Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

Negligent Hiring: Recidivism And Employment With A Criminal Record, Benjamin David Pyle

Faculty Scholarship

This Article tackles a difficult legal and policy challenge— reducing the impact of criminal records on job applicants’ chances in a manner that does not spur more discrimination—by looking at how another area of law, tort liability, impacts employers’ decision-making. It uses theoretical and empirical methods to study the most common reason employers report being reluctant to hire workers with a criminal record: legal liability generated by the tort of negligent hiring. While the purpose of the tort is ostensibly to protect and make whole those harmed when an employee misbehaves in a foreseeable manner, I show that, in practice, …

The Law Of Quitting, Andrew K. Jennings

Faculty Articles

Throughout life, people enter countless positions of authority and trust in relation to one another and the public. These positions include, among many others, being a public official, being a corporate director, and being an employee. Law announces prerequisites for starting such positions, as well as incumbents’ rights and obligations once in them. But no office holds forever. Indeed, incumbents often choose to exit positions before they would otherwise end by expiration, removal, or death. Yet law governs such voluntary relinquishment—often called “resignation” or, more generically, “quitting”—largely as afterthought. That is, law expansively attends how positions of authority and trust …

Workers’ Empowerment As U.S. Trade Policy, Desiree Leclercq

Scholarly Works

U.S. trade policy stands at an inflection point. The Biden administration’s “worker-centered” trade policy promised to empower foreign workers to improve employment and living standards globally, but it linked its trade assistance to political allies. The Trump administration’s “America First” trade policy promises to use tariffs and isolationism to protect and empower U.S. workers, but it is fostering antagonism rather than cooperation in trade. Both policies, while sharply diverging at the edges, recognize that U.S. trade policy affects employment opportunities in the United States. Both policies also critically overlook the relationship between the treatment of workers in trade partner countries, …

Enhancing Military Health System Organizational Efficiency And Quality Of Care Through A Social-Ecological Framework, Eric L. Peipelman

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Timely and fair adjudication of incivility-related actions within the Department of Defense (DoD) and Military Health System (MHS) is increasingly crucial for maintaining accountability, mission readiness, and quality of care. Ongoing delays in resolving workplace complaints and inefficiencies in resource-heavy adjudications highlight the need to shift from reactive complaint handling toward proactive civility promotion and transparent decision-making. This Integrated Learning Experience (ILE) introduces the Peipelman Civility Discussion and Assessment Toolkit (PCDAT)—a comprehensive, evidence-based framework designed to improve civility, optimize resources, and enhance communication, even in the MHS. Based on the Social-Ecological Model (SEM) and adapted from the Workplace Power and …

Data Rights For Workers, Pauline Kim, Rachel Leavitt

Scholarship@WashULaw

Workers are subject to immense amounts of data collection on the job, and the algorithmic management tools built with that data can produce negative effects, including deskilling jobs, unstable work hours, reduced wages, and dangerous and degrading working conditions. Workers thus have significant interests how their data are collected and used, and yet they have been excluded from nearly all the recently enacted or proposed data protection laws. Their exclusion stems from data protection’s roots in privacy law and theory, which primarily focused on consumers as data subjects. Current data protection laws, even if expanded to cover workers, would provide …

The Making Of Egyptian Cotton: An Alternative Narrative Between Empire And Global Capital, Dina I. Waked

FIU Law Review

Egyptian cotton has become a celebrated brand. Referring to cotton as “Egyptian” signals a certain quality, luxury, and durability. Egyptian cotton has, thus, become its own trademark, a signifier of value, and a symbol of national heritage. This image is carefully curated. It is now protected under a licensing scheme of branding and marketing that assures that fraudulently claimed “Egyptian cotton” does not benefit from the added value this geographic location ascribes to it. The Egyptian Cotton Association was thus created 2005 to license and accredit the brand. Part of the curation of the brand image is a historical narrative …

Tapera: Melindungi Hak Atas Tempat Tinggal Atau Mengancam Kehidupan Yang Layak, Elizabeth Jeneva Samuella, Ida Susanti

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

This study examines the People's Housing Savings (TAPERA) policy in the context of protecting the right to adequate housing and its impact on the decent living conditions of workers. Under TAPERA regulations, all workers are required to set aside a portion of their salary, including those who already own a home. While this policy aims to improve access to adequate housing, it raises questions about its impact on purchasing power and the fulfillment of other basic needs. The study employs an interdisciplinary approach using socio-legal methods to evaluate whether the mandatory TAPERA contributions can be considered a violation of the …

Workplace Retaliation And The Intersection Of Protected Conduct And Job Performance, Chris M. Schmidt

Arkansas Law Review

A host of statutory schemes seek to ensure equal employment opportunities in the United States by eradicating workplace discrimination (“EEO laws”). Consider two foundational pillars necessary for these EEO laws to strike the desired balance between individual rights and workplace efficiency. First, employees require robust protection from retaliation if they engage in protected conduct—for example, by reporting perceived discrimination. Second, employers can—and ideally, should—make employment decisions based on how an employee performs the job.

The interests in robust protection and performance-based decision-making serve the purposes of our EEO laws and are well-established. Rarely do they conflict (to the contrary, they …

Religious Employment And The Tensions Between Liberty And Equality, R. Shawn Gunnarson, James C. Phillips, Christopher A. Bates

BYU Law Review

Located in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is an exemption for religious employers that is often misunderstood. Often courts and commentators mischaracterize it as a narrow privilege for religious employers to hire people of the same religion. But the statute’s text says otherwise. This article resolves interpretive debates about the meaning and application of the religious employer exemption through a close textualist reading that discovers a new understanding of the structure of Title VII. Our approach applies the tools of textualism, the prevailing theory of statutory interpretation. Paying attention to the text and structure of Title …

Mobility And Power In Temp Work, Andrew Elmore

BYU Law Review

Labor mobility is an underdiscussed determinant of temp worker power. Drawing on original interviews with professional and blue-collar workers who work as and alongside temps, this Article shows how businesses use staffing agencies to restrict the labor mobility of contingent workers. Staffing agencies limit worker mobility by imposing user- and worker-side contractual restraints while misrepresenting themselves to temp workers as their sole employer. They also exploit state-imposed mobility limitations by recruiting foreign nationals and people leaving incarceration and channeling them into their most precarious work. This enables clients to dismantle internal labor markets and to fill staffing shortages without raising …

Labor And Employment Law, W. Jonathan Martin Ii

Mercer Law Review

This Article surveys recent developments in the state statutory and common law that affect labor and employment relations of Georgia employers. Accordingly, it surveys published decisions from the Supreme Court of Georgia and the Court of Appeals of Georgia from June 1, 2024 to May 31, 2025. This Article also includes highlights of certain revisions to the Official Code of Georgia Annotated (“O.C.G.A.”).

Despite Successful Lawsuits And Investigations, Kensington Grocery Stores Still Deny Workers Legal Wages, Tareq Saghie

Capstones

This article looks at three grocery stores in Kensington, Brooklyn that continue to pay immigrant workers below legal wages despite courts and the Department of Labor penalizing them for it repeatedly. The reporting speaks to the ineffectiveness of the law at deterring labor violations, the commonality of wage theft in New York's grocery stores, and the impacts it has on workers.

https://medium.com/@tareqsaghienyc/despite-successful-lawsuits-and-investigations-kensington-grocery-stores-still-deny-workers-legal-a332c980a1cb

Greenhat’S Greenlight To The Cftc: The Case For A Jurisdictional Shift Of Financial Transmission Rights From The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission To The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Timothy K. Shaw Ii

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

Regional Transmission Organizations and Independent System Operators are a relatively new platform to buy and sell wholesale electricity and transmission service of that electricity. These groundbreaking organizations have been around since 1996 after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) issued Order 888. FERC regulates the physical electricity wholesale sale and transmission service market managed by a Regional Transmission Organization (“RTO”) or Independent System Operator (“ISO”),through its Federal Power Act mandate. Many RTOs and ISOs offer a product called a Financial Transmission Right (“FTR”). Traditionally, FTRs assist the holder by providing price certainty, or a hedge, in the capacity market. This …

Choosing The Best Entity For Investments Trading After Understanding The Tax Limitations And Restrictions, Ray A. Knight, Joseph Lakatos

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

The trading of various securities is subject to market rules. However, when securities trading is completed within a business entity, the entity is subject to tax limitations and restrictions. The tax benefits cannot be the dominant purpose for the entity structure; economic substance including profit motive and business purpose for each transaction must be able to be shown.

The trading of investment securities must be housed in the right entity to gain the best economic results as well as to minimize the tax burden. The entity selection process must first consider the characteristics and nature of the securities (e.g., currencies, …

Volume 23 - Front Matter

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Société Des Casinos Du Québec Inc. V. Association Des Cadres De La Société Des Casinos Du Québec: The Supreme Court Of Canada Gambles On Liberal Voluntarism To Provide Meaningful Access To Collective Bargaining, Eric Tucker

All Papers

In April 2024, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) unanimously ruled that the exclusion of managerial employees from Quebec’s main statutory collective bargaining regime, combined with a failure to provide them with access to any other statutory labour rights, did not violate their constitutionally protected freedom of association. This decision raises many questions about the future of constitutional labour rights at the Supreme Court. In this brief comment I address what is arguably the biggest takeaway for workers such as the casino managers whose freedom of association is poorly or entirely unprotected by statutory rights: that despite the majority judgment’s …

Ben's Blog 1: What Would Benjamin Cardozo Do? (Wwcd): The Holiday Party Edition, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Archive

The inaugural installment of Ben's Blog presents a fictional exchange inspired by Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo, applying his judicial philosophy to contemporary workplace holiday party issues. The blog explores employment law topics including workplace inclusion, alcohol policies, cannabis use, anti-harassment obligations, and employer liability in a lighthearted educational format.

Field Effect Sec. Inc. V. Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct. (Anderson), 141 Nev. Adv. Op. 63 (Dec. 04, 2025), Mary Shamon

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

No abstract provided.

Ai In Canadian Workplaces: Why Clear Policies Can’T Wait, Stacy Thomas

Editorials and Commentaries

No abstract provided.

A Comparative Analysis Of The Lack Of Contractual Protections In Female Dominated Opportunities: Collegiate Competitive Dancers And Cheerleaders Compared To Ncaa Student-Athletes And National Pageant Organization Titleholders Compared To Employees/Independent Contractors, Abigail Church

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The lack of contractual protections and regulations throughout female-dominated opportunities is abundantly clear in the collegiate competitive dance & cheer and the national pageant organization titleholders. Collegiate competitive dancers and cheerleaders have no standardized contractual requirements regarding their commitment to an academic institution or their engagement in NIL opportunities. Their NCAA recognized student-athlete counterparts, on the other hand, have extensive regulations and protections in place for both categories of contracts. In the pageant industry, pageant titleholders have no protection against the all-too-common procedural and substantive unconscionability of their service agreements, which can be found in confidentiality and arbitration clauses. In …

The Equal Pay Act’S Hidden Loophole: Eliminating Prior Compensation As A “Factor Other Than Sex”, Madeleine Bol

Fordham Law Review

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA or the “Act”) prohibits employers from engaging in sex-based wage discrimination. The Act includes four exceptions that allow an employer to circumvent liability, the last of which allows for pay disparities when the “differential [is] based on any other factor other than sex.” The language of this exceedingly broad exception raises questions among courts on what “other than sex” entails—specifically, whether a court can rely on an employee’s prior compensation to justify a pay disparity between employees of the opposite sex. This Note examines how federal circuit courts have interpreted this catchall exception. …

Should The Army Be Involved In Divorce? Re-Examining The Pre-Divorce Defaults For Spousal Support, Artem M. Joukov, Thomas Godfrey

MC Law Review

Army Regulation 608-99 assigns a large portion of a Soldier’s paycheck to the spouse upon marital separation. The assignment occurs without a hearing, discovery, or consideration of critical evidence which might moderate the amount of support. The obligation rests on the Soldier to obtain a court order or spousal agreement to reduce the financial burden. The adversarial nature of modern divorces renders these requirements unrealistic. Amending the regulation would ease the burden of the Soldier, which is desirable in light of the ongoing recruitment crisis and the need to attract recruits and retain those already in the service.

Who Counts As A "Reasonable Employee"? The Third Circuit's Bungling Of Section 8(A)(1) Violations, Ben Milstein

Washington Law Review

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) protects private employees’ right to unionize and collectively bargain with their employers. Section 7 of the NLRA guarantees employees the right to self-organize labor unions, while section 8 outlines numerous unfair labor practices. Specifically, section 8(a)(1) bans employer interference, coercion, or restraint of any section 7 rights. In a 2022 case, FDRLST Media v. NLRB, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) finding that FDRLST Media’s executive officer’s tweet constituted a section 8(a)(1) violation. This Comment examines the history of section 8(a)(1) violations, specifically discussing the widely …

An Analysis Of Policies Impacting Ex-Offenders And The Barriers Created In Their Transition Into Society: A Qualitative Metasynthesis, Thomas A. Ayala

Theses & Dissertations

In 2018, more than six million people in the United States were under correctional supervision, including incarceration, probation, or parole, equivalent to 1 in 40 adults (Maruschak & Minton, 2020). While this reflects a decline from previous years, prison populations reversed course in 2022, increasing by 2% nationwide, with 36 states and federal facilities reporting higher inmate counts (Nellis, 2024). Since 1973, policy shifts have fueled the rise of mass incarceration (Nellis, 2021; O’Brien, 2020). According to the Pew Center, the United States remains a global outlier, holding 5% of the world’s population, but incarcerates 25% of the 9 million …

What Lpe And The Christian Bible Have In Common, Christopher D. Hampson, Alvin Velazquez

UF Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Case For Selective Non-Transparency In Ai-Mediated Work: A Workers Rights Framework, Daniel Plate, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

This article advances a labor rights argument for selective non-transparency in AI-mediated work, framed through educational labor yet generalizable across the United States. The central claim asserts that blanket requirements to disclose all AI-assisted methods reconfigure managerial power by converting process knowledge into a surveillance substrate, thereby diminishing autonomy, chilling professional judgment, and enabling rapid deskilling. Synthesizing U.S. labor and privacy frameworks—especially interpretations of the National Labor Relations Act regarding electronic monitoring—alongside emerging state initiatives on automated decision systems, the analysis demonstrates how expansive process transparency risks infringing protected concerted activity while normalizing function creep in algorithmic management. Empirical literature …

A Middle-Class New Deal: A Call To Action, Angela K. Littwin

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

The books featured in the Debt in the Real World Symposium paint compelling portraits of American financial insecurity and distress. The fact that half of U.S. households cannot make ends meet is a devastating development, but it also presents an opportunity for making change because economic insecurity is now an “us” problem rather than a “them” problem. The next step is to organize, and as part of that process, to develop a vision of an economy that works for everyone. The title of one featured book, Michele Dickerson’s forthcoming The Middle Class New Deal, is a strong starting point because …

Did Copyright Fail Music Artists?, Rachel Landy

Articles

Music soundtracks our lives, supports over two million domestic jobs annually, and is listened to more than ever before. The record industry is thriving, having made over $17 billion in 2024. Yet, many professional artists are barely surviving. Artists signed to record deals lament royalty payments that amount to a fraction of a penny for each stream of their songs. So where is all the money going, and who, or what, is to blame? Public rhetoric and existing legislative proposals implicate copyright as a guilty party. But are those concerns justified?

This Article unpacks the music supply chain. It builds …

Amazon.Com Services, Llc. V. Dwight Malloy, 141 Nev. Adv. Op. 50 (Oct. 30, 2025), Hannah Hoffmann

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

NEVADA WAGE-HOUR LAWS DO NOT INCORPORATE THE FEDERAL PORTAL-TO-PORTAL ACT’S EXCEPTIONS TO COMPENSABLE WORK.

Protecting Platform Workers In The European Union, Jeremias Adams-Prassl, Antonio Aloisi, Nicola Countouris, Valerio De Stefano, Silvia Rainone

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.