Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

Toward A Better Understanding Of Mail Balloting: The Case Of U.S. Labor Union-Representation Elections, Rafael Gely, Leonard Bierman, Timothy Chandler

Faculty Publications

The issue of how people vote in elections is important and timely. This Article examines this issue from the perspective of whether people vote by mail - i.e., mail balloting - or in person on a designated election day i.e., in-person voting. It explores the pros and cons of mail balloting versus in-person voting from a general political perspective and in the context of elections for labor union representation in the United States. It presents heretofore unreported data on the use of mail balloting in union-representation elections. It then draws lessons from these data concerning how mail balloting-which has increased …

The Future Of Work In The Era Of Ai, Orly Lobel

Indiana Law Journal

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing both work itself and the processes of employment—hiring, recruitment, evaluation, compensation, performance analysis, retention, and job mobility. This Essay, based upon the 2024 Indiana Law Journal annual William R. Stewart Lecture, examines the effects of AI on work and argues for a holistic approach that harnesses the benefits of automation while addressing the inevitable systemic changes that AI is rapidly bringing to the labor market. The Essay examines two industries in which AI is already changing labor market demands: trucking and the performing arts. The Essay argues that while the automation can often increase efficiency …

Excluded But Equal, Gali Racabi

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Work law is excessively exclusionary. Canonical examples include agriculture workers, independent contractors, and domestic workers. But work law excludes far more workers and employers than those familiar categories. Whole sectors, occupations, business sizes, wage arrangements, geographical areas, and more are excluded from the basic tenets of economic citizenship, including federal, state, and local minimum wage; overtime; and safety and labor protection laws.

Equal protection claims govern the authority of legislatures to determine who is in and who is out of work laws. Excluded workers and included employers now routinely use state and federal constitutional equal protection arguments against exclusionary work …

Cartel Breakdown: The Impact Of Demonopsonization On Market Concentration, Nathan Ashby, Miguel A. Ramos-Gonzalez

Hunt Institute Working Paper Series

The exogenous removal of labor restrictions mandated by Alston vs. NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) has provided a unique natural experiment for analyzing the impact of demonopsonization on market concentration. Using basketball tournament data between 2003 and 2024 we find evidence of increased concentration in performance among higher-tiered programs. The larger magnitude of estimates for women’s programs likely results from wider dispersion in market demand for participating programs predating the reforms. We also analyze parity in regular-season conference play and fail to detect a relationship between the changes and dispersion for higher-tiered conferences, but we do find a relationship for …

Want To Solve Labor Shortages? Relaxing The Child Labor Law Is Not The Answer, Yi Wu

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Recently, the United States has been engaged in a nationwide debate over loosening regulations regarding children’s employment. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) sets restrictions on the working hours of children under 16 and prohibits their employment in certain hazardous positions. However, some states, such as Iowa, Ohio, Arkansas, and Wisconsin, have either passed or are considering legislation allowing children to work longer hours or in potentially dangerous conditions in response to labor shortages. These new state laws conflict with existing federal regulations. This Comment discusses why states should refrain from relaxing their child labor laws to permit children to …

Speaking Collectively: The First Amendment, The Public Sector, And The Right To Bargain And Strike, Kate Andrias

Faculty Scholarship

How is it that the Supreme Court has not understood collective bargaining and strikes among public sector workers to fall within the First Amendment’s ambit? Public sector union activity involves expression, assembly, association, and petitioning. Workers’ ability to form unions and to engage in concerted action in support of their shared goals is an important part of democratic governance. Through unions, workers engage in active citizenship; through association with one another, they express their views collectively and engage the government and the public on issues of public concern. Indeed, in the context of protecting the putative speech rights of union …

The Effects Of 401(K) Vesting Schedules—In Numbers, Samantha Prince, Timothy G. Azizkhan, Cassidy R. Prince, Luke Gorman

Faculty Scholarly Works

Many Americans terminate employment, voluntarily or involuntarily, prior to vesting in their 401(k) plans. This costs them a lot of money; it also saves companies a lot of money. Vesting schedules used by some 401(k) plans cause plan participants to forfeit significant portions of their compensation—employer contributions made on their behalf—that should be increasing their retirement savings. This money is recycled by such plans to offset their employer contribution obligations and other costs. We analyzed data from Form 5500s to identify trends in and implications of vesting schedule use by 408 single-employer 401(k) plans over the five-year period of 2018-2022. …

Widiss Honored With Cosell Miller Award, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

An employment law scholar at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law has been honored for her remarkable contributions to the field.

Deborah A. Widiss, professor of law and the John F. Kimberling Chair, was presented the Miller Award at the 19th annual Colloquium on Scholarship in Employment and Labor Law (COSELL) in San Diego on September 13.

Named in honor of the late Paul Miller, who was the Henry M. Jackson Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law, the Miller Award is presented annually to a senior scholar who has shown “outstanding academic and public …

An Extremely Important Document: Khea's Struggle For A Contract, 1974-1978, John L.S. Daley Dr

KNEA 50th Anniversary

In 1973, the Kansas State College, Pittsburg administration fired thirteen faculty members without cause. In order to improve administration-faculty relations, remaining faculty organized, petitioned for recognition, and drafted PSU/KNEA's first contract with PSU/KBOR, which went into effect five years later. The narrative covering this period draws on Axe Library's KNEA Collection and interviews of former faculty.

Forging Future Frontiers: Pioneering Union Progress Through Training Centers, Ciara S. Alagao

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Getting Personal With Personnel: The Need For Stricter Employee Privacy Rights As Surviellance By Employers Expand, Amber Makda

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Fighting For Their Lives, Even Outside Of The Octagon: How The Ufc Violates Antitrust Laws To Undermine Fighters' Compensation, Joseph A. Diez

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Orange Is The New Bruise: Abuse In Correctional Facilities By Employees And How New York's Adult Survivors Act Can Become A Deterrent, Michael Zanni

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Affirmative Action: To Be Or No Longer To Be? That Is The Question. A Play On Words, Or A Vital Concern?, Michael Bernstein

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

"Boycott" -- A Proposed Legal Definition Put To Test, Sharona Aharoni-Goldenberg, Gerry Leisman

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

The definition of "boycott" attracts controversy in legislation, case law, and dictionaries. This paper questions what the worthy legal definition of "boycott" is. It examines and analyzes various sources on "boycott." We conclude that the most distinctive characteristic of a "boycott" is omissions, such as refusal to provide services. The antithesis of omission is commission. Omissions signify allowing something to happen, whereas commissions signify causing it to happen. Since boycotts concern omissions, they entail less legislative interference with the boycotter's right of autonomy. Yet, the autonomy of the boycotters should be restrained when they coerce the boycott's targets, coerce others …

The Fair Chance To Compete For Jobs Act: Proposing A More Equitable Statue For Individuals Affected By The Justice System, Brian M. Joseph

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Left In The Dust: The Decline In Coal Mining And The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act's Failure To Incorporate Just Transition Principles For Coal Communities, Gillian K. Joyce

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

A Market Solution To The Pay Gap, Stephen A. Plass

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

The pay gap between men and women is typically defined as the ratio of median annual earnings of men and women working full time. The gap is attributable to many pre- and post-labor market factors such as family background, work aspirations, education, experience, ability, hours worked, unionization rates, workplace practices or conditions, technological developments, and even public health developments. Because a large variety of personal and labor market factors contribute to the pay gap, it is highly improbable that the median pay of men and women will ever be the same, any more than pay for younger and older workers. …

A Quiet Workplace? Conceptualizing An Evidentiary Privilege Protecting Confidential Employer-Employee Communications, Michael D. Moberly

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Gender Conscious Labor Environmentalism, Chaumtoli Huq

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

Drawing primarily from the internationally recognized human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, ("right to a healthy environment") as well as related international environmental and economic human rights laws, this Article makes three critical moves towards theorizing a gender conscious approach to labor environmentalism. First, this Article demonstrates through four cases studies from Bangladesh, that global and national labor movements can effectively address the root causes of labor rights violations, specifically around health and safety by deploying and mobilizing around the recently passed international right to a healthy environment. Second, the right to a healthy environment offers a …

"The American Dream" Becoming The American Scheme: The Truth About Sponsoring Undocumented Child Laborers And What Hhs Officials Can Do To Help, Kristen P. Julich

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

No Really, What Should We Do? An Employer’S Guide To Groff V. Dejoy And Juggling Religious Accommodations In The Workplace, Keegan K. Davis

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Maximizing Productivity Through Digital Panopticism: Combatting Invasive Employee Surveillance Systems In The Workplace, Amber Wooten

West Virginia Law Review

The United States has experienced rapid advancements in surveillance technology and data collection in the past three decades. Conversely, since the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work opportunities have increased, with many remote workers being subjected to surveillance within their homes. Given the lack of significant statutory measures to safeguard remote employees against incessant surveillance, employers can monitor employees, collect data, and enforce unattainable productivity quotas with little repercussions. Despite these harms, the influx of remote jobs presents significant benefits, especially for states like West Virginia, which faces immense population decline and lacks consistent physical job opportunities. Remote work promotes flexibility and …

‘Constellations’ And ‘Entanglement’ In The Study Of Legal Pluralism: Reflections On The Scholarship Of Keebet Von Benda-Beckmann, Petra K. Mahy Dr

The Indonesian Journal of Socio-Legal Studies

Two key terms permeate the work of Keebet von Benda-Beckmann (and of her co-authors, especially Franz von Benda-Beckmann) in her discussions of legal pluralism: ‘constellations’ and ‘entanglement’. These terms are both concerned with describing the existence of, and interrelationships between, plural legal orders. This article critically analyses these two terms, their usage and implied meanings, and compares them with other alternative concepts employed elsewhere in legal pluralism and cognate literature. With reference to empirical evidence on plural work regulation in Indonesia, I argue that the terms have some descriptive benefits for understanding the realities of plural legal orders, but still …

Perpetuating Inequality: What Salary History Bans Reveal About Wages, James Bessen, Chen Meng, Erich Denk

Faculty Scholarship

Pay gaps for women and minorities have persisted after accounting for observable differences. Why? If employers can access applicants’ salary histories while bargaining over wages, they can take advantage of past inequities, perpetuating inequality. Recently, a dozen US states have banned employer access to salary histories. We analyze the effects of these salary history bans (SHBs) on employer wage posting and pay in a difference-in-differences design. Following SHBs, employers posted wages more often and increased pay for job changers, particularly for women (6.4%) and non-whites (7.7%). Bargaining behavior appears to account for much of the persistence of residual wage gaps.

Is Distance From Innovation A Barrier To The Adoption Of Artificial Intelligence?, Jennifer Hunt, Iain Cockburn, James Bessen

Faculty Scholarship

Using our own data on Artificial Intelligence publications merged with Burning Glass vacancy data for 2007-2019, we investigate whether online vacancies for jobs requiring AI skills grow more slowly in U.S. locations farther from pre-2007 AI innovation hotspots. We find that a commuting zone which is an additional 200km (125 miles) from the closest AI hotspot has 17% lower growth in AI jobs’ share of vacancies. This is driven by distance from AI papers rather than AI patents. Distance reduces growth in AI research jobs as well as in jobs adapting AI to new industries, as evidenced by strong effects …

Does Black-Letter Law Matter In Labor Rights Protection In China? - A Tale Of Two Cities, Peter Chi Hin Chan

Washington International Law Journal

This article discusses the role of black-letter law in labor protection in China in cases where employers dismiss employees on the grounds of serious breaches of internal regulations. This article presents an empirical analysis of the judicial practice of two of China’s economically developed cities, Suzhou and Wuxi. Suzhou employers have to give employees the opportunity to be heard prior to dismissal, while Wuxi does not provide that opportunity. First, this article introduces the Chinese labor legislation system, the dismissal system, and the two cities’ local labor regulations. Second, the article will analyze and discuss 140 cases from Suzhou and …

Public Employees As A Reflection Of A Religiously Diverse Culture, Steven T. Collis

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

For decades, scholars and jurists have debated over whether government violates the Establishment Clause when it endorses religion or if coercion is required. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Supreme Court put this argument to rest, at least as to public employees. It grounded its decision in some form of originalism. While that will be sufficient to satisfy some readers, others will want to be assured of the wisdom of the rule originalism demands. This Essay argues that a coercion test for the private religious exercise of public employees is appropriate for a pluralistic society.

It offers four …