Law Commons^™

Getting Paid In The Naked Economy, Meredith R. Miller

Scholarly Works

“It’s the end of work as we know it,” reports consulting firm Accenture in a paper about the “rise of the extended workforce.” (Gartside, Silverstone, Farley & Cantrell, Trends Reshaping the Future of HR: The Rise of the Extended Workforce, at 3 (Accenture 2013). The report predicts that, “[i]n the future, organizations’ competitive success will hinge on...workers who aren’t employees at all.” The legal nature of employment is changing and has been changing for quite some time; fewer and fewer workers are “employees.”

It is not new or novel to recognize that, from a legal perspective, there are many benefits …

Andrew B. Arnold's Fueling The Gilded Age: Railroads, Miners, And Disorder In Pennsylvania Coal Country, Laura Phillips Sawyer

Scholarly Works

Andrew Arnold’s Fueling the Gilded Age explores the struggles for managerial control and economic power that erupted among coal miners, coal operators, and railroad executives in central Pennsylvania between 1872 and 1902. Rather than presenting an unassailable triumph of the railroads’ interests over labor, Arnold argues that the “coal industry defied order” (p. 3) and laborers exhibited “unexpected agency ” (p. 4, emphasis in original) by thwarting the plans of railroad executives to impose managerial capitalism from the top down. Instead, wage earners “refused to accept their designated fate as commodities” (p. 222) and thereby exerted influence on the institutional …

Reconsidering Legal Regulation Of Race, Sex, And Sexual Orientation, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Debunking Unequal Burdens, Trivial Violations, Harmless Stereotypes, And Similar Judicial Myths: The Convergence Of Title Vii Literalism, Congressional Intent, And Kantian Dignity Theory, Peter Brandon Bayer

Scholarly Works

Title VII prohibits employers from imposing their racial, sex-based, ethnic, or religiously inspired grooming and appearance standards, even if, in light of widely accepted social conventions, the vast majority would feel exceptionally uncomfortable in the presence of employees who refuse to comport with their employers' discriminatory rules. Indeed, nearly four decades ago, with correct simplicity and directness the Supreme Court recognized Title VII's first principle: "Congress intended to prohibit all practices in whatever form which create inequality in employment opportunity due to discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex, or national origin." Therefore, contrary to the harsh dismay expressed …

Stabilizing Low-Wage Work: Legal Remedies For Unpredictable Work Hours & Income Stability, Charlotte Alexander, Anna Haley-Lock, Nantiya Ruan

Scholarly Works

Low-wage, hourly-paid service workers are increasingly subject to employers' "just-in-time" scheduling practices. In a just-in-time model, employers give workers little advance notice of their schedules, call workers in to work during non-scheduled times to meet unexpected customer demand, and send workers home early when business is slow. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act, the main guarantor of workers' wage and hour rights, provides no remedy for the unpredictable work hours and income instability caused by employers' last minute call-in and send-home practices. This Article examines two alternative sources of legal protection that have received little attention in the literature on …

Disarming Employees: How American Employers Are Using Mandatory Arbitration To Deprive Workers Of Legal Protection, Jean R. Sternlight

Scholarly Works

Employers’ imposition of mandatory arbitration constricts employees’ access to justice. The twenty percent of the American workforce covered by mandatory arbitration clauses file just 2,000 arbitration claims annually, a minuscule number even compared to the small number of employees who litigate claims individually or as part of a class action. Exploring how mandatory arbitration prevents employees from enforcing their rights the Article shows employees covered by mandatory arbitration clauses (1) win far less frequently and far less money than employees who litigate; (2) have a harder time obtaining legal representation; (3) are often precluded from participating in class, collective or …

Overvaluing Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance, Lauren R. Roth

Scholarly Works

Although positive and negative assessments of tying health insurance to employment abound, most scholars and policymakers have acknowledged that our long history in this area predicts our future. What they have largely ignored, however, is the extent to which individual attachment to employment-based insurance is at the root of our inability to make broader health reforms. The attachment (1) harms exchange-based insurance and (2) denies employers the ability to use Health Reimbursement Arrangements (“HRAs”) to subsidize the purchase of insurance by their employees on the exchanges.

This Article advocates reducing or eliminating workers’ overvaluation of their health insurance and increasing …