group have seen …