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Labor and Employment Law

Selected Works

2015

Law and Technology

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Law

Gandhi’S Prophecy: Corporate Violence And A Mindful Law For Bhopal, Nehal A. Patel Dec 2015

Gandhi’S Prophecy: Corporate Violence And A Mindful Law For Bhopal, Nehal A. Patel

Nehal A. Patel

AbstractOver thirty years have passed since the Bhopal chemical disaster began,and in that time scholars of corporate social responsibility (CSR) havediscussed and debated several frameworks for improving corporate responseto social and environmental problems. However, CSR discourse rarelydelves into the fundamental architecture of legal thought that oftenbuttresses corporate dominance in the global economy. Moreover, CSRdiscourse does little to challenge the ontological and epistemologicalassumptions that form the foundation for modern economics and the role ofcorporations in the world.I explore methods of transforming CSR by employing the thought ofMohandas Gandhi. I pay particular attention to Gandhi’s critique ofindustrialization and principle of swadeshi (self-sufficiency) …

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Welcome To The Machine: Privacy And Workplace Implications Of Predictive Analytics, Robert Sprague Apr 2015

Welcome To The Machine: Privacy And Workplace Implications Of Predictive Analytics, Robert Sprague

Robert Sprague

Predictive analytics use a method known as data mining to identify trends, patterns, or relationships among data, which can then be used to develop a predictive model. Data mining itself relies upon big data, which is “big” not solely because of its size but also because its analytical potential is qualitatively different. “Big data” analysis allows organizations, including government and businesses, to combine diverse digital datasets and then use statistics and other data mining techniques to extract from them both hidden information and surprising correlations. These data are not necessarily tracking transactional records of atomized behavior, such as the purchasing …

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Invisible Labor, Invisible Play: Online Gold Farming And The Boundary Between Jobs And Games, Julian Dibbell Apr 2015

Invisible Labor, Invisible Play: Online Gold Farming And The Boundary Between Jobs And Games, Julian Dibbell

Julian Dibbell

When does work become play, and play work? Courts have considered the question in a variety of economic contexts, from student athletes seeking recognition as employees to professional blackjack players seeking to be treated by casinos just like casual players. Here I apply the question to a relatively novel context: that of online gold farming, a gray-market industry in which wage-earning workers, largely based in China, are paid to play online fantasy games (MMOs) that reward them with virtual items their employers sell for profit to the same games’ casual players. Gold farming is clearly a job (and under the …

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Worker (Mis)Classification In The Sharing Economy: Trying To Fit Square Pegs Into Round Holes, Robert Sprague Dec 2014

Worker (Mis)Classification In The Sharing Economy: Trying To Fit Square Pegs Into Round Holes, Robert Sprague

Robert Sprague

How is it that the world’s largest taxi service claims it is not a transportation company? How can an iconic worldwide package delivery company argue that it is not in the package delivery business? These are just two idiosyncrasies of the modern economy in which microentrepreneurial contractors using their own resources carry out the fundamental operations of enterprises.
Businesses and courts have long struggled trying to determine whether certain workers are employees or independent contractors. Originally, the focus was on whether the employer should be held liable to third parties for injuries arising from the employer’s workers—it controlled the actions …

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