Law Commons^™

Awaking Rip Van Winkle: Has The National Labor Relations Act Reached A Turning Point?, William Corbett

William R. Corbett

No abstract provided.

Avoiding The Subject: The Opium War, Opium-Markets, And The Exclusion Of Chinese Laborers In The United States, Canada, And Mexico, Olivia L. Blessing

Olivia L Blessing

The 19th century saw significant increases in the number of Chinese immigrants entering North America, most significantly on the west coast of the United States. Already facing increasing divide amongst the American population over the issue of the Opium Wars and the resulting Opium-addiction amongst the Chinese, the United States found itself now confronting the problem in the form of immigrant workers. Although the Opium Wars and the issue of the Chinese Opium Dens were highly disputed outside the courts, the State and Federal courts surprisingly avoided discussing the topic in their legislative discussions surrounding the Chinese Exclusion Act of …

Seconda Giornata Della Bilateralità - 5 Dicembre 2013, Michele Faioli

Michele Faioli

Workshop di presentazione della ricerca sulla bilateralità italiana e europea

I’M Shocked, Shocked To Find That Politics Is Going On In Here, Anne M. Lofaso

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Shelter From The Storm: Rekindling Research On Collective Bargaining And Representation Issues, William A. Herbert

William A. Herbert

The National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions (National Center) is a four-decade old institution that is supported by and located at Hunter College, City University of New York. The National Center was founded in the wake of the granting of collective bargaining rights by various states and localities to public employees including higher education faculty members and shortly after the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) asserted jurisdiction over private institutions of higher education. Consistent with its mission, the National Center intends to be an engine for rekindling, incubating and promoting research and …

At The Brink Of Free Agency: Creating The Foundation For The Messersmith-Mcnally Decision - 1968-1975, Edmund P. Edmonds

Edmund P. Edmonds

"One of the most dramatic periods in baseball’s long history of labor relations occurred from 1968 through 1975. The Major League Baseball Players Association negotiated baseball’s first Basic Agreement in 1968 without the benefit of any leverage that could alter most of Organized Baseball’s long practices that controlled the players’ mobility and wages. In 1975, however, the union won an arbitration panel hearing that determined that pitchers Dave McNally and Andy Messersmith were free agents after playing one full season under the renewed option year of their contracts and filing a grievance under the newly adopted arbitration process. This stunning …

Let's Deconstrct The Meaning Of Dependent Work To Enlarge The Scope Of Labour Law, Barbara Grandi

barbara grandi

please note that the article might include a graph, which is in a power point format that cannot be attached here

Past As Prologue In The Affirmative Action Jurisprudence Of The Supreme Court: Reflections On Fisher V. University Of Texas, David L. Gregory

David L. Gregory

Fisher v. Texas is the latest, and not the last, word of the Supreme Court on Affirmative Action. After forty years of contentious litigation in more than a dozen highly-charged cases, the near-unanimous Fisher Court undoubtedly understands the operational parameters of affirmative action. The Fisher Court is approaching the mid-point of Justice O’Connor’s 25 years to reach the utopian end of affirmative action. Perhaps the loudest silence in the Fisher Court’s recent history was the complete absence of any reference to Justice O’Connor’s 25 years chronology. Affirmative action is not a perfect methodology; rather, it is a flawed theory. But, …

Permanent Replacements: Organized Labor’S Fall, Employment Law’S (Incomplete) Rise, And The Way Forward, Alexander T. Macdonald

W&M Law Student Publications

No abstract provided.

Collective Representation And Employee Voice In The U.S. Public Sector Workplace: Looking North For Solutions?, Martin H. Malin

All Faculty Scholarship

Legislation enacted in many states following the 2010 elections in the United States strengthened unilateral public employer control and weakened employee voice. This rebalancing of power occurred in the context of state public employee labour relations acts modeled on the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), but with a narrower scope of bargaining than in the private sector. This narrow scope channels unions’ voice away from the quality of public services and towards protecting members from the effects of decisions unilaterally imposed by management. The Supreme Court of Canada has held that the freedom of association guaranteed by the Charter of …

Community Supported Agriculture And Community Labor: Constructing A New Model To Unite Volunteers And Employers, A. Bryan Endres, Rachel Armstrong

A. Bryan Endres

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a farm philosophy and marketing strategy that creates a union between consumers and farmers. Extending beyond the traditional buyer-seller relationship, CSA farmers invite customers to participate in food production in a variety of scenarios the authors refer to as “community labor.” But community labor entails a serious paradox. Traditional employment law doctrine envisions autonomous competition between laborer and employer, and makes little room for these novel, community-based relationships. More importantly, rigid application of employment law structures undermines many of the values embedded in the CSA movement and may limit its continued viability and growth. Constructed …

Utilizing Credit Reports For Employment Purposes: Casting A Wider Net Into The Ocean Of Employment Practices Results In Unintended Yet Much Needed Outcomes, David D. Schein, James D. Phillips

David D. Schein

In our previous article, “Holding Credit Reporting Agencies Accountable: How the Financial Crisis May be Contributing to Improving Accuracy in Credit Reporting”[1] we reviewed the legal history of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and its amendments, and the Federal case law by circuit. We suggested that the ability of consumers to ensure the accuracy and security of their credit reports might lead to an expansion of the litigation surrounding accurate credit reporting. This article takes the discussion further by exploring the ever-expanding use of credit reports in the employment law arena. We review the state legislation limiting the use …

Permanent Replacements: Organized Labor’S Fall, Employment Law’S (Incomplete) Rise, And The Way Forward, Alexander T. Macdonald

Alexander T MacDonald

In the second half of the twentieth century, organized labor effectively collapsed as a source of workplace rights. To fill the gap, federal, state, and local lawmakers patched together a hodge-podge of statutes, regulations, and court-made doctrines, which we now broadly refer to as “employment law.” I this article, I examine the implications of this transition.

First, I track unions’ slow decline, examining not only their shrinking presence in the workforce, but also their waning political strength and their loss of public favor. I then follow the rise of “employment law,” which in labor’s absence grew to become the primary …

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

Nantiya Ruan

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 …

The Family Responsibilities Convention Reconsidered: The Work-Family Intersection In International Law Thirty Years On, Lee Adams

Lee Adams

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Workers with Family Responsibilities Convention, 1981, No. 156 coming into force. Family responsibilities in the context of paid work and its implications for gender equality have been the subject of international regulation most specifically in ILO 156, although it remains a marginalized convention. Since then, the interaction of work and family and the conflict between them have exploded as a subject of scholarly importance. This article examines ILO 156 in the context of chronological development of other major international legal instruments which address the intersection of work and …

Overruling Precedent: "A Derelict In The Stream Of The Law", Michael Leroy

Michael H LeRoy

Will the Supreme Court overrule Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. N.L.R.B., 535 U.S. 137 (2002), its precedent that treats unlawful alien workers as criminals and denies them backpay for a violation of a labor law? More generally, what are the statistical indicators of a precedent that the Supreme Court overrules— and how well does Hoffman Plastic fit that profile? To answer these research questions, I analyze two unique databases— 128 federal and state rulings from 2002-2012 that involved Hoffman Plastic’s remedy issue, and a sample of 154 Supreme Court pairings of an overruled precedent, and the decision that explicitly …

Daddy Warriors: The Battle To Equalize Paternity Leave In The United States By Breaking Gender Stereotypes; A Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Analysis, Abraham Z. Melamed

Abraham Z Melamed

No abstract provided.

The Rule Of Law Goes To Work: How Collective Bargaining May Promote Access To Justice In The U.S., Canada, And Around The World, Christopher David Ruiz Cameron

Christopher David Ruiz Cameron

No abstract provided.

How To Create American Manufacturing Jobs, John D. Gleissner Esquire

John D Gleissner Esquire

No abstract provided.

Restoring The Right To Organize In The Private Sector, James Newell

James Newell

No abstract provided.

Unions, Corporations, And The First Amendment: A Response To Professors Fisk And Chemerinsky, Todd E. Pettys

Todd E. Pettys

In this response to Professor Fisk and Chemerinsky’s critique of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Knox v. SEIU Local 1000, I make two arguments. First, I challenge the premise of shareholder-employee equivalency that undergirds key portions of Fisk and Chemerinsky’s analysis. Second, I contest the claim that Knox contributes to incoherence in the Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence. Specifically, I challenge Fisk and Chemerinsky’s argument that Knox is difficult to reconcile with the Court’s leading precedents on the speech rights of government employees, and I raise doubts about their reading of the Court’s compelled-speech cases involving complaints that one’s resources are …

“The Emperor Has No Clothes:” The Ncaa’S Last Chance As The Middle Man In College Athletics, Nicolas A. Novy

Nicolas A. Novy

No abstract provided.

The Need For A Revitalized Common Law Of The Workplace, William Corbett

William R. Corbett

No abstract provided.

The Narrowing Of The National Labor Relations Act: Maintaining Workplace Decorum And Avoiding Liability, William R. Corbett

William R. Corbett

No abstract provided.

Waiting For The Labor Law Of The Twenty-First Century: Everything Old Is New Again, William R. Corbett

William R. Corbett

No abstract provided.

"The More Things Change,…": Reflections On The Stasis Of Labor Law In The United States, William Corbett

William R. Corbett

No abstract provided.

Is Welching On Public Pension Promises An Option For Illinois? An Analysis Of Article Xiii, Section 5 Of The Illinois Constitution, Eric M. Madiar

Eric M. Madiar

Illinois has the largest unfunded public pension liabilities of any state in the nation. This article considers whether the Illinois General Assembly may, without violating Article XIII, Section 5 of the 1970 Illinois Constitution, unilaterally cut the pension benefits of current public employees as a means to reduce the $96.8 billion the State owes to its five public pension systems. Article XIII, Section 5 (i.e., the “Pension Clause”) of the Illinois Constitution provides that: “Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be …

Social Protection Afforded To Irregular Migrant Workers: Thoughts On International Norms, The Southern African Development Community, Botswana And South Africa, Bruno Ps Van Eck, Felicia Snyman

Bruno PS Van Eck

The majority of migrant workers target those countries in southern Africa that have stronger economies. Irregular migrants are in a particularly vulnerable position, and this article discusses the protection that this category of persons may expect to experience in the southern African region. The authors recommend that the broad notion of “social protection”, rather than the narrower concept “social security” should be emphasized. International, continental and regional instruments providing protection to irregular migrants are traversed and the constitutional and legislative frameworks in relation to social protection in Botswana and South Africa are compared. The article concludes that there are significant …

Shining The Spotlight On Unpaid Law Student Workers, Susan Harthill

Susan Harthill

Shining the Spotlight on UNPAID LAW STUDENT Workers Susan Harthill Abstract Law students who ‘intern’ at for-profit law firms across the United States do a fair day’s work but do not always get a fair day’s pay. Unpaid student interns have long been a well-utilized labor source in the non-profit world, public agencies, and in certain for-profit sectors, such as entertainment and media. Indeed, some unpaid internships are mutually beneficial arrangements for the student and the employer; the student gets hands-on training in an industry that might be difficult to break into, has useful work experience on her resume, and …

Gridlock At The Nlrb: One Step Back, Two Steps Further Back, Michael J. Goldberg

Michael J Goldberg

No abstract provided.