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Labor and Employment Law

University of Michigan Law School

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Journal

Race and law

Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Law

"When They Enter, We All Enter": Opening The Door To Intersectional Discrimination Claims Based On Race And Disability, Alice Abrokwa Jan 2018

"When They Enter, We All Enter": Opening The Door To Intersectional Discrimination Claims Based On Race And Disability, Alice Abrokwa

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article explores the intersection of race and disability in the context of employment discrimination, arguing that people of color with disabilities can and should obtain more robust relief for their harms by asserting intersectional discrimination claims. Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw first articulated the intersectionality framework by explaining that Black women can experience a form of discrimination distinct from that experienced by White women or Black men, that is, they may face discrimination as Black women due to the intersection of their race and gender. Likewise, people of color with disabilities can experience discrimination distinct from that felt by people of …


Coercive Assimilationism: The Perils Of Muslim Women's Identity Performance In The Workplace, Sahar F. Aziz Oct 2014

Coercive Assimilationism: The Perils Of Muslim Women's Identity Performance In The Workplace, Sahar F. Aziz

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

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. But what if being oneself entails behaviors, mannerisms, and values integrally linked to the employee’s gender, race, or religion? And what if the basis for the employer’s workplace rules and professionalism standards rely on negative racial, ethnic or gender stereotypes that disparately impact some employees over others? Currently, Title VII fails to take into account such forms of second-generation discrimination, thereby limiting statutory protections to phenotypical or morphological bases. Drawing on social psychology and …


Have A Job To Get A Job: Disparate Treatment And Disparate Impact Of The 'Currently Employed' Requirement, Jennifer Jolly-Ryan Sep 2012

Have A Job To Get A Job: Disparate Treatment And Disparate Impact Of The 'Currently Employed' Requirement, Jennifer Jolly-Ryan

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Countless people struggle to find a job in a competitive job market despite possessing solid qualifications. Although the news media reports that job numbers are improving, the problems of unemployment particularly loom for people of color, older workers, and people with disabilities. These groups are often unemployed longer than other job seekers. These groups also suffer the disparate impact of job advertisements that require "current employment" as a prerequisite for hiring. The harsh reality is that the longer a job seeker is unemployed, the closer a job seeker becomes to becoming permanently unemployed. Job advertisements that require "current employment" exacerbate …


Some Women's Work: Domestic Work, Class, Race, Heteropatriarchy, And The Limits Of Legal Reform, Terri Nilliasca Apr 2011

Some Women's Work: Domestic Work, Class, Race, Heteropatriarchy, And The Limits Of Legal Reform, Terri Nilliasca

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Note employs Critical Race, feminist, Marxist, and queer theory to analyze the underlying reasons for the exclusion of domestic workers from legal and regulatory systems. The Note begins with a discussion of the role of legal and regulatory systems in upholding and replicating White supremacy within the employer and domestic worker relationship. The Note then goes on to argue that the White, feminist movement's emphasis on access to wage labor further subjugated Black and immigrant domestic workers. Finally, I end with an in-depth legal analysis of New York's Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, the nation's first state law to …


Federal Employer Sanctions As Immigration Federalism, Darcy M. Pottle Sep 2010

Federal Employer Sanctions As Immigration Federalism, Darcy M. Pottle

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

For low-skilled workers in much of the world, U.S. admission policies make illegal immigration the most viable means of entering the country. Low average schooling, which disqualifies many potential immigrants from employment-based visas, and long queues affecting family preference immigration from high-traffic countries, make the admission criteria outlined in the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) prohibitive for most would-be immigrants to the United States. Perhaps due to this failure of immediate legal avenues, many immigrants enter the country illegally. Though many eventually gain legal status, in the meantime they live and work in the United States without documentation. "Illegal …


Employee Free Choice Or Employee Forged Choice? Race In The Mirror Of Exclusionary Hierarchy, Harry G. Hutchinson Jan 2010

Employee Free Choice Or Employee Forged Choice? Race In The Mirror Of Exclusionary Hierarchy, Harry G. Hutchinson

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is arguably the most transformative piece of labor legislation to come before Congress since the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA). One of the newest attempts to transform labor relations is the EFCA. The first to disappear under the EFCA would be a system of union democracy whereby unions could only obtain the rights of exclusive representation for firms if they could prevail in a secret-ballot election. Second, the EFCA would eliminate tile necessity of a freely negotiated collective bargaining agreement between management and labor and instead substitute compulsory arbitration. …


From Race To Class Struggle: Re-Problematizing Critical Race Theory, E San Juan Jr. Jan 2005

From Race To Class Struggle: Re-Problematizing Critical Race Theory, E San Juan Jr.

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The misconstrual of "class" as a theoretical and analytic concept for defining group or individual identity has led, especially during the Cold War period, to its confusion with status, life-style, and other ideological contingencies. This has vitiated the innovative attempt of CRT to link racism and class oppression. We need to reinstate the Marxist category of class derived from the social division of labor that generates antagonistic class relations. Class conflict becomes the key to grasping the totality of social relations of production, as well as the metabolic process of social reproduction in which racism finds its effectivity. This will …


The New Cultural Diversity And Title Vii, Steven A. Ramirez Jan 2000

The New Cultural Diversity And Title Vii, Steven A. Ramirez

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article will show that the most progressive diversity initiatives taking hold in the business community are facially neutral in their approach, merit-driven, and fundamentally culture-conscious (as opposed to race-conscious). These initiatives do not allow for any racial preference or gender preference and draw any such bias not from the inherent values of diversity but from the largely segregated pre-existing corporate tradition: hiring culturally aware minorities unleashes value because they bring insights previously unavailable to segregated businesses. In other words, White males can be and are hired in the name of cultural diversity when they bring cultural insights to the …


"Reverse Discrimination" And Higher Education Faculty, Joyce A. Hughes Jan 1998

"Reverse Discrimination" And Higher Education Faculty, Joyce A. Hughes

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In this Article, the author critiques the use of "reverse discrimination" claims by White plaintiffs to challenge the hiring of Blacks in institutions of higher education. The author argues that "reverse discrimination" is a myth since no such claim is possible when one White candidate is selected over another; assumptions of inferiority are implicit where such a claim is made when a Black candiate is selected over a White candidate. In other words, allowing such a claim, even if ultimately unsuccessful, implies a presumption of superiority on the part of the White candidate. For this reason, the author argues that …