Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

Duty Of Fair Representation Jurisprudential Reform: The Need To Adjudicate Disputes In Internal Union Review Tribunals And The Forgotten Remedy Of Re-Arbitration, Mitchell H. Rubinstein

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

One of the best kept secrets in American labor law is that duty of fair representation jurisprudence simply does not work. It does not work for plaintiff union members because they must satisfy a close-to-impossible burden of proof and have a short statute of limitations window in which to assert their claim. It does not work for defendant unions because they are often forced to file pointless grievances in order to avoid the cost of litigation. It does not work for defendant employers because they are often brought into these lawsuits because they have the "deep pockets."

This Article makes …

Agency, Code, Or Contract: Determining Employees' Authorization Under The Computer Fraud And Abuse Act, Katherine Mesenbring Field

Michigan Law Review

The federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act ("CFAA ") provides for civil remedies against individuals who have accessed a protected computer without authorization or in excess of their authorization. With increasing numbers of employees using computers at work, employers have turned to the CFAA in situations where disloyal employees have pilfered company information from the employer's computer system. The vague language of the CFAA, however, has led courts to develop three different interpretations of "authorization" in these CFAA employment cases, with the result that factually similar cases in different courts can generate opposite outcomes in terms of employee liability under …

The Future Of American Labor And Employment Law: Hopes, Dreams, And Realities, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

In many respects the US is a deeply conservative country. Unique among the major industrial democracies of the world, it imposes the death penalty, provides no national health insurance, fixes a high legal drinking age, and subscribes to the doctrine of employment at will. Perhaps not surprisingly, its labor movement is also one of the most conservative on earth, eschewing class warfare and aiming largely at the bread-and-butter goal of improved wages, benefits, and working conditions. Yet American employers have generally never been as accepting of unionization as their counterparts in other countries (Bok 1971; Freeman and Medoff 1984). Over …

Prosecuting Worker Endangerment: The Need For Stronger Criminal Penalties For Violations Of The Occupational Safety And Health Act, David M. Uhlmann

Articles

A recent spate of construction deaths in New York City, similar incidents in Las Vegas, and scores of fatalities in recent years at mines and industrial facilities across the country have highlighted the need for greater commitment to worker safety in the United States and stronger penalties for violators of the worker safety laws. Approximately 6,000 workers are killed on the job each year1—and thousands more suffer grievous injuries—yet penalties for worker safety violations remain appallingly small, and criminal prosecutions are almost non-existent. In recent years, most of the criminal prosecutions for worker safety violations have been brought by the …

Working Group On Chapter 1 Of The Proposed Restatement Of Employment Law: Existence Of Employment Relationship, Dennis R. Nolan, Theodore J. St. Antoine, Joseph E. Slater, Alvin Goldman

Articles

This article presents a critique of chapter 1 of the Proposed Restatement of Employment Law. The critique is organized to follow the organization of the proposed Restatement, which begins with a provision of black letter law, a series of comments and illustrations explaining the meaning and application of the black letter law, and the reporters' notes providing support for the black letter law and the commentary. This critique will follow that structure, with each part focusing on a section of the chapter: the introductory note; section 1.01; section 1.02; section 1.03; and section 1.04. The subdivisions of the parts will, …

Addressing Segregation In The Brown Collar Workplace: Toward A Solution For The Inexorable 100%, Leticia M. Saucedo

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Despite public perception to the contrary, segregated workplaces exist in greater number today than ever before, largely because of the influx of newly arrived immigrant workers to low-wage industries throughout the country. Yet existing antidiscrimination frameworks no longer operate adequately to rid workplaces of the segregation that results from targeting immigrant workers. This Article suggests a new anti-discrimination framework to address workplace segregation. The Article reviews how litigants have attempted to rid the workplace of conditions resulting from segregated departments through existing anti-discrimination frameworks. It then suggests a simple, yet powerful, shift in the inferences that can be drawn from …

Will The Tax Man Cometh To Coach Rodriguez?, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn

Articles

There has been much in the news recently about coaches of major college sports teams moving to a new school and incurring an obligation to make payment to their old school under a buyout provision in their contract. The most recent example is the highly publicized move of Richard Rodriguez from West Virginia University to the University of Michigan. Coach Rodriguez had a contract with his former employer that required him to pay $4 million dollars to West Virginia if he left for another coaching position. After a suit was filed, it was reported that the parties agreed that the …

From Court-Surrogate To Regulatory Tool: Re-Framing The Empirical Study Of Employment Arbitration, W. Mark C. Weidemaier

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

A growing body of empirical research explores the use of arbitration to resolve employment disputes, typically by comparing arbitration to litigation using relatively traditional outcome measures: who wins, how much, and how quickly. On the whole, this research suggests that employees fare reasonably well in arbitration. Yet there remain sizeable gaps in our knowledge. This Article explores these gaps with two goals in mind. The first and narrower goal is to explain why it remains exceedingly difficult to assess the relative fairness of arbitration and litigation. The outcome research does not account for a variety of 'filtering" mechanisms that influence …

Arbitration Costs And Forum Accessibility: Empirical Evidence, Christopher R. Drahozal

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this Article, written for this symposium issue on "Empirical Studies of Mandatory Arbitration," I examine the available empirical evidence on these two questions. I take "mandatory arbitration" to refer to pre-dispute arbitration clauses in consumer and employment (and maybe franchise) contracts. Accordingly, I limit my consideration of the empirical evidence to those types of contracts. I do not discuss empirical studies of international arbitrations, which almost always arise out of agreements between commercial entities. Nor do I discuss empirical studies of court-annexed arbitrations, which may not derive from party agreement and do not ordinarily proceed to a binding award.

Mandatory Arbitration: Why It's Better Than It Looks, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

"Mandatory arbitration" as used here means that employees must agree as a condition of employment to arbitrate all legal disputes with their employer, including statutory claims, rather than take them to court. The Supreme Court has upheld the validity of such agreements on the grounds that they merely provide for a change of forum and not a loss of substantive rights. Opponents contend this wrongfully deprives employees of the right to a jury trial and other statutory procedural benefits. Various empirical studies indicate, however, that employees similarly situated do about as well in arbitration as in court actions, or even …

Reverse Monitoring: On The Hidden Role Of Employee Stock-Based Compensation, Sharon Hannes

Michigan Law Review

This Article develops a new understanding of equity-based compensation schemes, such as employee stock option plans. Current literature views such schemes as a measure aimed at motivating the recipient employees to work harder for the firm. Under that view, this method of remuneration either complements or substitutes for other measures used to monitor the performance of the recipient employees. In contrast, this Article proposes that recipient employees be viewed as potential monitors of other employees and that stock options (or similar types of compensation) motivate them to fulfill this task. This view has many applications and can shed light on …

Property, Contracts, And Politics, Mark Tushnet

Michigan Law Review

Rebecca Scott is a historian, not an economist. Describing how a dispute over a mule's ownership was resolved, Professor Scott reproduces a receipt two claimants left when they took the mule from the plantation whose manager claimed it as well (p. 185). By contrast, analyzing property relations in the pre-Civil War American South, economic historian Jenny Wahl observes, "[E]conomic historians tend to [use] ... frequency tables, graphs, and charts." The differences in visual aids to understanding indicate the various ways historians and economists approach a single topic-the relation between markets and politics, the latter defined to include the deployment of …

Young Associates In Trouble, William D. Henderson, David Zaring

Michigan Law Review

Large law firms have reputations as being tough places to work, and the larger the firm, the tougher the firm. Yet, notwithstanding the grueling hours and the shrinking prospects of partnership, these firms perennially attract a large proportion of the nation's top law school graduates. These young lawyers could go anywhere but choose to work at large firms. Why do they do so if law firms are as inhospitable as their reputations suggest? Two recent novels about the lives of young associates in large, prestigious law firms suggest that such a rational calculation misapprehends the costs. Law professor Kermit Roosevelt's …

Education And Labor Relations: Asian Americans And Blacks As Pawns In The Furtherance Of White Hegemony, Xiaofeng Stephanie Da

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Asian Americans and Blacks have been, and continue to be, racialized relative to each other in our society. Asian Americans and Blacks have come to occupy marginalized positions as the polarized ends on the economic spectrums of education and labor relations, with an expanding "Whiteness" as the filler in the middle as Whites manipulate the differing interests of both subordinated groups to align with White (the dominant group's) interests. Although Whites purport to champion the interests of one subordinate group over the other, in reality the racialization of Asian Americans and Blacks in our country is rooted in the preservation …

Tax Consequences When A New Employer Bears The Cost Of The Employee's Terminating A Prior Employment Relationship, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn

Articles

The next few months will be busy ones for moving companies that have NCAA basketball coaches as customers. In the past few months, several men's college basketball coaches have accepted jobs at different schools. Several of those coaches, who were still under contract at their former institution, had buy out provisions that allowed them to terminate their relationship for a set price. John Beilein is a prominent example of this since his buy out price was so high. Last season, Beilein was the head basketball coach at West Virginia University where he was under contract with the school until 2012. …

There's No "I" In "League": Professional Sports Leagues And The Single Entity Defense, Nathaniel Grow

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that outside of labor disputes, sports leagues should be presumed to be single entities. Part I argues that professional sports leagues are single entities in disputes regarding league-wide, non-labor policy. In particular, the focus of the Supreme Court's jurisprudence on economic reality rather than organizational form necessitates a finding that professional sports leagues are single entities in non-labor disputes. Part II argues that professional sports leagues are not single entities for purposes of labor disputes; sports leagues, on the whole, do not involve a unity of interest for labor matters. More importantly, existing precedent outside of the …

Conscripting Attorneys To Battle Corporate Fraud Without Shields Or Armor? Reconsidering Retaliatory Discharge In Light Of Sarbanes-Oxley, Kim T. Vu

Michigan Law Review

This Note advocates that federal courts should allow attorneys to bring retaliatory discharge claims under SOX. Traditional rationales prohibiting the claims of retaliatory discharge by attorneys do not apply in the context of Sarbanes-Oxley. This Note contends that the Department of Labor and the federal courts should interpret the whistleblower provisions of § 806 as protecting attorneys who report under § 307. Assuring reporting attorneys that they have protection from retaliation will encourage them to whistleblow and thereby advance SOX's policy goal of ferreting out corporate fraud. Part I explores the legal landscape of retaliatory discharge suits by attorneys. This …

Mark(Et)Ing Nondiscrimination: Privatizing Enda With A Certification Mark, Ian Ayres, Jennifer Gerarda Brown

Michigan Law Review

People in the United States strongly support the simple idea that employers should not discriminate against gays and lesbians. In a 2003 Gallup poll, eighty-eight percent of respondents said that "homosexuals should . . . have equal rights in terms of job opportunities." Even prominent social conservatives- such as George W. Bush-give lip service to the idea that employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is wrong. But gay rights advocates have achieved only modest legal reform on this issue. Seventeen states have prohibited employment discrimination against gays and lesbians. A seemingly modest bill, the Employment Non Discrimination Act …

Finding The Sex In Sexual Harassment: How Title Vii And Tort Schemes Miss The Point Of Same-Sex Hostile Environment Harassment, Yvonne Zylan

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

It has been nearly a quarter century since the United States Supreme Court first recognized the cause of action for a sexually hostile work environment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, the Court essentially adopted the view offered by legal academician Catharine MacKinnon that harassment taking the form of a sexually hostile work environment is a manifestation of gender-based power. In so doing, the Court created a remedy for many aggrieved employees, permitting redress in the federal courts for a problem that makes many workplaces unbearable. At the same …

The Four Pillars Of Work Law, Orly Lobel

Michigan Law Review

In our contemporary legal landscape, a student wishing to study the law of the workplace has scarce opportunity to encounter an integrated body of scholarship that analyzes the labor market as the subject of government regulation, contractual duties, collective action, and individual rights. Work law developed in the American legal system as a patchwork of common law doctrine, federal and state statutes, and evolving social norms. Typical law school curricula often include courses relating to the four pillars of work law: "employment law," "labor law," "employment discrimination," and some variation of a tax-oriented "employee-benefits law." Employment law, in most categorizations, …

Victimizing The Abused?: Is Termination The Solution When Domestic Violence Comes To Work?, Nicole Buonocore Porter

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Part I of this article will discuss domestic violence, explaining the dynamics of domestic violence in an effort to shed light on why it is so difficult for a battered woman to leave the abusive relationship. This understanding is necessary for a sensitive and informed decision-making process. This Part will also discuss the magnitude of the effect that domestic violence has on the workplace. Part II will discuss a company's potential legal liability for: (a) wrongfully terminating the employee-victim and (b) failing to protect other employees (including, perhaps, the employee-victim herself) if the company does not terminate the employee-victim and …

Teaching Adr In The Labor Field In China, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

My first visit to China, in 1994, was purely as a tourist, and came about almost by accident. In late September of that year I attended the XIV World Congress of the International Society for Labor Law and Social Security in Seoul, South Korea. In the second week of October I was scheduled to begin teaching a one-term course in American law as a visiting professor at Cambridge University in England. Despite my hazy notions of geography, I realized it made no sense to return to the United States for the intervening week. The obvious solution was to continue flying …

Offshore Outsourcing And Worker Rights, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

For the workers in the Rust Belt of the United States, concentrated in Southern New England, Western New York State, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois, it doesn't make much difference whether their jobs are outsourced or lost to North Carolina or Mexico or China. In any event the sources of income that have existed for generations are gone and the economic and psychic pains are much the same. Nonetheless, for purposes of national policy it plainly matters whether the work is moving to another part of the country or is leaving the United States entirely. I am going to …

Sexual Harassment: Limiting The Affirmative Defense In The Digital Workplace, Donald P. Harris, Daniel B. Garrie, Matthew J. Armstrong

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Digital communications sexual harassment is on the rise. Such harassment occurs through sexually offensive and unwarranted e-mails, placing harassing messages on electronic bulletin boards, and other forms of harassment that occur through the Internet. To date, courts have remained silent on the issue of sexual harassment by digital communications. Should this type of harassment be treated any differently than harassment that occurs in the physical space? The somewhat surprising answer is yes.

This Article advocates applying a new judicial framework for addressing digital communications sexual harassment. This new framework accounts for the real-world technology in the digital workplace and the …

Offshore Outsourcing And Workers Rights, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

No abstract provided.

Is U.S. Ceo Compensation Inefficient Pay Without Performance?, John E. Core, Wayne R. Guay, Randall S. Thompson

Michigan Law Review

In Pay Without Performance, Professors Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried develop and summarize the leading critiques of current executive compensation practices in the United States. This book, and their highly influential earlier article, Managerial Power and Rent Extraction in the Design of Executive Compensation, with David Walker offer a negative, if mainstream, assessment of the state of U.S. executive compensation: U.S. executive compensation practices are failing in a widespread manner, and much systemic reform is needed. The purpose of our Review is to summarize the book and to offer some counterarguments to try to balance what is becoming …

"Has The Millennium Yet Dawned?": A History Of Attitudes Toward Pregnant Workers In America, Courtni E. Molnar

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article will focus on what might be considered the "prehistory" of the PDA in an attempt to shed new light on the equality/difference debate. Beginning as early as the nineteenth century, pregnant workers have been forced into either the equality approach or the difference approach depending mostly on race and class. This Article will show that, at times, both approaches restrained the autonomy of women and even caused harm to individual women and society by contributing to the development of the stereotypes and social attitudes that continue to permit pregnancy discrimination today.

From Race To Class Struggle: Re-Problematizing Critical Race Theory, E San Juan Jr.

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The misconstrual of "class" as a theoretical and analytic concept for defining group or individual identity has led, especially during the Cold War period, to its confusion with status, life-style, and other ideological contingencies. This has vitiated the innovative attempt of CRT to link racism and class oppression. We need to reinstate the Marxist category of class derived from the social division of labor that generates antagonistic class relations. Class conflict becomes the key to grasping the totality of social relations of production, as well as the metabolic process of social reproduction in which racism finds its effectivity. This will …

Tribal Employment Separation: Tribal Law Enigma, Tribal Governance Paradox, And Tribal Court Conundrum, Matthew L.M. Fletcher

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Each year, more and more people--Indians and non-Indians--are employed by Indian Tribes and Tribally-chartered organizations. However, as Tribal employment grows, so do the problems associated with personnel disputes. Tribal employment is different than traditional corporate or even government employment because Tribal communities are incredibly close-knit and Tribal governments are very accountable to their constituents. Because of this dynamic, employment separations can create excessive difficulty within a Tribe. Many Tribal courts apply the principles of the Supreme Court's decision in Loudermill, granting terminated employees the right to both an administrative and judicial hearing. However, these processes can often be incredibly painful …

After 70 Years Of The Nlrb: Warm Congratulations -- And A Few Reservations, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

The following essay is based on a talk the speaker was invited to deliver to the National Labor Relations Board on June 3 in Washington, D.C., on the occasion of the agency's 70th anniversary.