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Articles 1 - 17 of 17
Full-Text Articles in Law
Caring For Workers, Martha T. Mccluskey
Caring For Workers, Martha T. Mccluskey
Maine Law Review
This essay examines the question of conflict between market work and family care from the angle of family caretaking labor for workers rather than for dependents. Feminist legal scholars and activists have been concerned for generations about the effect of women's unpaid caretaking work on women's participation and success in the wage labor market. Better public support for this gendered family care work is crucial to many leading visions of feminist legal and economic change. Recent welfare reforms, however, have increased the extent to which public policy treats caretaking instead as a personal responsibility (or a sign of personal irresponsibility) …
Caretaking And The Contradictions Of Contemporary Policy, Michael Selmi, Naomi Cahn
Caretaking And The Contradictions Of Contemporary Policy, Michael Selmi, Naomi Cahn
Maine Law Review
Contemporary social policy relating to women's employment remains strikingly ambivalent. Those in favor of traditional family structures, a position that is generally associated with conservative political agendas, have often expressed a preference for a family model that emphasizes the woman's role as a homemaker, or to use the more recent term, a caretaker. At the same time, as the 1996 Welfare Reform Act demonstrates, if the choice is between providing financial support that would enable lower-income women to stay in the home and forcing those women into the labor market, the conservative agenda will opt for the latter. More recently, …
Telecommuting: The Escher Stairway Of Work/Family Conflict, Michelle A. Travis
Telecommuting: The Escher Stairway Of Work/Family Conflict, Michelle A. Travis
Maine Law Review
According to Working Mother magazine, telecommuting is a “wonderful arrangement for working moms.” Advertisements for telecommuting jobs and related technologies show us pictures of these happy telecommuting moms, who are conducting important business on the telephone or typing busily at their computers, as their smiling toddlers play quietly by their sides or sit contentedly in their laps. Some employers have offered this wonderful experience in direct response to concerns raised by “women's issues” committees. That was probably just what Jack Nilles had in mind when he first coined the term “telecommuting” in the 1970s and described it as a way …
Job Segregation, Gender Blindness, And Employee Agency, Tracy E. Higgins
Job Segregation, Gender Blindness, And Employee Agency, Tracy E. Higgins
Maine Law Review
Almost forty years after the enactment of Title VII, women's struggle for equality in the workplace continues. Although Title VII was intended to “break[] down old patterns of segregation and hierarchy,” the American workplace remains largely gender-segregated. Indeed, more than one-third of all women workers are employed in occupations in which the percentage of women exceeds 80%. Even in disciplines in which women have made gains, top status (and top paying) jobs remain male-dominated while the lower status jobs are filled by women. This pattern of gender segregation, in turn, accounts for a substantial part of the persistent wage gap …
Lessons From The Fields: Female Farmworkers And The Law, Maria L. Ontiveros
Lessons From The Fields: Female Farmworkers And The Law, Maria L. Ontiveros
Maine Law Review
In both the fields of labor law and gender studies, we learn the most from experience. The experience of workers coming together to demand equality and respect and the experience of women coming together to share their experiences has led to most of what we study in these fields. Unfortunately, too many times traditional legal doctrine does not fit these experiences. In those cases, we must struggle to change the law to be responsive to the lived experiences of women and workers. This Article explores the lived experiences of one particular group of workers—immigrant farmworking women in California. From their …
Gender Typing In Stereo: The Transgender Dilemma In Employment Discrimination, Richard F. Storrow
Gender Typing In Stereo: The Transgender Dilemma In Employment Discrimination, Richard F. Storrow
Maine Law Review
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) prohibits discrimination against men because they are men and against women because they are women. This familiar characterization of the Act has been quoted in dozens of sex discrimination cases to support a narrow view of who is protected against sex discrimination in this country. When transsexuals file suit, “[e]mployment discrimination jurisprudence at both the federal and state levels ... captures transsexuals in a discourse of exclusion from social participation. This wide net, using a remarkably refined system of semantic manipulations, snags all claims launched by transsexuals and reveals …
Sex, Allies And Bfoqs: The Case For Not Allowing Foreign Corporations To Violate Title Vii In The United States, Keith Sealing
Sex, Allies And Bfoqs: The Case For Not Allowing Foreign Corporations To Violate Title Vii In The United States, Keith Sealing
Maine Law Review
The extent to which foreign corporations as well as their domestic subsidiaries can discriminate against American employees on the basis of sex, age, religion, and national origin in a manner that would be acceptable under their own laws and customs but inimical to American law is currently determined by a muddled jumble of circuit court opinions interpreting a “[w]e express no view” Supreme Court footnote. As a result, American victims of sexual discrimination have much less protection under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when the discriminating actor is a foreign corporation or its domestic subsidiary than …
Congressional Power To Regulate Sex Discrimination: The Effect Of The Supreme Court's "New Federalism", Calvin Massey
Congressional Power To Regulate Sex Discrimination: The Effect Of The Supreme Court's "New Federalism", Calvin Massey
Maine Law Review
Congressional power to prevent and remedy sex discrimination in employment has been founded almost entirely upon the commerce power and Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which gives Congress power “to enforce, by appropriate legislation” the equal protection guarantee. The commerce power has enabled Congress to prohibit private sex discrimination in employment, and the combination of the commerce and enforcement powers has enabled Congress to prohibit such sex discrimination by public employers. From the late 1930s until the early 1990s the doctrinal architecture of these powers was relatively stable, even if statutory action to realize the promise of a nondiscriminatory …
The Unenforced Promise Of Equal Pay Acts: A National Problem And Possible Solution From Maine, Elizabeth J. Wyman Esq.
The Unenforced Promise Of Equal Pay Acts: A National Problem And Possible Solution From Maine, Elizabeth J. Wyman Esq.
Maine Law Review
Equal pay for women is a concept that has been around for a long time. It was during World War I that women were first guaranteed pay equity in the form of regulations enforced by the War Labor Board of 1918. The Board's equal pay policy required manufacturers, who put women on the payroll while male employees were serving in the military, to pay those women the same wages that were paid to the men. The National War Labor Board continued that trend through World War II. Shortly after the war, states began enacting statutes that required employers to pay …
Foreword: Law, Labor And Gender, Jennifer B. Wriggins
Foreword: Law, Labor And Gender, Jennifer B. Wriggins
Maine Law Review
The theme of the conference, Law, Labor, & Gender, came out of a working group comprised of law students, lawyers, a judge, and myself. We thought that a number of issues deserved attention, ranging from current jurisprudence on employment discrimination to more theoretical issues having to do with work/family dilemmas. Professor Deborah Rhode kindly accepted our invitation to be the keynote speaker, and various other academic speakers also agreed to present papers. The working group, and the editors of the Maine Law Review, drafted and sent out a call for papers to approximately 1600 law professors and others. The Law …
Taking Care Of Business And Protecting Maine's Employees: Supervisor Liability For Employment Discrimination Under The Maine Human Rights Act, Katharine I. Rand
Taking Care Of Business And Protecting Maine's Employees: Supervisor Liability For Employment Discrimination Under The Maine Human Rights Act, Katharine I. Rand
Maine Law Review
On the heels of federal legislation prohibiting employment discrimination most states, including Maine, have enacted their own civil or human rights statutes aimed at eliminating discriminatory behavior in the workplace. Like its federal counterpart, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), the Maine Human Rights Act, enacted in 1971, prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of race, gender, age, religion, or national origin and provides a civil remedy for victims of employment discrimination. Moreover, like Title VII, the question of just who constitutes a liable “employer” under the Maine Human Rights Act has been the …
The Persistence Of Union Repression In An Era Of Recognition, Anne Marie Lofaso
The Persistence Of Union Repression In An Era Of Recognition, Anne Marie Lofaso
Maine Law Review
Labor rights in countries with predominantly free market economies have generally passed through three stages--repression, tolerance, and recognition. In the United States, nineteenth-century state and federal governments repressed labor unions by making conduct, such as workers banding together for higher wages, subject to criminal penalty and civil liability. Courts paved the way for tolerating labor unions by overruling repressive precedents. By the early twentieth century, Congress followed suit by legislatively exempting unions from certain legal liabilities. In 1935, Congress enacted Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), marking the first formal federal government recognition of employees' “right to …
It Has To End Somewhere: Feiereisen V. Newpage Corp. And The Scope Of The Employment Contract, Benjamin R. Hutchinson
It Has To End Somewhere: Feiereisen V. Newpage Corp. And The Scope Of The Employment Contract, Benjamin R. Hutchinson
Maine Law Review
In January of 2008, Kurt Feiereisen was driving to attend a mediation meeting regarding his workers’ compensation claims when he was injured in a car accident. At the time, Feiereisen was pursuing three separate claims against Newpage Corporation for bodily injuries that he had sustained while working for the company during the years of 1987, 1997, and 2007. In June of 2008 he petitioned for compensation awards related to the injuries from all four occasions. Awards were granted for the three earliest injuries, but denied for the injury sustained during the 2008 car accident because this injury did not occur …
Speaking Of Workplace Harassment: A First Amendment Push Toward A Status-Blind Statute Regulating "Workplace Bullying", Jessica R. Vartanian
Speaking Of Workplace Harassment: A First Amendment Push Toward A Status-Blind Statute Regulating "Workplace Bullying", Jessica R. Vartanian
Maine Law Review
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes discrimination in employment unlawful, but only based on certain suspect classes: race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Courts have interpreted the statute to ban workplace harassment in this same limited fashion, refusing to recognizg harassment claims based on sexual orientation or any other unspecified classification.Although Congress may regulate in this selective manner consistent with equal protection, workplace harassment differs from other forms of discrimination proscribed under Title VII in one very important respect—workplace harassment is often achieved through an array of expression traditionally protected under the First Amendment
Fuhrmann V. Staples Office Superstore East, Inc.: A Split In The Law Court As To The Definition Of "Employer" Demonstrates The Need For Legislative Action To Amend The Maine Human Rights Act In Order To Protect Maine Employees, Stephen B. Segal
Maine Law Review
In Fuhrmann v. Staples Office Superstore East, Inc., Jamie Fuhrmann submitted a complaint to the Maine Human Rights Commission (Commission) against her former employer, Staples Office Superstore East, Inc. (Staples), and four of her individual supervisors. After the Commission granted her right to sue, she filed a complaint in court alleging whistleblower retaliation under the Whistleblowers’ Protection Act (WPA) and the Maine Human Rights Act (MHRA), as well as sex discrimination under the MHRA. The Superior Court granted Staples’ motion for summary judgment on all counts, and granted the four supervisors’ motions to dismiss on the grounds that individual supervisor …
Trott V. H.D. Goodall Hospital: When Analyzing Employment Discrimination Cases Under Maine Law, Should Maine Courts Continue To Apply The Mcdonnell Douglas Analysis At The Summary Judgment Stage?, Ari B. Solotoff
Maine Law Review
Since 2003, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court has applied the Supreme Court’s McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting analysis on summary judgment in employment discrimination claims brought under Maine law. Recently, however, some justices of the Law Court have questioned McDonnell Douglas’s continuing application to summary judgment determinations. They argue that the framework is outdated, overly mechanical, and unnecessary. In Trott v. H.D. Goodall Hospital, the court set forth three guiding principles for lawyers and judges to follow in employment discrimination cases facing disposition at summary judgment. In doing so, the court signaled that McDonnell Douglas should continue to be applied at summary …
Exhausted Yet? Stephens V. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation And The Application Of The Exhaustion Doctrine To Statute-Based Erisa Claims, Carson D. Phillips-Spotts
Exhausted Yet? Stephens V. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation And The Application Of The Exhaustion Doctrine To Statute-Based Erisa Claims, Carson D. Phillips-Spotts
Maine Law Review
By 1974, the U.S. Congress recognized that employer-provided retirement pension plans had “become an important factor affecting the stabilization of employment and the successful development of industrial relations” and enacted the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) with the aim of protecting “the interests of participants in employee benefit plans and their beneficiaries.” In enacting ERISA, Congress established “standards of conduct, responsibility, and obligation[s] for fiduciaries of employee benefit plans” and provided for “appropriate remedies, sanctions and ready access to the Federal courts.” Apart from creating federal causes of action to ensure efficient and equitable administration of private pension plans, …