Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

The Attachment Gap: Employment Discrimination Law, Women's Cultural Caregiving, And The Limits Of Economic And Liberal Legal Theory, Laura T. Kessler

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Title VII has prohibited employment discrimination on the basis of pregnancy since 1978, when Congress passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act ("PDA"), but it does not require employers to recognize women's caregiving obligations beyond the immediate, physical events of pregnancy and childbirth. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 ("FMLA ") also does little more than provide job security to some relatively privileged women in the case of childbirth. Neither of these statutes, which constitute the bulk of the United States' maternity and parental leave policies, provides for the most common employment leave needs of caregivers, who by all measures …

Stock Market Volatility And 401 (K) Plans, Colleen E. Medill

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Many workers today depend on their 401(k) plan to provide them with an adequate income during retirement. For these workers to achieve retirement income security, their 401(k) plan investments must perform well over their working lifetime. Employers' selection of investment options for the 401(k) plan, a fiduciary duty under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), plays a critical role in determining investment performance. In this Article, Professor Medill uses a series of hypothetical litigation scenarios to illustrate how interpretation of the employer's duty of prudence and duty of loyalty under ERISA present different policy choices for the …

Law As A Tool For A Sexual Revolution: Israel's Prevention Of Sexual Harassment Law- 1998, Tzili Mor

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Discussion of the newly enacted law will outline the theoretical underpinnings and their effect on the resultant version (Part III), followed by the legislative history, including the Knesset and the public debate surrounding the bill (Part IV), and the impact of that debate on the final outcome of the law (Part V). Part VI will pay particular attention to the innovative approach of the law as a whole and some of the revolutionary specific provisions within. In particular, the legislative framework will be considered in the context of a nation founded and conducted on traditional religious tenets of Judaism. Finally, …

The Changing Role Of Labor Arbitration (Symposium: New Rules For A New Game: Regulating Employment Relationships In The 21st Century), Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

A quarter century ago, in a provocative and prophetic article, David E. Feller lamented the imminent close of what he described as labor arbitration's "golden age." I have expressed reservations about that characterization, insofar as it suggested an impending shrinkage in the stature of arbitration. But Professor Feller was right on target in one important respect. Labor arbitration was going to change dramatically from the autonomous institution in the relatively self-contained world of union-management relations which it had been from the end of World War II into the 1970s. When the subject matter was largely confined to union-employer agreements, arbitration …

Gilmer In The Collective Bargaining Context, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Can a privately negotiated arbitration agreement deprive employees of the statutory right to sue in court on claims of discrimination in employment because of race, sex, religion, age, disability, and similar grounds prohibited by federal law? Two leading U.S. Supreme Court decisions, decided almost two decades apart, reached substantially different answers to this questionand arguably stood logic on its head in the process. In the earlier case of Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., involving arbitration under a collective bargaining agreement, the Court held an adverse award did not preclude a subsequent federal court action by the black grievant alleging racial discrimination. …

The Nlra: A Call To Collective Bargaining, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Other Publications

A century ago the legal specialty of most members of this audience would have been known as Master and Servant Law. By the time my generation entered law school, the Decennial Dgest had just added a new topic - Labor Relations Law. That of course dealt with collective bargaining and union-management relations generally. Now, a half century further along, we might seem to have come full circle, to judge by the lectures of the two eminent jurists who inaugurated this series. Both Abner Mikva and Richard Posner spoke on highly important and timely subjects, and yet those would be classified, …

Deference And Disability Discrimination, Rebecca Hanner White

Michigan Law Review

For thirty-five years, the civil rights community has paid scant attention to administrative law principles. Those interested in advancing on-the-job equality for this country's working men and women (or in preserving employer autonomy vis-a-vis federal encroachment) have all but ignored what many consider the arcane technicalities of administrative law. This state of affairs is strange when one considers that administration and enforcement of each of our major federal laws outlawing employment discrimination have been confided to an administrative agency, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC"). The EEOC, however, has historically been given short shrift by litigants and by the judiciary. …

Reclaiming The Labor Movement Through Union Dues? A Postmodern Perspective In The Mirror Of Public Choice Theory, Harry G. Hutchison

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) seeming powerlessness to process dues objector cases has led to a proliferation of state sponsored "paycheck protection" laws and popular referenda devised to ensure that workers will not be obliged to pay dues for non-germane purposes. Recently, California captured national attention as the site of a richly contested paycheck protection referendum. Such proposals have electrified union advocates and have enlivened the debate over the proper use of union dues. In addition, recent attempts to reform campaign finance have run aground on the thorny issue of union political contributions (both in-kind and in cash). Concurrently, …

Labor Rights, Globalization And Institutions: The Role And Influence Of The Organization For Economic Cooperation And Development, James Salzman

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article has four sections. The first recounts the history of the OECD, from its creation as the overseer of the Marshall Plan to its current prominence as global economic analyst, and explains its operations. The second section explores its influence on the development of labor rights, examining the well-known OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, publications on trade and labor by the Employment, Labor and Social Affairs Directorate, and the events surrounding South Korea's accession to the OECD. Each of these activities, though quite different from one another (and, in combination, very different from the activities of other IGOs), provided …

The New Cultural Diversity And Title Vii, Steven A. Ramirez

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article will show that the most progressive diversity initiatives taking hold in the business community are facially neutral in their approach, merit-driven, and fundamentally culture-conscious (as opposed to race-conscious). These initiatives do not allow for any racial preference or gender preference and draw any such bias not from the inherent values of diversity but from the largely segregated pre-existing corporate tradition: hiring culturally aware minorities unleashes value because they bring insights previously unavailable to segregated businesses. In other words, White males can be and are hired in the name of cultural diversity when they bring cultural insights to the …

Contract Reading' In Labor Arbitration, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

A quarter century ago, I used the phrase "contract reader" to characterize the role an arbitrator plays in construing a collective bargaining agreement. This phrase has almost invariable been misunderstood to refer to reading or interpreting the contract. When I spoke of the "contract reader," it was in the context of judicial review of an award. My point was this: When a court has before it an arbitrator's award applying a collective bargaining agreement, it is as if the employer and the union had signed a stipulation stating: "What the arbitrator says this contract means is exactly what we meant …

Arbitration And Judicial Review, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Other Publications

A quarter century ago, in a presentation at the Academy's annual meeting, I used the phrase "contract reader" to characterize the role an arbitrator plays in construing a collective bargaining agreement. That two-word phrase may be the only thing I ever said before this body that has been remembered. Unfortunately, it is almost invariably misunderstood. Time and again members have reproached me: "What's the big deal about contract reading, anyway? Isn't it just the same as contract interpretation?" Or, more substantively scathing: "Do you really think, Ted, that all you have to do to interpret a labor agreement is to …

Building A Community Through Workplace E-Mail: The New Privacy Frontier, Peter Schnaitman

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The relatively new technology of electronic mail (e-mail) presents an entirely new issue of workplace privacy. Currently, whether a person has a privacy interest in their workplace e-mail communications is as unsettled an issue as it has been since the technology emerged in the early part of this decade as the preferred mode of communication in the workplace. Indeed, e-mail may soon be the preferred mode of communication in general. This comment will argue that all e-mail users have a privacy interest in workplace e-mail communications and that the current law does not afford e-mail users any type of protection …

The Rise Of America's Two National Pastimes: Baseball And The Law, Cleta Deatherage Mitchell

Michigan Law Review

Mark McGwire's seventieth home run ball sold at auction in January of this year for $3,005,000. In late 1998, Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos sued a former Orioles manager and his daughter in the circuit court of Cook County, Illinois. Angelos alleged that the original lineup card from the 1995 game when Cal Ripken, Jr., broke Lou Gehrig's consecutive game record belongs to the Orioles, not to the former manager and certainly not to his daughter. There may be no crying in baseball, but there is money. And wherever earthly treasure gathers two or more, a legal system arises. From …

The Triumph Of Hate Speech Regulation: Why Gender Wins But Race Loses In America, Jon Gould

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

On March 30, 1995, newspaper headlines declared that hate speech regulations were dead. After six years of litigating over university hate speech codes, Stanford University's rule, one of the most modest and cautiously drafted, had been declared unconstitutional by a California Superior Court. Hate speech regulation is far from over. To the contrary, hate speech rules not only continue to exist, but the courts regularly enforce their provisions. The difference is that these cases are largely restricted to a single category-sexual harassment. Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and with the regulatory support of the Equal …

What Will Diversity On The Bench Mean For Justice?, Theresa M. Beiner

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This article is aimed at the general question: whether having a woman judge would make a difference in sexual harassment cases. This article is aimed at this general question, the response to which has been elusive: Does the race, gender, or other background characteristics of a judge make a difference in the outcome of cases? The effects of diversity on the bench are just becoming measurable. Many legal scholars have assumed diversity will make a difference. While this conclusion may seem commonsensical, it is important to be able to support such assertions with actual data. The supposition has been that …

The Warn Act, David A. Santacroce

Book Chapters

Plant closings are devastating for workers, their families and the communities in which they live. The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act ("the WARN Act" or "WARN") requires some employers to give their workers sixty days' notice before a plant closing or mass layoff. The purpose of the WARN Act is to provide workers with time to seek alternative employment or retraining and to plan for the transition phase after the layoff.

The WARN Act does not prevent employers from closing a plant; instead it only requires larger employers to give notice, subject to a number of exceptions and exemptions. …

Caste, Class, And Equal Citizenship, William E. Forbath

Michigan Law Review

There is a familiar egalitarian constitutional tradition and another we have largely forgotten. The familiar one springs from Brown v. Board of Education; its roots lie in the Reconstruction era. Court-centered and countermajoritarian, it takes aim at caste and racial subordination. The forgotten one also originated with Reconstruction, but it was a majoritarian tradition, addressing its arguments to lawmakers and citizens, not to courts. Aimed against harsh class inequalities, it centered on decent work and livelihoods, social provision, and a measure of economic independence and democracy. Borrowing a phrase from its Progressive Era proponents, I will call it the social …

Reforming Accretion Analysis Under The Nlra: Supplementing A Borrowed Analysis With Meaningful Policy Considerations, Matthew S. Miner

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Current accretion analysis utilizes a variety of factors to determine whether to merge a non-unionized group of employees with a unionized group of employees within the same firm. The present construction of the analysis; however, ignores employee views and potential manipulation of the doctrine. By failing to account for these two important factors, current accretion analysis neglects two key concerns of the National Labor Relations Act - preventing employer discrimination and fostering uncoerced employee action and choice. This Note advocates a better approach, which gives proper weight to employee views and considers employer motive to control against the possibility of …

Against Common Sense: Why Title Vii Should. Protect Speakers Of Black English, Jill Gaulding

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The speech of many black Americans is marked by phrases such as 'we be writin"' or "we don't have no problems." Because most listeners consider such "Black English" speech patterns incorrect, these speakers face significant disadvantages in the job market. But common sense suggests that there is nothing discriminatory about employers' negative reactions to Black English because it makes sense to allow employers to insist that employees use correct grammar.

This article argues against this common sense understanding of Black English as bad grammar. The author first analyzes the extent of the job market disadvantages faced by Black English speakers …

Local Government Anti-Discrimination Laws: Do They Make A Difference?, Chad A. Readler

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

During the past decade, local governments have expanded their role protecting individuals from discrimination in private employment. Although federal and state laws already protect individuals from employment discrimination based on race, sex, color, religion, national origin, age, and disability, local anti-discrimination ordinances protect an even wider range of characteristics such as sexual orientation, marital status, military status, and income level. The author details the results of a survey indicating that the agencies and dispute resolution processes mandated by local anti-discrimination ordinances are seldom used to protect this wider range of characteristics He argues that effective, uniform anti-discrimination protection should come …

Assesing The Family And Medical Leave Act In Terms Of Gender Equality, Work/Family Balance, And The Needs Of Children, Angie K. Young

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

While recognizing that parental leave is only one aspect of the FMLA, this Article concentrates on the provision allowing leave to parents in order to care for their children. Before analyzing the FMLA in detail, it is helpful to explore what aims a parental-leave policy should have. The purpose of this Article is to propose and defend three goals that parental-leave legislation should strive to meet: equality of career opportunities for men and women, the right to participate in both work and family, and meeting the needs of children. After articulating what parental-leave legislation should aim for in theory, this …

"Reverse Discrimination" And Higher Education Faculty, Joyce A. Hughes

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In this Article, the author critiques the use of "reverse discrimination" claims by White plaintiffs to challenge the hiring of Blacks in institutions of higher education. The author argues that "reverse discrimination" is a myth since no such claim is possible when one White candidate is selected over another; assumptions of inferiority are implicit where such a claim is made when a Black candiate is selected over a White candidate. In other words, allowing such a claim, even if ultimately unsuccessful, implies a presumption of superiority on the part of the White candidate. For this reason, the author argues that …

Cooperation, Conflict, Or Coercion: Using Empirical Evidence To Assess Labor-Management Cooperation, Ellen J. Dannin

Michigan Journal of International Law

Since the 1980s there has been strong interest in labor-management cooperation. That interest was reflected even in government attention, for example, through projects by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor-Management Cooperation. Under the leadership of Undersecretary Stephen Schlossberg, the Bureau's "Laws Project" examined the impact of labor law on labor-management cooperation. The Dunlop Commission issued a report strongly in favor of labor-management cooperation, and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Chair William B. Gould has spoken favorably of it. More recently, the government issued a report on state and local initiatives in this area.

How The Wagner Act Came To Be: A Prospectus, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

The Wagner Act of 1935, the original National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), has been called "perhaps the most radical piece of legislation ever enacted by the United States Congress."' But Supreme Court interpretations supposedly frustrated the utopian aspirations for a radical restructuring of the workplace." Similarly, according to another commentator, unnecessary language in one of the Court's earliest NLRA cases "drastically undercut the new act's protection of the critical right to strike."'

Engineering The Middle Classes: Class Line-Drawing In New Deal Hours Legislation, Deborah C. Malamud

Michigan Law Review

The likely readers of this Article work for a living, or are studying with the hope that they will work for a living very soon. Unlike many other workers in this society, they do not (and will not) get paid time-and-a-half for overtime. In this Article, I tell the story of how upper-level white-collar workers - people like the intended readers of this Article - came to be exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act's general overtime rules. My purpose in telling this story is not to participate in the debate on whether the so-called "white-collar exemptions" to the Fair …

Arbitration: Time Limits And Continuing Violations, Richard I. Bloch

Michigan Law Review

Time limits in a collective bargaining agreement, particularly as they apply to the grievance procedure, are very important. Filing or processing deadlines are taken as seriously in the context of these private documents and negotiated time limits as they are in the world of standard litigation, with deadlines that are imposed statutorily or otherwise. Management advocates often view the time limitation provisions as virtually the only thing employers gain, as opposed to give, in the bargaining relationship. Deadlines have been strictly, if reluctantly, construed by most arbitrators. The "continuing violation" provides a meaningful exception to the otherwise immutable time bar. …

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 …

Mandatory Arbitration Of Employee Discrimination Claims: Unmitigated Evil Or Blessing In Disguise?, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

One of the hottest current issues in employment law is the use of mandatory arbitration to resolve workplace disputes. Typically, an employer will make it a condition of employment that employees must agree to arbitrate any claims arising out of the job, including claims based on statutory rights against discrimination, instead of going to court. On the face of it, this is a brazen affront to public policy. Citizens are being deprived of the forum provided them by law. And indeed numerous scholars and public and private bodies have condemned the use of mandatory arbitration. Yet the insight of that …

"Supervisor" Hostile Environment Sexual Harassment Claims, Liability Insurance, And The Trend Towards Negligence, Amanda D. Smith

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

A lack of settled standards for determining liability in supervisor hostile environment sexual harassment lawsuits combined with similar uncertainty in the context of employer liability insurance coverage has resulted in increased litigation in this area. This Note argues that the current predominant standard in the employer liability context, which is based on negligence principle should be rejected in favor of an apparent authority standard, which more appropriately strikes a balance between encouraging employers to identify harassing behaviors and exonerating them from liability when they do so and take appropriate remedial action. It further argues that in order to develop effective …