Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

Speech Of Government Employees, Ann C. Hodges

Law Faculty Publications

For many years, government employment was considered a privilege rather than a right, and, as a result, the government could place restrictions on employee speech that would be unconstitutional if applied to citizens.

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

All Faculty Scholarship

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

All Faculty Scholarship

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

All Faculty Scholarship

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 …

Let's Talk About Sex Baby: Lyle V. Warner Brothers Television Productions And The California Court Of Appeal's Creative Necessity Defense To Hostile Work Environment Sexual Harassment, Sarah Pahnke Reisert

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Deconstructing The Maternal Wall: Strategies For Vindicating The Civil Rights Of "Carers" In The Workplace, Joan C. Williams, Elisabeth S. Westfall

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Keynote Address: Want Gender Equality? Die Childless At Thirty, Joan C. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Caregivers In The Courtroom: The Growing Trend Of Family Responsibilities Discrimination, Joan C. Williams, Stephanie Bornstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Family Responsibilities Discrimination: What Plaintiffs' Attorneys, Management Attorneys And Employees Need To Know, Joan C. Williams, Cynthia Thomas Calvert

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"If The Train Should Jump The Track.. .": Divergent Interpretations Of State And Federal Employment Discrimination Statutes, Alex B. Long

Georgia Law Review

As interpretational issues surrounding federal employment discrimination statutes have become more complex and controversial, there have arisen more opportunities for parallel state anti-discrimination law to jump the track" and take alternative courses. Not surprisingly, when dealing with their own parallel state statutes, a number of state appellate courts in recent years have chosen this course of action. Even where state and federal employment discrimination have not yet taken different paths, the potential for such divergent interpretations of state and federal anti-discrimination law has increased in recent years to the point where we may enter an era not unlike that of …

The Regulation Of Labor And The Relevance Of Legal Origin, David E. Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

Arguably the most important social science research of the past decade has centered on comparative law and economics. In a celebrated series of articles, the economists Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer, and intermittent collaborators have explored empirically how a country's legal origin – English common law, French civil law, Germanic code, Scandinavian law, or Soviet socialist law – affects its subsequent institutional and economic development. The common law emerges as the hero of this analysis: Compared with other countries and especially with civil law countries, common law bearers have, ceteris paribus, better legal protection of shareholders and …

The Architecture Of Inclusion: Advancing Workplace Equity In Higher Education, Susan Sturm

Faculty Scholarship

The path to workplace'equality has become a difficult one to navigate. No one can safely rely upon the strategies developed in the 1960s and 1970s to integrate workplaces. Employers face legal and political challenges both for failing to diversify their workplaces and for diversity efforts to overcome that failure. Civil rights and women's rights advocates battle to hold on to the litigation victories of the past, even as they acknowledge judicial remedies' shrinking availability and limited efficacy in addressing many aspects of current-day equality. Anti-discrimination regulators contend with inadequate resources to carry out their traditional enforcement activities, as well as …

Of Offers Not (Frequently) Made And (Rarely) Accepted: The Mystery Of Federal Rule 68, Harold S. Lewis Jr., Thomas A. Eaton

Scholarly Works

This Symposium brings together, from around the nation, eight civil rights and employment discrimination lawyers, four legal academics, and an eminent federal judge, all with deep experience and interest in the promise and pitfalls of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68. We gather to unravel a mystery. In an oversimplified nutshell, Rule 68, as construed, enables the defendants to say to the plaintiffs in employment discrimination and civil rights cases: "If you don't beat my offer at trial, you forfeit your right to any future statutory attorney fees." Rule 68 would, therefore, appear to give the defendants a significant incentive …

Grutter At Work: A Title Vii Critique Of Constitutional Affirmative Action, Jessica Bulman-Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

This Note argues that Title VII doctrine both illuminates internal contradictions of Grutter v. Bollinger and provides a framework for reading the opinion. Grutter's diversity rationale is a broad endorsement of integration that hinges on the quantitative concept of critical mass, but the opinion's narrow-tailoring discussion instead points to a model of racial difference that champions subjective decisionmaking and threatens to jettison numerical accountability. Title VII doctrine supports a reading of Grutter that privileges a view of diversity as integration and therefore cautions against the opinion's conception of narrow tailoring. Grutter, in turn, can productively inform employment discrimination law. The …

Good Faith Performance In Employment Contracts: A "Comparative Conversation" Between The Us And England, Katherine M. Apps

ExpressO

This paper asks two questions connected by the fact that they both stem from the inherent incompleteness of employment contracts: in American law, how can the terms in employment handbooks be variable, but sometimes only within reasonable procedurally fair circumstances; and in English law, why doesn’t the implied term of mutual trust and confidence in employment contracts fall foul of the strict test for implication of terms into contract? This paper finds the answer to both questions in the doctrine of good faith. An analysis of good faith as a “comparative conversation” between academic and judicial debates in the US …

Book Review, Minna J. Kotkin

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Wait! Don't Fire That Blogger! What Limits Does Labor Law Impose On Employer Regulation Of Employee Blogs?, Carson Strege-Flora

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently issued a decision protecting the right of an employee to post critical comments about his employer on a website. The court found that the employer’s discipline was an unfair labor practice prohibited by federal labor law because it was “concerted activity” protected by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Employers wishing to discipline employees for their public blogging activity should be familiar with the protections provided by the NLRA. This Article explores the consequences for violating the Act and addresses what employers should consider when attempting to limit employee blogging.

Workplace Flexibility 2010: Facts On Short Term Time Off, Jean Flatley Mcguire, Kaitlyn Kenney

Memos and Fact Sheets

Short Term Time Off (STO) refers to job-protected time away from the workplace (generally 5 days or less) to address anticipated or unexpected issues of limited duration. STO may be scheduled or unscheduled, depending on the underlying need. STO enables workers to address the routine and emergency situations that occur in everybody’s lives.

The need for STO may arise, for example, because a worker or worker’s child is sick or has a routine doctor’s appointment, because a worker has to wait for the plumber or apply for benefits or go to court, or because a worker needs to attend a …

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

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Labor And Employment, W. Melvin Haas Iii, William M. Clifton Iii, W. Jonathan Martin Ii

Mercer Law Review

This Article surveys recent developments in state statutory and common law that affect labor and employment relations of Georgia employers. Accordingly, it surveys published decisions from the Georgia Court of Appeals and Georgia Supreme Court from June 1, 2004 to May 31, 2005. This Article also highlights specific revisions to the Official Code of Georgia Annotated ("O.C.G.A.").

Clarett V. National Football League: Defining The Non-Statutory Labor Exception To Antitrust Law As It Pertains To Restraints Primarily Focused In Labor Markets And Restraints Primarily Focused In Business Markets, Ronald Terk Sia

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “Contemporary sports have seen an influx of young talent opting for a chance at playing in the big leagues earlier at the expense of obtaining higher education. Many dream of playing professional sports—dreams often prohibited by player eligibility rules. In situations where the restraints are not argued to have been protected by non-statutory labor exception, antitrust law has been seen to set its talons into eligibility rules. […]

Federal antitrust law and national labor law set forth two conflicting policies that have created a periodic drama for sports fans concerned that their favorite sports will suffer a cataclysmic court …

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. …

Taking The Stand: The Lessons Of The Three Men Who Took The Japanese American Internment To Court, Lorraine K. Bannai

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Labor And Employment Law, W. David Paxton, Gregory R. Hunt

University of Richmond Law Review

It was a relatively quiet year in the Virginia labor and employment law arena, with no real groundbreaking cases or legislative enactments. There were developments in case law and legislative changes, but these were more subtle this year than in years past, and for the most part, the courts confirmed, affirmed, or clarified the existing state of the law. This article discusses cases and legislative activity of note in the Virginia labor and employment law arena during the past year. Part II addresses recent cases considering employment agreements under Virginia law. Part III considers cases in the continually evolving area …

Proposed Federal Definition Of "Internet Job Applicant" Suggests Need For Revised Human Resource Policies, Carson Strege-Flora

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

After several years of discussion, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, along with several other federal agencies, has proposed a new definition of “Internet job applicant” to help employers understand how to treat such applicants. The explosion over the past decade of Internet recruiting prompted the need for clarification of how employers must treat applicants for purposes of federal antidiscrimination law and recordkeeping requirements. The new guidelines suggest that employers engaged in Internet recruiting should review their hiring policies to ensure that their treatment of Internet job applicants complies with the proposed guidelines. This Article suggests that employers avoid violating federal …

Re Aliant Telecom Inc And Ac & Twu (Macdonald), Innis Christie

Innis Christie Collection

Union Grievance 04-01, dated July 21, 2004, on behalf of the Grievor, Robert MacDonald, alleging that the Employer discharged the Grievor in violation of Article 2.1 of the Collective Agreement between the parties effective January 1, 1999 — January 1, 2002, which the parties agree is the Collective Agreement applicable here. At the outset of the hearing in this matter the parties agreed that I am properly seized of it, that I should remain seized after the issue of this award to deal with any matters arising from its application and that all time limits, either pre-or post-hearing, are waived. …

Vol. 22, No. 4, Rochelle Gordon, Brian Clauss

The Illinois Public Employee Relations Report

Contents:

Privatization of Public Educational Services: The Application of the Doctrine of Successorship in the No Child Left Behind Era, by Rochelle Gordon and Brian Clauss

Recent Developments

Further References, compiled by Yoo-Seong Song

Short Term Time Off Options For Federal Employees, Workplace Flexibility 2010, Georgetown University Law Center

Charts and Summaries of State, U.S., and Foreign Laws and Regulations

No abstract provided.

Short Term Time Off Options For Federal Employees, Workplace Flexibility 2010, Georgetown University Law Center

Charts and Summaries of State, U.S., and Foreign Laws and Regulations

No abstract provided.

The Nature And Enforcement Of Investor Rights Under Investment Treaties: Do Investment Treaties Have A Bright Future, Susan Franck

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The number of investment treaties has surged in the past decade. Even now, the United States and Canada are actively engaged in programs designed to facilitate the completion of multilateral treaties such as the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) and Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs). These investment treaties act like economic bills of rights, which grant foreign investors substantive protections and procedural rights to facilitate investment. Sovereigns, meanwhile, may benefit from these treaties by obtaining increased foreign direct investment, which may promote the development of their country's infrastructure 6 and offer citizens basic services including access to clean water, …