Law Commons^™

Structural Labor Rights, Hiba Hafiz

Michigan Law Review

American labor law was designed to ensure equal bargaining power between workers and employers. But workers’ collective power against increasingly dominant employers has disintegrated. With union density at an abysmal 6.2 percent in the private sector—a level unequaled since the Great Depression— the vast majority of workers depend only on individual negotiations with employers to lift stagnant wages and ensure upward economic mobility. But decentralized, individual bargaining is not enough. Economists and legal scholars increasingly agree that, absent regulation to protect workers’ collective rights, labor markets naturally strengthen employers’ bargaining power over workers. Existing labor and antitrust law have failed …

Are Unions A Constitutional Anomaly?, Cynthia Estlund

Michigan Law Review

This term in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Ass’n, the Supreme Court will consider whether ordinary public employees may constitutionally be required to pay an “agency fee,” as a condition of employment, to the union that represents them in collective bargaining. The Court established the terms of engagement in the 2014 decision Harris v. Quinn, which struck down an agency fee on narrower grounds while describing the current doctrine approving agency fees, blessed many times by the Court itself, as an “anomaly.” This Article asks whether labor unions are themselves anomalies in our legal system, particularly in their constitutional entitlements. Its …

How American Workers Lost The Right To Strike, And Other Tales, James Gray Pope

Michigan Law Review

To paraphrase a veteran labor scholar, if you want to know where the corpses are buried in labor law, look for the "of course" statements in court opinions. By "of course" statements, he meant propositions that are announced as if they were self-evident, requiring no justification. Each year, thousands of law students read such statements in labor law casebooks. And each year, they duly ask themselves - prodded sometimes by the casebook's notes - how these conclusions could be justified in legal terms. But often there seems to be no answer, and the mystery continues. This Essay recounts the origins …

Realigning Corporate Governance: Shareholder Activism By Labor Unions, Stewart J. Schwab, Randall S. Thomas

Michigan Law Review

Labor unions are active again - but this time as capitalists. The potential strength of union pension funds has long been noted, but until recently unions have held their stock passively or invested in union-friendly companies. In the 1990s, however, unions have become the most aggressive of all institutional shareholders. In most cases, it is hard to find a socialist or proletarian plot in what unions are doing with their shares. Rather, labor activism is a model for any large institutional investor attempting to maximize return on capital. Unions, union pension funds, individual union members, and labor-oriented investment funds are …

The Continuing Relevance Of Section 8(A)(2) To The Contemporary Workplace, Michael C. Harper

Michigan Law Review

After embarking on his illustrious career as a legal academic, Theodore St. Antoine, through a multitude of roles, including those of scholar, teacher, administrator, pragmatic law reformer, and arbitrator, made innumerable contributions to the practice and development of many parts of American law. For most of us, however, as a scholar he will be associated primarily with the system of collective bargaining established and encouraged by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and its progeny. During the first part of Professor St. Antoine's years as an academic, this system continued to flourish in America, as he, along with other legal …

Rearranging Deck Chairs On The Titanic: The Inadequacy Of Modest Proposals To Reform Labor Law, Charles B. Craver

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Agenda for Reform: The Future of Employment Relationships and the Law by William B. Gould IV

Are Trojan Horse Union Organizers "Employees"?: A New Look At Deference To The Nlrb's Iterpretation Of Nlra Section 2(3), Jonathan D. Hacker

Michigan Law Review

This Note takes a different approach to interpreting section 2(3). Although this Note agrees that section 2(3) neither clearly includes nor clearly excludes trojan horse organizers, it also argues that the definition of employee under section 2(3) must be determined by looking to common law principles of agency. In other words, the question whether courts should defer to the Board's interpretation of section 2(3) does not turn on statutory ambiguity. Rather, courts have a continuing duty to ensure that the Board interprets employee consistently with common law agency principles. Nevertheless, the correct interpretation of employee under agency principles ultimately turns …

Collective Bargaining Or "Collective Begging"?: Reflections On Antistrikebreaker Legislation, Samuel Estreicher

Michigan Law Review

The strike is a necessary part of collective bargaining. Workers should not ordinarily lose their jobs by pressing their disputes in this manner. But neither should strikes be viewed as a risk-free means of empowering unions to lock employers into uncompetitive contracts.

Labor Law Successorship: A Corporate Law Approach, Edward B. Rock, Michael L. Wachter

Michigan Law Review

In this article, we take an approach fundamentally different from that of the labor law commentators. We start from a broader perspective than is common: successorship is as important an issue for corporate law as it is for labor law. Given that the two principal inputs to the firm are labor and capital, it would be surprising if the laws for labor law successorship were completely different from the laws for corporate law successorship. To the extent that differences exist, those differences should hinge upon differences between the employees' and the creditors' relationships with the firm.

Hoffa, James S. Beall

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Hoffa by Arthur A. Sloane

A Bargaining Analysis Of American Labor Law And The Search For Bargaining Equity And Industrial Peace, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt

Michigan Law Review

In this article, I present an alternative economic analysis of unions and collective bargaining that utilizes recent advances in labor economics and some simple applications of game theory to address the deficiencies of the traditional monopoly model.

The article proceeds in four parts. In Part I, I provide a brief primer on the economic analysis of unions and collective bargaining. I discuss the various possible sources of union wage increases, possible employer responses to union wage demands, and alternative models of the costs of collective bargaining. In Part II, I outline the traditional monopoly theory of unions by combining the …

Which Side Are You On?: Trying To Be For Labor When It's Flat On Its Back, John Edward Connelly

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Which Side Are You On?: Trying to Be for Labor When It's Flat on Its Back by Thomas Geoghegan

Feminizing Unions: Challenging The Gendered Structure Of Wage Labor, Marion Crain

Michigan Law Review

In this article, I argue that labor unions can be an effective, central tool in a feminist agenda targeting the gendered structure of wage labor. Collective action is the most powerful and expedient route to female empowerment; further, it is the only feasible means of transforming our deeply gendered market and family structure. Others have laid the groundwork by showing how existing individual-model challenges have been unable to accomplish such broad-based reform. I begin where they leave off.

Collective Bargaining In The Federal Public Sector: Disclosing Employee Names And Addresses Under Exemption 6 Of The Freedom Of Information Act, Trina Jones

Michigan Law Review

This Note examines the application of FOIA and the Privacy Act to union requests for employee names and addresses under the Fed. LM Statute. Part I briefly explores the importance of employee names and addresses to collective bargaining. This Part also examines the increasingly significant role of public sector unions due to the growth in federal public sector employment and the decline of private sector unionization. Part II analyzes the various circuit court decisions supporting disclosure in the federal public sector. Part III examines Reporters Committee and Department of the Treasury and discusses the potential policy implications resulting from the …

Substantiating "Competitive Disadvantage" Claims: A Broad Reading Of Truitt, Brandon David Lawniczak

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that the broad reading of Truitt is correct. It advocates a broad rule which would require an employer to disclose substantiating financial information to its employees' union whenever it claims that meeting a proposed wage demand would place the firm at a competitive disadvantage. Because the appropriateness of substantiating financial information is factually dependent, this Note will not focus on the type or amount of information that should be disclosed. Instead, it will focus on the legal and policy justifications for a broad disclosure rule. Part I reviews Truitt and discusses the various interpretations given to it …

Labor Law's Alter Ego Doctrine: The Role Of Employer Motive In Corporate Transformations, Gary Alan Macdonald

Michigan Law Review

This Note examines the differing judicial approaches for reviewing NLRB alter ego findings, and concludes that a fundamental problem with all of the current approaches is the unwarranted consideration of motive in varying degrees. This Note proposes a modified "reasonably foreseeable benefit" standard which does not depend in any degree on the employer's motive for changing its corporate form. Part I discusses the origin and evolution of the alter ego doctrine, including its genesis in Southport Petroleum, the well-settled Crawford Door factors, and the related "successorship" doctrine. Part II analyzes the conflict among the federal courts of appeals over …

Employer Postcertification Polls To Determine Union Support, James D. Dasso

Michigan Law Review

This Note evaluates these competing standards in light of the two major policy objectives of the NLRA: industrial stability and employee free choice. It concludes that the courts of appeals properly apply a less stringent standard. Part I considers employer polling in the larger context of the general law of employer interrogation. This section concludes that the Board's standard for postcertification polling deviates significantly from the general law of employer interrogation as well as the more specific rules established for precertification polling. The remainder of this Note demonstrates that the Board's distinctions between pre- and postcertification polling do not justify …

Challenges And Choices Facing American Labor, George Feldman

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Challenges and Choices Facing American Labor edited by Thomas A. Kochan

Evaluating Unions: Labor Economics And The Law, Michael J. Goldberg

Michigan Law Review

A Review ofWhat Do Unions Do? by Richard B. Freeman and James L. Medoff

Statutory And Common Law Considerations In Defining The Tort Liability Of Public Employee Unions To Private Citizens For Damages Inflicted By Illegal Strikes, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that in the absence of any clear indication that the legislature intended to bar such suits, courts should uphold private actions whenever plaintiffs can establish the elements of a common-law tort. Part I briefly outlines the various theories supporting the view that public sector collective bargaining statutes preempt private actions. The analysis is necessarily general, but Part I concludes that in most cases neither the language and structure of the applicable statute nor an analogy to federal labor law will resolve the preemption question. Part II, therefore, looks to the policies that animate no-strike provisions and argues …

Union Representation Elections: Law And Reality: The Authors Respond To The Critics, Stephen B. Goldberg, Julius G. Getman, Jeanne G. Getman

Michigan Law Review

The response to the study in the academic journals was extensive, particularly in light of its multidisciplinary nature, which could be seen as calling for reviewers capable of assessing not only the labor law recommendations, but also the data collection methodology and the statistical analysis. One law review dealt with the multidisciplinary nature of the study by inviting a psychologist and a law teacher to write a joint review, and another law review published separate reviews by a lawyer, a professor of labor law, a labor economist, a professor of industrial relations, and a labor reporter and editor. Most legal …

Contribution Between Parties To A Discriminatory Collective Bargaining Agreement, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note examines rules of title VII back pay liability and apportionment. Part I argues that all signatories to a discriminatory collective bargaining agreement should be jointly and severally liable to injured persons for back pay. Although a union or employer may object to joint and several liability if its opponent in collective bargaining proposed and bargained for the discriminatory term, the purposes of title VII require that the parties become jointly and severally liable upon signing the agreement. Since joint and several liability fully serves the compensatory purpose of the statute, Part II of the Note looks to deterrence …

Union Decisions On Collective Bargaining Goals: A Proposal For Interest Group Participation, Eileen Silverstein

Michigan Law Review

This Article assesses the consequences of unions' virtually unrestrained power to set bargaining priorities and to reconcile antagonisms among the workers they represent. It then evaluates the function that economic interest groups within unions might serve if workers were encouraged to form interest groups and these groups were recognized as legitimate mechanisms for meeting the diverse needs of a heterogeneous workforce.

Afterthoughts On The Short-Lived Experiment In Deregulation Of Representation Elections, David B. Ross

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Union Representation Elections: Law and Reality by Julius G. Getman, Stephen B. Goldberg, and Jeanne B. Herman

The Integrity Of The Arbitral Process, Roger I. Abrams

Michigan Law Review

Over twenty years ago Dean Shulman and Professor Cox debated through the pages of the Harvard Law Review the question of the role law should play in labor arbitration. Shulman urged "that the law stay out," while Cox argued that courts would come to understand the special nature of the arbitration process and would accordingly limit the extent of judicial intervention. The impact of their discussion has, of course, been mooted by the numerous judicial decisions implanting private arbitration within the federal law of the collective agreement. From the Supreme Court has come a formidable legal superstructure for the labor …

Labor Relations Law In The Public Sector, Arvid Anderson

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Labor Relations Law in the Public Sector by Russell A. Smith, Harry T. Edwards, and R. Theodore Clark, Jr.

Title Vii And Nlra: Protection Of Extra-Union Opposition To Employment Discrimination, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act guarantees freedom from employment discrimination based on race, religion, sex, or national origin and establishes remedial procedures for aggrieved employees. A nondiscrimination clause in a collective bargaining agreement may also protect employees from discriminatory treatment; typically, the contract will also contain grievance machinery through which the employee, with the aid of his union, can present his complaint. The question remains: When both title VII and contract grievance procedures are available, can an individual employee or a group of employees take direct action against an allegedly discriminatory employer independently of the union and …

The Emerging Duty To Bargain In The Public Sector, Harry T. Edwards

Michigan Law Review

Whether the public sector is indeed sufficiently different from the private sector to warrant the assumption that private sector precedents should be avoided, or at least modified, is a question that can and has been argued at length; therefore, it will serve no useful purpose to rehash the issue in this Article. Rather, it is probably sufficient to observe that, for the most part, legislators and judges at the federal, state, and municipal levels have assumed that the two sectors are different; as a consequence, the initial legislative and judicial reactions to public sector unionism have been cautious. Arguments about …

Organized Labor, The Environment, And The Taft-Hartley Act, James C. Oldham

Michigan Law Review

The legal issues inherent in treating out-plant pollution under the Taft-Hartley Act cannot be fully evaluated without a realistic appreciation of practical considerations and industrial experience. For this reason, considerable empirical information has been collected from a variety of sources. The examination and evaluation of this data will precede the legal analysis. The data, it is hoped, will resolve two questions: What is the effect of out-plant pollution on the workers, and what has been the response of labor unions to date?

Contract Rights And The Successor Employer: The Impact Of Burns Security, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note will only briefly discuss the implications of Burns for NLRB proceedings. Instead, the focus will be on the impact of Burns on actions to compel arbitration under section 301. Is the rationale of Burns inconsistent with the rule established in Wiley for section 301 actions? If it does not undermine Wiley, does Burns indicate when employers will be deemed successors in future actions under section 301 to compel arbitration? Before examining these questions, however, it is necessary to consider the decisions of Wiley and Burns.