Law Commons^™

Vets Just Want Fair Benefits, Patricia E. Roberts

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Reply Brief For Petitioner. Paske V. Fitzgerald, 136 S.Ct. 536 (2015) (No. 15-162), 2015 U.S. S. Ct. Briefs Lexis 3941, 2015 Wl 6748880, Eric Schnapper, Margaret A. Harris

Court Briefs

QUESTIONS PRESENTED McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green established a common method of analyzing evidence of an unlawful discriminatory motive. If a plaintiff establishes a prima facie case of discrimination, the defendant must articulate a legitimate, non-discriminatory purpose for the disputed action; where the defendant has done so, the plaintiff has the burden of demonstrating that the proffered purpose was a pretext for discrimination. This Court has repeatedly explained that the burden of establishing a prima facie case is “not onerous.” United States Postal Service Board of Governors v. Aikens held, in the context of a case which had gone to …

Gaming The System: The Exemption Of Professional Sports Teams From The Fair Labor Standards Act, Charlotte S. Alexander, Nathaniel Grow

Faculty Publications By Year

This article examines a little known exemption to the Fair Labor Standards Act relieving seasonal recreational or amusement employers from their obligation to pay the minimum wage and overtime. After evaluating the existing, confused case law surrounding the exemption, we propose a new, simplified framework for applying the provision. We then apply this framework to a recent wave of FLSA lawsuits brought by cheerleaders, minor league baseball players, and stadium workers against professional sports teams. The article concludes by considering the policy implications of exempting this class of employers from the FLSA's wage and hour requirements.

Distinguishing Disparate Treatment From Disparate Impact; Confusion On The Court, Michael C. Harper

Faculty Scholarship

In two decisions in the 2014-2015 Term, Young v. United Parcel Service, Inc., and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Abercrombie & Fitch, Inc., the Court seemed to give contradictory answers to an important unresolved conceptual definitional question: Does disparate treatment include assigning members of a protected group based on their protected status to a larger disfavored group that is defined by neutral principles and that includes others who are not members of the protected group? Or does such assignment have only a disparate impact on the protected status group?

In Young, the first of these decisions, all members of the …

Newsroom: Monestier On Long-Arm Jurisdiction, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of Mcdonnell Douglas: The Domination Of Title Vii By The At-Will Employment Doctrine, Chuck Henson

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this Article is to describe the actual relationship between the Doctrine and Title VII as implemented in the Court's disparate treatment decisions. Title VII and the Doctrine are not separate forces warring with each other. The at-will employment doctrine guided the Court's Title VII disparate treatment jurisprudence, giving the maximum possible latitude to employers because that was the Eighty-eighth Congress's intent.

Human Trafficking: Statute Comparisons And Attitudes In Nebraska, Katie Sheets

Seventh Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking (2015)

Human trafficking has become an issue for global concern. Here in the United States, the Federal government and all fifty states are taking steps to combat the pervasive problem. This study looks at the anti-human trafficking statutes of all fifty states and compares them with each other to see how each state stacks up against the other. Nebraska was the focus of the study as the unicameral has recently been enacting changes to the state’s laws against human trafficking. Nebraska was expected to at least be with the majority of states with their human trafficking provisions. The study then looked …

Focusing The Multifactor Test For Employee Status: The Restatement’S Entrepreneurial Formulation, Michael C. Harper

Faculty Scholarship

The American Law Institute’s twenty-first century mission to restate for the first time American employment law carried the responsibility to provide more clear guidance on the law’s critical distinction between employees and independent contractors. This distinction delineates the scope not only of federal employee protection and benefit statutes, but also of employee protections and benefits conferred by state statutory and common law.

A Restatement of Employment Law, however, like any Restatement, could not formulate clearer or otherwise more desirable doctrine from the whole cloth of the views and values of the Reporters or the ALI membership. The Restatement could not …

Newsroom: Yelnosky On Franchisor Liability, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Mika V. Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., 131 Nev. Adv. Op. 71 (Sep. 24, 2015), Kory Koerperich

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The court denied extraordinary writ relief from the district court’s decision to compel arbitration between Petitioners and their employer based on a long-form arbitration agreement signed only by the Petitioners, and federal law favoring arbitration agreements.

Brief For Respondents. Tyson Foods, Inc. V. Bouaphakeo, 136 S.Ct. 1036 (2016) (No. 14-1146), 2015 Wl 5634431, David C. Frederick, Derek T. Ho, Matthew A. Seligman, Robert L. Wiggins Jr., Scott Michelman, Scott L. Nelson, Allison M. Zieve, Eric Schnapper

Court Briefs

QUESTIONS PRESENTED

1. Whether, in this class and collective action for wage-and-hour violations arising out of an employer's failure properly to compensate employees for time spent donning and doffing protective equipment and walking between sites where work was performed, the district court abused its discretion in granting certification where plaintiffs proceeded to prove the amount of work they did using individual timesheet evidence and representative proof concerning donning, doffing, and walking times in accordance with Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., 328 U.S. 680 (1946).

2. Whether a class or collective action may be certified when it contains members …

The Surety's Exposure For Wages And Related Liabilities, Lisa D. Sparks, Marc A. Campsen

All Faculty Scholarship

A surety faces potential exposure to a multitude of liabilities under payment and performance bonds issued for state and federally funded bonded projects as well as from the express obligations imposed by private common law performance and payment bonds. This paper, however, focuses only on a surety’s potential exposure for wage and related liabilities.

Under federal law, a surety faces possible liability under a Miller Act Payment Bond to laborers for the bonded principal’s failure to pay wages. Union trusts may also recover against a surety under a Miller Act Payment Bond for the bonded principal’s failure to remit union …

Regulations And Flexibility, Donald Roth

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Salaried workers are more likely to blur their work and home lives by taking work home, checking emails at night, or telecommuting."

Posting about changes in labor laws from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/regulations-and-flexibility/

Section 1: Moot Court: Friedrichs V. California Teachers Association, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Save The Bureaucrats, Paul R. Verkuil

The Regulatory Review in Depth

No abstract provided.

Toward Politically Stable Nlrb Lawmaking: Rulemaking Vs. Adjudication, Charlotte Garden

Faculty Articles

For the last several decades, there have been two constants with respect to the National Labor Relations Board. First, the modern Board has been notoriously reluctant to use its rulemaking authority; until recently, it had made only one significant substantive rule via the notice-and-comment process. Second, commentators academics, lawyers, judges, and politicians have issued a steady stream of calls for the Board to make law via rulemaking rather than through adjudications, arguing for the rulemaking process on both pragmatic and normative grounds. In recent years, however, the first of these has changed: the Board has engaged in two significant rulemaking …

Foreword: The Restatement Of Employment Law Project, Michael C. Harper, Samuel Estreicher, Matthew T. Bodie, Stewart J. Schwab

Faculty Scholarship

After over a dozen years of work, the American Law Institute (ALI or Institute)'s Restatement of Employment Law has been completed. The membership of the ALI, the nation's leading private organization dedicated to clarifying and improving the law, approved the proposed final draft, subject to editing, at its May 2014 annual meeting. The final edits are done and the volume is now available both electronically and as a book to practitioners, judges, scholars, and law libraries around the country and world.

We have had the honor to serve as Reporters for the Restatement of Employment Law and are pleased to …

From Hierarchies To Markets: Fedex Drivers And The Work Contract As Institutional Marker, Julia Tomassetti

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Judges are often called upon today to determine whether certain workers are “employees” or “independent contractors.” The distinction is important, because only employees have rights under most statutes regulating work, including wage and hour, anti-discrimination, and collective bargaining law. Too often judges exclude workers from statutory protection who resemble what legal scholars have described as typical, industrial employees — long-term, full-time workers with set wages and routinized responsibilities within a large firm. To explain how courts reach these counterintuitive results, the article examines recent federal decisions finding that FedEx delivery drivers are independent contractors rather than employees. It argues that …

Mensah V. Corevel Corp., 131 Nev. Adv. Op. 60 (Aug. 06, 2015), Jaymes Orr

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court held self-employed workers may still be entitled to temporary disability and the employee’s lost wages should be calculated by considering business income and losses and not strictly evidence of a traditional salary

After Tackett: Incomplete Contracts For Post-Employment Healthcare, Maria O'Brien

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines the recent U.S. Supreme Court retiree health care decision in Tackett v. M & G Polymers and focuses, in particular, on the ostensibly odd silence with respect to a critical contract term — whether the parties in fact agreed that these benefits were vested. Although the union in Tackett insisted these welfare benefits were clearly intended to vest and the employer now asserts they can be modified at any time, the collective bargaining agreement and supporting documents are ambiguous on this question. This paper examines how and why this “silence” persisted for so many decades and concludes …

Petition For A Writ Of Certiorari. Paske V. Fitzgerald, 136 S.Ct. 536 (2015) (No. 15-162), 2015 U.S. S. Ct. Briefs Lexis 2659, 2015 Wl 4651685, Eric Schnapper, Margaret A. Harris

Court Briefs

QUESTIONS PRESENTED McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green established a common method of analyzing evidence of an unlawful discriminatory motive. If a plaintiff establishes a prima facie case of discrimination, the defendant must articulate a legitimate, non-discriminatory purpose for the disputed action; where the defendant has done so, the plaintiff has the burden of demonstrating that the proffered purpose was a pretext for discrimination. This Court has repeatedly explained that the burden of establishing a prima facie case is “not onerous.” United States Postal Service Board of Governors v. Aikens held, in the context of a case which had gone to …

Brief Amicus Curiae For The National Employment Lawyers Association In Support Of Petitioner. Green V. Brennan, 136 S.Ct. 1769 (2016) (No. 14-613), 2015 Wl 4381189, Roberta L. Steele, Eric Schnapper

Court Briefs

No abstract provided.

Summary Of D&D Tire, Inc., V. Ouellette, 131 Nev. Adv. Op. 47 (Jul. 02, 2015), Jaymes Orr

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court held that a subcontractor or independent contractor is not immune to liability for workplace injuries if the work being performed is a specialized repair. Ouellette was injured by an employee of Purcell while performing a task that would not be considered a specialized repair. The employee, however, was only present on the job site because of a specialized repair. The Court, however, held that the activity leading to the injury must be considered in context and the employee would not have been present but for the repair.

The Nlrb As An Uberagency For The Evolving Workplace, Michael Z. Green

Faculty Scholarship

In addressing legal issues regarding the relationships between employers and employees, one must navigate a complex maze of rights and remedies that govern the workplace. This Essay details several recent and important workplace disputes addressed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) pursuant to Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Section 7 protects a worker's right to pursue an activity for mutual aid or protection regarding wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment. The NLRB, a unique agency with its ultimate decisions determined by five members who primarily establish rules through adjudication rather than rule …

Partnerships In Employment National Transition Systems Change Project: Building A Transition-To-Employment Agenda, Institute For Community Inclusion, University Of Massachusetts Boston

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

The national Partnerships in Employment (PIE) National Transition Systems Change Project was established in 2011 by the Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. This five-year project focuses on improving, developing, and implementing policies and practices that raise community expectations and overall employment outcomes for youth with intellectual/developmental disabilities (I/DD). Now in the last phase of the funding cycle, the eight state projects involved in the PIE initiative (Alaska, California, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, Tennessee, and Wisconsin) are uniquely positioned to provide youth employment recommendations to federal, state, and local agencies. In this document, we share several of the findings …

Labour Law And Transnational Law: The Fate Of Legal Fields / The Trajectory Of Legal Scholarship, Harry Arthurs

Conference Papers

In this lecture, I’m going to explain how and why I came to write my article, The Law of Economic Subordination and Resistance. I hope that by doing so, I will be able to shed some light not only on my own field of labour law, but on the larger problem of how legal fields or domains of legal knowledge, come into existence, change or become obsolete, and in the end are either transformed or superseded altogether. I will be talking about labour law, but I hope you will be thinking about transnational law. I’m going to try to persuade …

Right-To-Work:' The Issue That Won't Die — A Historical Perspective, Charles A. Scontras

Bureau of Labor Education

Phoenix-like, "right-to-work" measures have again surfaced in the state Legislature. Such measures are designed to prohibit employers from negotiating union security clauses by which all who benefit from union bargaining agreements pay their share of the costs involved in the union's legal obligation to represent all workers.

Newsroom: Ri Center For Justice Takes Off, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

401(K) Plan Expenses, Anne Becker, Jeffrey Arnold

Pension Action Center Publications

Under a 401(k) plan, your benefit is your vested account balance. This account balance reflects the contributions you make to the plan, the contributions your employer makes to the plan on your behalf (if any), and investment gains and losses.

Many 401(k) plan participants are responsible for choosing how to invest their account balances. If you direct the investment of your 401(k) plan account balance, it is important to understand that fees and expenses may substantially reduce the growth of your 401(k) plan account balance over the course of your working life. The Department of Labor (DOL) estimates that paying …

Work-Related Stress: Survey Of Academic Staff In The Institutes Of Technology Sector, Aidan Kenny

Articles

This article presents findings from a survey of professional workers in the institutes of technology sector in Ireland regarding work-related stress. The research instrument was based on a work-related stress questionnaire developed by the UK Health and Safety Executive, augmented with a specific subset of questions relevant to the Irish higher education sector. The questionnaire format was modified to enable online delivery. It was distributed to a sample population in 2014 with a response rate over 30% (n=1,131). The research provides baseline data on work-related stress levels experienced by workers in this sector. The results associate increased levels of risk …