Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

Privacy, Poverty, And Big Data: A Matrix Of Vulnerabilities For Poor Americans, Mary Madden, Michele E. Gilman, Karen Levy, Alice Marwick

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the matrix of vulnerabilities that low-income people face as a result of the collection and aggregation of big data and the application of predictive analytics. On one hand, big data systems could reverse growing economic inequality by expanding access to opportunities for low-income people. On the other hand, big data could widen economic gaps by making it possible to prey on low-income people or to exclude them from opportunities due to biases entrenched in algorithmic decision-making tools. New kinds of “networked privacy” harms, in which users are simultaneously held liable for their own behavior and the actions …

The Role Of The State Towards The Grey Zone Of Employment: Eyes On Canada And The United States, Susan Bisom-Rapp, Urwana Coiquaud

Faculty Scholarship

In most countries, precarious working is on the rise and nonstandard forms of work are proliferating. What we call the “grey zone” of employment is generated by transformations at and with respect to work both in standard and nonstandard forms of working. Focusing on legal and policy regulation, and on the role of the state in the creation and perception of the grey zone, our contribution explains the way the government acts or fails to act, and the consequences of that activity or inactivity on the standard employment relationship. Examining and juxtaposing conditions in our two countries, Canada and the …

The Death Of The Firm, June Carbone, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

This Article maintains that the decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which referred to the corporation as a legal fiction designed to serve the interests of the people behind it, signals the “death of the firm” as a unit of legal analysis in which business entities are treated as more than the sum of their parts and appropriate partners to advance not just commercial, but public ends. The Hobby Lobby reference to the firm as a fiction is a product of a decades-long shift in the treatment of corporations. This shift reflects both an ideological embrace of the free-market-oriented “agency-cost” …

A Different Class Of Care: The Benefits Crisis And Low-Wage Workers, Trina Jones

Faculty Scholarship

When compared to other developed nations, the United States fares poorly with regard to benefits for workers. While the situation is grim for most U.S. workers, it is worse for low-wage workers. Data show a significant benefits gap between low-wage and high-wage in terms of flexible work arrangements (FWAs), paid leave, pensions, and employer-sponsored health-care insurance, among other things. This gap exists notwithstanding the fact that FWAs and employment benefits produce positive returns for employees, employers, and society in general. Despite these returns, this Article contends that employers will be loath to extend FWAs and greater employment benefits to low-wage …

The New Labor Law, Kate Andrias

Articles

Labor law is failing. Disfigured by courts, attacked by employers, and rendered inapt by a global and fissured economy, many of labor law’s most ardent proponents have abandoned it altogether. And for good reason: the law that governs collective organization and bargaining among workers has little to offer those it purports to protect. Several scholars have suggested ways to breathe new life into the old regime, yet their proposals do not solve the basic problem. Labor law developed for the New Deal does not provide solutions to today’s inequities. But all hope is not lost. From the remnants of the …

How To Screen For Success In Employment Law Cases, Robert M. Rosen

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Nela Touro Conference 1999 Selected Second Circuit Cases Of Interest, Lawrence Solotoff

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Recent Supreme Court Employment Law Developments, Olati Johnson, Douglas D. Scherer

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Three Out Of Four Economists Recommend Raising The Minimum Wage! A Closer Look At The Debate Surrounding Seattle's Minimum Wage Ordinance, Erica Bergmann

Seattle University Law Review

This Note will discuss the implications of a high minimum wage by examining the debate around the Seattle Ordinance with a particular focus on the IFA lawsuit. To analyze the possible impacts of the Seattle Ordinance, current and historical arguments both in support of and in opposition to minimum wage laws are considered. This Note ultimately concludes that the U.S. District Court rightly denied the IFA’s motion for a preliminary injunction, which would have frustrated Seattle’s experiment before it began. Seattle’s plan to implement a $15 minimum wage, and similar experiments, should be permitted to proceed because the problem of …

Civil Rights-Newspaper Advertisements For Employment Opportunities Located In South Africa, Which Do Not On Their Face Recite Discriminatory Conditions, Do Not Violate Municipal Anti-Discrimination Laws, Nancy L. Rumble

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

United Nations-United States Withdraws From The International Labor Organization, Michael K. Mixson

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Occupy Our Occupations: Why “We Are The 99%” Resonates With Working People And What We Can Do To Fix The American Workplace, Sarah Leberstein, Anastasia Christman

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Angry Employees: Revisiting Insubordination In Title Vii Cases, Susan Carle, Susan D. Carle

Faculty Collected Scholarship and Works

In too many Title VII cases, employees find themselves thrown out of court because they reacted angrily to reasonable perceptions of employer discrimination. In the race context, supervisors repeatedly call employees the n-word and use other racial epithets, order African American employees to perform work others in the same job classification do not have to do, and impose discipline white employees do not face for the comparable conduct. In the gender context, courts throw out plaintiffs’ cases even where supervisors engage in egregious sexual harassment. Employees who react angrily to such demeaning treatment—by cursing, shouting, refusing an order or leaving …

Will Work For Free: The Legality Of Unpaid Internships, Nicole M. Klinger

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This Note addresses the current ambiguity in the law regarding if unpaid interns are employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Note explores relevant case law throughout the circuit courts, but primarily focuses on the Second Circuit’s recent decision in Glatt v. Fox Searchlight Pictures. It argues that the primary benefits test created by the Second Circuit in Glatt does not adequately protect unpaid interns nor does it inform employers of the standards they need to meet in order to adopt legal unpaid internship programs. Instead, courts should adopt a clearer, more rigid test that finds an intern not …

Saving Mr. Banks And Other Interest-Based Negotiations, Michael Rogers

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

The goal of this article is to encourage the use of interestbased negotiations. Some of the stories included will be familiar; others will be fresh. In Getting to Yes, Fisher and Ury identify four principles of negotiation ("principled negotiation") that can be employed effectively in almost any type of dispute resolution: (1) Separate the people from the problem; (2) Focus on interests rather than positions; (3) Invent options for mutual gain; and (4) Insist on using objective criteria. Because focusing on interests is the second step identified in Getting to Yes, and inventing options for mutual gain is the …

Criminal Labor Law, Benjamin Levin

Publications

This Article examines a recent rise in civil suits brought against unions under criminal statutes. By looking at the long history of criminal regulation of labor, the Article argues that these suits represent an attack on the theoretical underpinnings of post-New Deal U.S. labor law and an attempt to revive a nineteenth century conception of unions as extortionate criminal conspiracies. The Article further argues that this criminal turn is reflective of a broader contemporary preference for finding criminal solutions to social and economic problems. In a moment of political gridlock, parties seeking regulation increasingly do so via criminal statute. In …

Overcoming The Great Forgetting: A Comment On Fishkin And Forbath, Jedediah S. Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

Fishkin and Forbath’s (F&F’s) manuscript is a project of recovery. It portrays the present as a time marked by a “Great Forgetting” of a tradition of constitutional political economy. F&F name what has been forgotten the “democracy of opportunity” tradition. Recovering it would mean again treating the following three principles as linked elements at the core of our Constitution: (1) an anti-oligarchy principle that works to prevent wealth from producing grossly unequal political power; (2) a commitment to a broad middle class with secure, respected work; and (3) a principle of inclusion that opens participation in both citizenship and the …

Politics At Work After Citizens United, Ruben J. Garcia

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

There are seismic changes going on in the political system. The United States Supreme Court has constitutionalized the concentration of political power in the “one percent” in several recent decisions, including Citizens United v. FEC. At the same time, unions are representing a shrinking share of the workforce, and their political power is also being diminished. In order for unions to recalibrate the balance of political power at all, they must collaborate with grassroots community groups, as they have done in several recent campaigns. There are, however, various legal structures that make coordination between unions and nonunion groups difficult, …

My Hair Is Not Like Yours: Workplace Hair Grooming Policies For African American Women As Racial Stereotyping In Violation Of Title Vii, Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander, Linda F. Harrison

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

This article argues that workplace discrimination based on hair grooming policies disproportionately impacts African American women. The article seeks to establish that natural hair is an immutable characteristic, as is all hair, made mutable by social policies that impose an "acceptable" standard of beauty that was never meant to include or reflect black women. Often placed under workplace or other institutional grooming policies, the article posits that these policies are no more than a continuation of race-based policies that reflect unlawful stereotyping under Title VII and should be eliminated. Lastly, the article proposes a set of questions that test the …

Criminal Labor Law, Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article examines a recent rise in suits brought against unions under criminal statutes. By looking at the long history of criminal regulation of labor, the Article argues that these suits represent an attack on the theoretical underpinnings of post-New Deal U.S. labor law and an attempt to revive a nineteenth century conception of unions as extortionate criminal conspiracies. The Article further argues that this criminal turn is reflective of a broader contemporary preference for finding criminal solutions to social and economic problems. In a moment of political gridlock, parties seeking regulation increasingly do so via criminal statute. In this …

Proposing An Integrative-Progressive Model In Handling Troubled Indonesian Overseas Workers In The Transit Area (A Socio-Legal Research In Tanjung Pinang City, Kepulauan Riau Province), Rina Shahriyani Shahrullah, Elza Syarief

Indonesia Law Review

Tanjung Pinang City of the Riau Islands Province (Provinsi Kepulauan Riau) is a transit area for the troubled Indonesian overseas workers from Singapore and Malaysia. The Indonesian National Board for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Workers (Badan Nasional Penempatan dan Perlindungan Tenaga Kerja Indonesia/BNP2TKI) reported that 15,105 troubled Indonesian overseas workers were deported from January to November 2014 via Tanjung Pinang City. Previous research revealed that citizens of Tanjung Pinang City criticized the treatments given by the local government to the deported workers by reason that they were not the citizens of the Riau Islands Province, yet the local …

Employment Equality In A Color-Blind Society, Earl M. Curry Jr.

Akron Law Review

The purposes of this article are first, to look at the rights of Negroes, under law, to bring economic pressure to bear for employment equality, including the demand for a quota, and secondly to see how that law is satisfying today's social needs. To achieve this latter purpose, perhaps we must ask whether our society can afford to be legally color-blind? We shall look first to the private self-help devices that have been used by minorities, and then to one area of governmental intervention that has dealt directly with minority employment and the use of quotas or goals to achieve …

National Gay Task Force V. Board Of Education Of Oklahoma City, Susan Fitch

Akron Law Review

The National Gay Task Force (NGTF) looked to the courts for relief in challenging an Oklahoma statute which attempted to regulate teachers' speech. National Gay Task Force v. Board of Education of Oklahoma City marks the first time since the beginning of the gay rights movement that the United States Supreme Court has granted certiorari to a case which had homosexuality as its central issue. The result in National Gay Task Force has left both the challengers and the defenders of the Oklahoma statute claiming victory.

The NGTF claims that although the portion of the statute which prohibits teachers from …

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

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Fitting The Forum To The Pernicious Fuss: A Dispute System Design To Address Implicit Bias And 'Isms In The Workplace, Elayne E. Greenberg

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

This paper proposes a dispute system design to address workplace discrimination caused by implicit biases so that employees and employers involved in such disputes can secure a more responsive justice than existing legal processes are able to provide. Workplace discrimination caused by implicit bias continues to contaminate our work environment despite our focused legal efforts to combat such overt "isms" as sexism, racism, ageism, and ableism. Although overt expressions of bias have significantly decreased in recent years, expressions of implicit bias, the primary cause of workplace discrimination, persist.

This discussion takes place in three parts. Part One describes implicit bias, …

Fitting The Forum To The Pernicious Fuss: A Dispute System Design To Address Implicit Bias And 'Isms In The Workplace, Elayne E. Greenberg

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

This paper proposes a dispute system design to address workplace discrimination caused by implicit biases so that employees and employers involved in such disputes can secure a more responsive justice than existing legal processes are able to provide. Workplace discrimination caused by implicit bias continues to contaminate our work environment despite our focused legal efforts to combat such overt "isms" as sexism, racism, ageism, and ableism. Although overt expressions of bias have significantly decreased in recent years, expressions of implicit bias, the primary cause of workplace discrimination, persists.

This paper extends the research on implicit bias to dispute system …

Andrew B. Arnold's Fueling The Gilded Age: Railroads, Miners, And Disorder In Pennsylvania Coal Country, Laura Phillips Sawyer

Scholarly Works

Andrew Arnold’s Fueling the Gilded Age explores the struggles for managerial control and economic power that erupted among coal miners, coal operators, and railroad executives in central Pennsylvania between 1872 and 1902. Rather than presenting an unassailable triumph of the railroads’ interests over labor, Arnold argues that the “coal industry defied order” (p. 3) and laborers exhibited “unexpected agency ” (p. 4, emphasis in original) by thwarting the plans of railroad executives to impose managerial capitalism from the top down. Instead, wage earners “refused to accept their designated fate as commodities” (p. 222) and thereby exerted influence on the institutional …

Rights At Work: Fairness In Personal Work Relations And Restorative Labour Market Regulation, Bruce P. Archibald

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

By desire or necessity, virtually all of us work for a considerable portion of our lives. Work defines our social status, determines our degrees of health and happiness and underpins our sense of self. The productivity, efficiency and economic significance of the work we do, in aggregate terms, are critical to the prosperity of the societies in which we live. Moreover, fair treatment in our workplaces is an important aspect of our individual well-being and a mark of the civility and decency of our communities. Many of us expect the law to ensure fairness in our work relations; but increasingly, …

A Comparative Analysis Of Unconscious And Institutional Discrimination In The United States And Britain, Leland Ware

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Social Media Policy Confusion: The Nlrb's Dated Embrace Of Concerted Activity Misconstrues The Realities Of Twenty-First Century Collective Action, Geordan G. Logan

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.