Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

Due Process In Employment Arbitration: The State Of The Law And The Need For Self-Regulation, Martin H. Malin

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No abstract provided.

Casa Of Maryland And The Battle Regarding Human Trafficking And Domestic Worker Rights, Elizabeth Keyes

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At the November 2006 symposium presented by the University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class, the panelists discussed various issues regarding human trafficking. One entity at the forefront of the fight against human trafficking is CASA of Maryland. This article contains remarks originally made by the author that focused the topic of human trafficking on one particular group of workers: domestic workers. That particular group provides an interesting study because of the many race and gender issues that are wrapped up in the treatment of domestic workers under the law.

Charter Schools And Collective Bargaining: Compatible Marriage Or Illegitimate Relationship? (With C. Kerchner), Martin H. Malin

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The rapid increase in charter schools has been fueled by the view that traditional public schools have failed because of their monopoly on public education. Charter schools, freed from the bureaucratic regulation that dominates traditional public schools, are viewed as agents of change that will shock traditional public schools out of their complacency. Among the features of the failed status quo are teacher tenure, uniform salary grids and strict work rules, matters that teacher unions hold dear. Yet unions have begun organizing teacher in charter schools. This development prompts the question whether unionization and charter schools are compatible. In contrast …

Derecho Laboral Y Organización Sindical En Puerto Rico, César F. Rosado Marzán

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No abstract provided.

Derechos Mancos Para Manos Obreras: Cómo El Derecho Laboral Y La Economía Impactan La Organización Sindical En Puerto Rico, César F. Rosado Marzán

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No abstract provided.

Solidarity Or Colonialism? The Polemic Of "Labor Colonialism", César F. Rosado Marzán

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No abstract provided.

Avoiding Harm Otherwise: Reframing Women Employees' Responses To The Harms Of Sexual Harassment, Margaret E. Johnson

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This article concerns the concepts of employee harm and harm avoidance within the liability framework for hostile work environment sexual harassment by a supervisor. Whether an employer is liable for supervisor sexual harassment depends in part on whether or not the employee avoids her harm or mitigates her damages resulting from the sexual harassment. Despite the law's interest in employee's harm avoidance, courts have failed to fully explore the vast array of harms resulting from sexual harassment and the variety of ways in which an employee avoids these multiple harms. This article reframes the legal discussion of an employee's actions …

Days Without Immigrants: Analysis And Implications Of The Treatment Of Immigration Rallies Under The National Labor Relations Act, Michael C. Duff

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The massive immigration rallies of early 2006 were prompted by anticipated congressional action classifying all unauthorized workers as felons subject to immediate deportation. While a product of federal immigration policy, the rallies implicate federal labor law because they could be characterized as concerted employee action resulting in a series of work stoppages.

Some employees were discharged for missing work to attend the rallies, so an initial question is whether participation in the rallies is protected activity under the National Labor Relations Act. But even assuming the rallies were attended by unauthorized workers, those workers are undeniably employees within the meaning …

The Business Of Employing People With Disabilities: Four Case Studies, Alexander A. Boni-Saenz, Allen W. Heinemann, Deborah S. Crown, Linda L. Emanuel

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This exploratory study examines employer attitudes towards people with disabilities in the labor market. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with senior management, human resources staff, directors of diversity, and hiring managers at four corporations, it pinpoints reasons why businesses chose to hire people with disabilities, investigates the perceived benefits and barriers to hiring people with disabilities, and identifies strategies for successfully hiring and retaining workers with disabilities. It fills a gap in examining the attitudes and decision-making processes of U.S. companies that have been leaders in hiring people with disabilities, as well as delving into the special issues of small businesses …

Wrongful Discharge: The Use Of Federal Law As A Source Of Public Policy, Nancy M. Modesitt

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Wrongful discharge in violation of public policy circumscribes the employment at-will doctrine by prohibiting employers from firing employees who engage in conduct that is deemed to be protected by state or federal public policy. While much has been written about the pros and cons of such wrongful discharge claims, to date no scholarship has focused on the problems that arise when the source of public policy is a federal rather than state statute. This article analyzes the historical and current approaches to the use of federal statutes as a source of public policy to protect employees against discharge, concluding that …

That Pernicious Pop-Up, The Prima Facie Case, Michael Hayes

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This article first explains the role the prima facie case has played in discrimination cases, from its creation in McDonnell Douglas through the Supreme Court's decisions in Aikens and Reeves, up to the application of Reeves by lower courts in the past several years. Next, this article focuses on Reeve's identification of "strength of the prima facie case" as a factor to be considered on summary judgment, and discusses why it would be unwise and unworkable to interpret the words "prima facie case" in that factor as having the same meaning as the "prima facie case" proved in the first …

No Longer Just Company Men: The Flexible Workforce And Employment Discrimination, Review Essay On 'From Widgets To Digits Employment Regulation For The Changing Workplace', By Katherine V.W. Stone (2004), Miriam A. Cherry

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In her new book, From Widgets to Digits, Professor Katherine V.W. Stone reviews and analyzes the dramatic changes, both technological and demographic, that have transformed work in America during the last thirty years. The book broadly documents the shift from an economy that primarily relies on the production and consumption of goods to one in which learning and the transmittal of knowledge is central to the creation of wealth. Professor Stone describes how in the past, workers may have expected job security and long-term employment, but that recent economic, social, and technological change have led to a more temporary and …

Decentering The Firm: The Limited Liability Company And Low Wage Immigrant Women Workers, Miriam A. Cherry

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Congress is now considering radical changes to the immigration system. This article looks at the immigration issue as a labor and employment law question, and proposes a possible solution based on this approach.

I suggest that forming Limited Liability Companies (LLCs) will benefit low-wage immigrant women workers by transforming them into business owners. By using existing legal structures to their benefit, low-wage women workers can curtail at least a portion of the exploitation that they currently experience. Instead of being hired to perform a job, having the intermediary take a cut, and then pay them some amount out of that, …

It's About The Relationship: Collaborative Law In The Employment Context, Marcia L. Mccormick

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Work is central to American life and drives us in fundamental ways. And the workplace, as a result, dominates our lives. We are spending ever greater amounts of time in the workplace and less time in civic and social engagements. As a consequence, our relationships at work have become so significant that they are nearly as important to us as our family relationships. In fact, the employment relationship is similar to the family relationship in the emotional support from coworkers it can provide and in the financial support it provides. Because the employment relationship is so common and psychologically so …

Preserving The Exceptional Republic: Political Economy, Race, And The Federalization Of American Immigration Law, Matthew Lindsay

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Between 1882 and 1891, the U.S. Congress enacted a spate of immigration laws though which the federal government assumed virtually exclusive control over a regulatory sphere that historically had been the province of the states. This Article argues that this federalization of immigration regulation represented an attempt to reconcile the nation’s most cherished ideological commitment - the notion that the U.S. would forever remain an exceptional, “free labor” republic - with the unprecedented social and economic convulsions of the 1870s and 1880s.

The meaning of both immigrants and immigration was fundamentally transformed during the Gilded Age due to two successive …

The Evolving Role Of The Labor Arbitrator (With J. Vonhof), Martin H. Malin

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No abstract provided.

Successful Wage Moderation: Trust, Labor Market Centralization, And Wage Moderation In Puerto Rico's Experience With Export-Led Development, César F. Rosado Marzán

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No abstract provided.

The Allure And Danger Of Practicing Law As Taxonomy, Marcia L. Mccormick

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In this article, I hope to contribute to the ongoing debate on how our society treats the problem of discrimination. Many scholars have criticized the types of antidiscrimination statutes we have enacted as well as the ways in which the courts have interpreted those laws. While I agree with many of these critiques, rather than tackle those very large issues at the outset, I focus on the test the courts currently use to evaluate the evidence to determine whether an inference can be made that discrimination has occurred. I argue that lawyers and courts have become so caught up in …

The Effects Of Jury Ignorance About Damage Caps: The Case Of The 1991 Civil Rights Act, Rebecca E. Hollander-Blumoff, Matthew T. Bodie

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The 1991 Civil Rights Act revolutionized employment discrimination litigation by allowing for compensatory and punitive damages. At the same time, however, the Act capped those damages and forbade courts from informing jurors about the cap. This Article explores the effects of this imposed secrecy on the jury deliberation process and on the jury system itself. First, our article delves into the wealth of psychological literature about jury decision-making to determine how disclosing or hiding the caps might affect the jury's damage calculations. We explore decision-making biases and heuristics that might systematically affect the jurors' judgment about damage awards, and discuss …

The Potential For State Labor Law: The New York Greengrocer Code Of Conduct, Matthew T. Bodie

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While labor law academics bemoan the ossification of federal labor law, the potential for state labor law has just begun to be explored. This Article takes a closer look at the New York Greengrocer Code of Conduct, a unique approach to the problem of industry-wide employment law violations. The Code, negotiated by the New York Attorney General's Office in conjunction with groups representing workers and greengrocers, provides a set of minimum terms and conditions for grocers which to some extent go beyond statutory requirements. In return for agreeing to the Code, grocers can avoid liability for past state employment law …

Questions About The Efficiency Of Employment Arbitration Agreements, Matthew T. Bodie

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The growing popularity of arbitration agreements is well-documented. The academic literature on these agreements has been largely critical, arguing that they jeopardize important rights and enable employers to take unfair advantage of employees and consumers. However, standard economic analysis suggests that since these agreements are freely negotiated, they presumably increase the utility of both parties and are therefore efficient. This Article raises questions about the efficiency of such agreements in the employment context. It begins by modeling the decision-making process by which a rational employee would judge the desirability of an agreement, both after and before a dispute has arisen. …

Whistling In The Dark? Corporate Fraud, Whistleblowers, And The Implications Of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act For Employment Law, Miriam A. Cherry

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Passed in 2002 in the wake of the accounting scandals that resulted in billions of dollars of lost value to shareholders, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has as its major goal the prevention of corporate corruption. This Article analyzes the impact of Section 806, the portion of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that provides protections for employees who report securities fraud, and describes the effect that Sarbanes-Oxley has on existing employment law. In addition, this Article contributes to the debate over the general effectiveness of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a topic of contention among both academics and press commentators. This Article argues that the Act …

Ethical Concerns In Drafting Employment Arbitration Agreements After Circuit City And Green Tree, Martin H. Malin

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No abstract provided.

Book Review, Success Through Political Action: Collective Bargaining In The Private Sector (Paul F. Clark Et Al. Eds.), César F. Rosado Marzán

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No abstract provided.

Questions About The Efficiency Of Employment Arbitration Agreements, Matthew T. Bodie

All Faculty Scholarship

The growing popularity of arbitration agreements is well-documented. The academic literature on these agreements has been largely critical, arguing that they jeopardize important rights and enable employers to take unfair advantage of employees and consumers. However, standard economic analysis suggests that since these agreements are freely negotiated, they presumably increase the utility of both parties and are therefore efficient. This Article raises questions about the efficiency of such agreements in the employment context. It begins by modeling the decision-making process by which a rational employee would judge the desirability of an agreement, both after and before a dispute has arisen. …

Let Unions Be Unions: Allowing Grants Of Benefits During Representation Campaigns, Michael Hayes

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Unions exist to provide assistance to employees; this is their reason for being. Yet once a union begins a campaign to represent a group of employees, it is legally barred from extending tangible assistance to the workers. The National Labor Relations Board ("NLRB" or the "Board") and courts deem a union grant of benefits to employees during or prior to a representation campaign objectionable conduct that requires setting aside the results of the representation election and holding another election.

This article's proposal to open the door to unconditional union benefits during an organizing campaign will likely be controversial. Part of …

Aligning Incentives With Equity: Employee Stock Options And Rule 10b-5, Matthew T. Bodie

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When the Internet boom was in full swing and the stock markets skyrocketed to new levels, companies new and old used stock options to attract and retain employees. Implicit in those options was the promise that employees could participate in the growth of a company's value. However, as the scandals involving WorldCom, Enron, and Global Crossing demonstrate, corporate managers were not always honest with employees or public investors about the company's true value. Public investors can seek civil remedies for securities fraud through a private action under the Securities and Exchange Commission's Rule 10b-5. The Rule's purchase or sale requirement, …

After "Hiding The Ball" Is Over: How The Nlrb Must Change Its Approach To Decision-Making, Michael Hayes

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Is the National Labor Relations Board (the NLRB or the Board), the agency that oversees federal labor law, still relevant? When this question is considered, as it frequently is by scholars, lawyers and officials of the NLRB itself, the focus typically is on whether changes in the workplace, the economy and society are diminishing the relevance of the Board. But there is a new and more immediate threat to the relevance of the Board that so far has been mostly ignored - that the Board is in danger of being rendered a superfluous legal institution in the scheme of American …

Letting Federal Unions Protest Improper Contracting-Out, Charles Tiefer

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In 2000 - 2001, a judicial and General Accounting Office (GAO) ruling precluded federal employee unions from protesting the government's alleged violation of the rules governing the contracting-out procedure because the parties lacked standing. These rulings illustrate how outdated procedures have insulated the government from challenge, and have become matters of particular importance as the government increases its practice of contracting-out. Although these rulings have not closed the tribunal doors to federal employee unions, they have made protests much more difficult, leaving federal employee unions without a forum to protest violations. To better serve the needs of contractors - and …

Analysis Of U.S. Supreme Court Employment Law Decisions, Henry H. Perritt Jr.

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No abstract provided.