Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

Kentucky River At The Intersection Of Professional And Supervisory Status: Fertile Delta Or Bermuda Triangle?, Marley S. Weiss

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Seeing Straight In The Workplace: An Examination Of Sexual Orientation Discrimination In Public Employment In The Aftermath Of Lawrence V. Texas, Devin A. Cohen

ExpressO

Title VII does not explicitly protect homosexual employees from sexual orientation discrimination and the courts have generally refused to bootstrap sexual orientation discrimination into Title VII as a form of gender discrimination. Therefore, homosexual employees have had to depend on their constitutional rights to protect them from their public employers’ sexual orientation discrimination. Traditionally, the courts have allowed public employers to discriminate against homosexual employees so long as the employers’ reasons were rationally related to legitimate business purposes.

I argue that the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Lawrence v. Texas forces future courts to question the reasonableness of employers’ rational bases. …

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

No Longer Just Company Men: The Flexible Workforce And Employment Discrimination (Book Review Of Katherine Stone's From Widgets To Digits), Miriam A. Cherry

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

The Duty To Bargain In Good Faith: Nlrb V. Truitt Manufacturing Co. And Nlrb V. Insurance Agents’ International Union, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt

ExpressO

This article discusses two classic Supreme Court cases from the 1950's that explore the contours of the obligation to bargain in good faith: NLRB v. Truitt Manufacturing Co. and NLRB v. Insurance Agents' International Union. In the Truitt case, the Supreme Court held that the obligation to bargain in good faith requires an employer to open its books to the union when the employer refuses a request for a wage increase on the basis that such an increase will drive the employer out of business. In the Insurance Agents' case, the Supreme Court held that union slow-down tactics were consistent …

Where There’S At-Will, There Are Many Ways: Redressing The Increasing Incoherence Of Employment At Will, Scott A. Moss

ExpressO

Employment at will, the doctrine that employees have no legal remedy for unfair terminations because they hold their jobs at the will of the employer, has become mired in incoherence. State courts praise the common law rule as “essential to free enterprise” and “central to the free market,” but in recent years they have riddled the rule with increasing exceptions, allowing employee claims for whistleblowing, fraud, etc. Yet states have neither rejected employment at will nor shown any consistency in recognizing exceptions. Strikingly, states cite the same rationales to adopt and reject opposite exceptions, as a case study of two …

State Legislation As A Fulcrum For Change: Wisconsin's Public Sector Labor Law, And The Revolution In Politics And Worker Rights, Joseph E. Slater

ExpressO

The rise of public sector unions is one of the most significant but least examined movements for legal rights and social change. Through the 1950s, government employees typically had no right to bargain collectively or even to organize unions–rights often regarded as fundamental human rights–and public sector unions were small and relatively powerless. Yet today, unions represent more than 40 percent of all public workers, government employees make up about 40 percent of the entire U.S. labor movement, and public sector unions are among the strongest political advocacy groups in the country. This became possible only through a revolution of …

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

All Faculty Scholarship

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Stag Hunt Account And Defense Of Transnational Labour Standards---A Preliminary Look At The Problem, Alan Hyde

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

Transnational labor standards are modeled as cooperative solutions to the class of strategic dilemmas known as Stag Hunts, in which all actors would gain from a cooperative solution, but only if all cooperate. If you think a partner will defect, your best strategy is also to defect. Intuitively, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh will all be better off if none of their children work and all go to school; however if one defects from this agreement it will capture a stream of foreign investment linked to child labor. Understanding Stag Hunts explains why transnational labor standards are found both in genuinely …

Employment Discrimination In A High Velocity Labor Market, Alan Hyde

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

Silicon Valley employers employ few African-Americans, Latino/as, or older workers, yet do not fit the usual paradigms of employment discrimination: they exhibit no taste for uniformity and do not employ job tournaments or internal labor markets. A new model of employment discrimination attributes disparate hiring in Silicon Valley to a combination of: demands for specific skill sets at hiring (the opposite of the subjective criteria that have long beguiled scholars of discrimination) and concomitant refusal to train; hiring through networks of personal contacts; and rewards to career paths that alternate employment with self-employment. Overcoming the disparate impact of these employment …

Who Speaks For The Working Poor?: A Preliminary Look At The Emerging Tetralogy Of Representation Of Low-Wage Service Workers, Alan Hyde

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

Recent advocacy campaigns for low-wage service workers in New York City reveal a new pattern of representation by legal avocacy groups (like National Employment Law Project or law school clinics), governmental actors (like the state Attorney General or New York City Council), and immigrant rights groups. Such campaigns have won important economic and legal victories for Mexican workers in Korean greengroceries, West African delivery personnel for supermarkets and drug chains, and domestic workers. They have not, however, institutionalized workplace or political representation for these groups. Unions have either been passive, outmaneuvered, or played negative roles in these campaigns. This pattern …

Neutrality Agreements And Card Check Recognition: Prospects For Changing Paradigms, James J. Brudney

The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law Working Paper Series

This article is the first comprehensive treatment of neutrality agreements, which are themselves the most important development in Labor Law for decades. The labor movement's new approach to organizing displaces NLRB-supervised elections with negotiated agreements that provide (i) for employers to remain neutral during an upcoming union campaign, and (ii), in most instances, for employees to decide if they want to be represented through signing authorization cards rather than through a secret ballot election. The article demonstrates the substantial, perhaps predominant, role played by this new contractually-based approach over the past 5-10 years; it also explains why so many employers …

The Limitations Of Retirement Plan Law, Peter M. Van Zante

ExpressO

It is widely believed that employers determine whether or not their employees receive retirement benefits and the type and amount of any benefits that are received. This belief is mistaken. While sponsorship of a retirement plan is a voluntary choice on the part of the sponsoring employer and the sponsoring employer directly controls the type of plan and the level of benefits provided, the employer's choices on these matters are controlled by its employees' preferences for different forms of compensation. An employer must spend the funds available for employee compensation so as to provide its employees with those forms of …

How American Workers Lost The Right To Strike, And Other Tales, James Gray Pope

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

This essay recounts the origins of five statements of labor law made by the Supreme Court, each of which has had a devastating impact on the American labor movement. The five statements are: (1) Workers have no right of self-defense against employers that commit unfair labor practices (NLRB v. Fansteel Metallurgical Corporation); (2) Employers enjoy the right permanently to replace economic strikers (NLRB v. Mackay Radio & Telegraph Company); (3) The National Labor Relations Board has no power to deter unfair labor practices (Consolidated Edison Company v. NLRB); (4) Employers may exclude union organizers from their property (Lechmere, Inc. v. …

Reconstituting The Law Of The Workplace In An Era Of Self-Regulation, Cynthia L. Estlund

ExpressO

As the reach of collective bargaining has shrunk in recent decades, the domain of employment law – of judicially-enforceable individual rights and administratively-enforced regulatory standards – has expanded. Both branches of employment law have seen the rise of employer “self-regulation” – internal systems for enforcement of rights and regulatory standards – and of legal inducements to self-regulation in the form of reduced public oversight or sanctions. In the shift from “self-governance” to “self-regulation,” employees have lost their institutional voices and are losing the protective oversight of courts and public agencies. In this article Professor Estlund looks for ways not to …

Evaluating Work: Enforcing Occupational Safety And Health Standards In The United States, Canada And Sweden, Daniel B. Klaff

ExpressO

The United States’ occupational safety and health enforcement system is breaking down. Klaff argues that much of this breakdown has to do with a fundamental lack of worker participation in the United States’ safety and health system. Klaff makes his case by comparing and contrasting the history and enforcement schemes of the United States, Canada, and Sweden. After arguing for economic rights as human rights, Klaff concludes by offering a set of recommendations for the United States’ occupational safety and health system based upon his value-centered analysis.

How Employment Discrimination Plaintiffs Fare In Federal Court, Kevin M. Clermont, Stewart J. Schwab

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article presents the full range of information that the Administrative Office’s data convey on federal employment discrimination litigation. From that information, the authors tell three stories about (1) bringing these claims, (2) their outcome in the district court, and (3) the effect of appeal. Each of these stories is a sad one for employment discrimination plaintiffs: relatively often, the numerous plaintiffs must pursue their claims all the way through trial, which is usually a jury trial; at both pretrial and trial these plaintiffs lose disproportionately often, in all the various types of employment discrimination cases; and employment discrimination litigants …

The Needle And The Damage Done: How Hoffman Plastics Promotes Sweatshops And Illegal Immigration And What To Do About It , Jennifer S. Berman

ExpressO

This paper examines the intersection of immigration and labor law as developed in federal law, culminating in the recent Supreme Court case, Hoffman Plastics. Arguing that Hoffman was wrongly decided, the paper further demonstrates that stronger penalties are necessary under the NLRA to deter employer wrongdoing, protect workers’ rights, and slow the proliferation of sweatshops.

Brief For The Lawyers' Committee For Civil Rights Under Law; Aarp; The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation; The Legal Aid Society – Employment Law Center; The National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium; The National Association For The Advancement Of Colored People; The National Employment Lawyers Association; The National Partnership For Women And Families; The National Women's Law Center; And Now Legal Defense And Education Fund; As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondent, Susan Grover, Patricia E. Roberts, Barbara R. Arnwine, Thomas J. Henderson, Michael L. Foreman, Sarah R. Crawford, Audrey Wiggins

Briefs

No abstract provided.

Protecting The Labor And Employment Rights Of Immigrant Workers, Anita Sinha, Rebecca Smith, Cynthia Mark

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Barriers To Immigrant Laborers' Access To Workplace Rights, Anita Sinha

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

The 'Race To The Bottom' Returns: China’S Challenge To The International Labor Movement, Stephen F. Diamond

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

China is now, and increasingly, an integral player in the global economy and in international relations. Economic and political restructuring in China today is affecting the lives of millions, yet only a small number of top bureaucrats and wealthy regime-backed entrepreneurs are making the basic decisions about the outcome of this process. This bureaucratic and entrepreneurial class resists fiercely any serious attempt to build independent and democratic institutions such as trade unions.

This article will consider four areas of concern. First, the structural changes underway in the Chinese economy are creating both domestic and international imbalances that are exacerbating inequalities …

The Uneasy Case For Department Of Justice Control Of Federal Litigation, Neal Devins, Michael Herz

Articles

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Priestley V. Fowler (1837) And The Emerging Tort Of Negligence, Michael Ashley Stein

Faculty Publications

Priestly v. Fowler has long been noted as the source of the doctrine of common employment. This Article, however, argues that the case is better understood in the context of the then-emerging independent tort of negligence-specifically, as an unsuccessful attempt to require of masters a duty of care towards their servants. The Article re-examines the facts, arguments, personalities, and various reported versions of the case in tracing the effort to establish a new duty of care. The Article traces, as well, to another case, Hutchinson v. York, the true origins of the common employment doctrine. Finally, the Article compares the …

Labor Law, Robin Jean Davis, Louis J. Palmer Jr.

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Section 7: Employment Law, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Bridging The Gap Between Work And Family: Accomplishing The Goals Of The Family And Medical Leave Act Of 1993, Emily A. Hayes

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

El Impacto Del Arbitraje En Los Patrones Huelgarios De Puerto Rico, 1956-1995, César F. Rosado Marzán

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.