Law Commons^™

Resurrecting Labor, Rick Bales

Maryland Law Review

Participation in American labor unions has changed radically, albeit incrementally, over the last fifty years. Private-sector union density has declined five-fold, whereas public-sector density has increased almost as significantly. Today, unions rarely strike, and in much of the country, they are politically impotent. As traditional manufacturing declines and is replaced by on-demand work, unions risk becoming a historical footnote.

This Article ties the decline in union density and power to macroeconomic trends that are highly troubling in an advanced democracy, such as rising income inequality and the failure of wage growth to keep pace with gross domestic product (“GDP”) growth. …

The Persistence Of Union Repression In An Era Of Recognition, Anne Marie Lofaso

Maine Law Review

Labor rights in countries with predominantly free market economies have generally passed through three stages--repression, tolerance, and recognition. In the United States, nineteenth-century state and federal governments repressed labor unions by making conduct, such as workers banding together for higher wages, subject to criminal penalty and civil liability. Courts paved the way for tolerating labor unions by overruling repressive precedents. By the early twentieth century, Congress followed suit by legislatively exempting unions from certain legal liabilities. In 1935, Congress enacted Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), marking the first formal federal government recognition of employees' “right to …

Can Nfl Players Obtain Judicial Review Of Arbitration Decisions On The Merits When A Typical Hourly Union Worker Cannot Obtain This Unusual Court Access?, Michael Z. Green, Kyle T. Carney

Faculty Scholarship

Several recent court cases, brought on behalf of National Football League (NFL) players by their union, the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), have increased media and public attention to the challenges of labor arbitrator decisions in federal courts. The Supreme Court has established a body of federal common law that places a high premium on deferring to labor arbitrator decisions and counseling against judges deciding the merits of disputes covered by a collective bargaining agreement (CBA). A recent trend suggests federal judges have ignored this body of law and analyzed the merits of labor arbitration decisions in the NFL setting.

NFL …

An Overview Of The October 2006 Supreme Court Term, Erwin Chemerinsky

Erwin Chemerinsky

No abstract provided.

Questions, Questions: Has Weber Had An Impact On Unions’ Representational Responsibilities In Workplace Human Rights Disputes?, Claire Mummé

Law Publications

This essay attempts to put forward a research agenda for properly evaluating the changing nature of unions’ human rights representational obligations since Weber. I begin by investigating two legal questions: first, whether unions are held to a more stringent duty of fair representation (DFR) standard in regards to members’ discrimination grievances than prior to Weber and Parry Sound, and second, whether there has been a broadening of the concept of union discrimination under human rights codes, such that unions may be held liable for failing to bring forward discrimination grievances. With the legal picture in place, I then set out …