Supreme Court of the United States Commons^™

Wimberly And Beyond: Analyzing The Refusal To Award Unemployment Compensation To Women Who Terminate Prior Employment Due To Pregnancy, Mary F. Radford

Faculty Publications By Year

In Wimberly v. Labor & Industrial Relations Commission, the Supreme Court interpreted section 3304(a)(12) of the Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA), which requires that states not dent unemployment benefits "solely on the basis of pregnancy," as an antidiscrimination statue, rather that one requiring preferential treatment for pregnant and formerly pregnant women. Professor Mary Radford argues that given the ambiguous legislative history and other Supreme Court precedent in the area of unemployment compensation, Wimberly could just as easily have held that FUTA's language requires preferential treatment to pregnant and formerly pregnant women. She further argues that given the current realities that …

Prevention Of Antiunion Discrimination In The United States, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Nearly all rank-and-file employees in private businesses of any substantial size in the United States are protected by federal law against antiunion discrimination. The Railway Labor Act applies to the railroad and airline industries. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) applies to all other businesses whose operations "affect [interstate] commerce" in almost any way. Supervisory and managerial personnel, domestic servants, and agricultural workers are excluded from this federal scheme. Separate federal law covers the employees of the federal government. About thirty of the fifty states have statutes ensuring the right to organize on the part of some or most of …

Deferral To Arbitration And Use Of External Law In Arbitration, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

proper definition of the appropriate roles of arbitrators, administrative agencies and the courts depends in great part on the notion that, generally speaking, in labor relations, the interpretation and application of contracts is for arbitrators, and the interpretation and application of statutes is for the administrative agencies and the courts. Arbitrators deal primarily with contract rights and administrative agencies, like the NLRB and the courts, deal primarily with statutory rights. If that distinction is maintained, the problems of deferral to arbitration and the use of external law in arbitration can be more easily resolved.

Webster V. Doe, Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

California Federal Savings & (And) Loan Association V. Guerra: Supreme Court Affirms California's Efforts To Accommodate Pregnancy In Fair Employment Laws, 21 J. Marshall L. Rev. 181 (1987), Judith Gallo

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Integrity And Circumspection: The Labor Law Vision Of Bernard D. Meltzer, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Bernard Meltzer has testified under oath that he "rarely take[s] absolute positions." The record bears him out. While his colleagues among labor law scholars often strain to demonstrate that the labor relations statutes and even the Constitution support their hearts' desires, the typical Meltzer stance is one of cool detachment, pragmatic assessment, and cautious, balanced judgment. The "itch to do good," Meltzer has remarked wryly, "is a doubtful basis for jurisdiction" -or, he would likely add, for any other legal conclusion. In this brief commentary I propose to examine the Meltzer approach to four broad areas of labor law: (1) …

Pattern Makers' League Of North America, Afl-Cio V. Nlrb: Supreme Court Upholds Federal Limitation On Union Power To Compel Strike Activity, 19 J. Marshall L. Rev. 789 (1986), Colette Foisette

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Bankruptcy Dynamics Of Collective Bargaining Agreements, 19 J. Marshall L. Rev. 301 (1986), Richard L. Merrick

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Nlra Preemption Of State Law Actions For Wrongful Discharge In Violation Of Public Policy, Thomas Bean

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note considers the circumstances under which the NLRA should preempt state law tort suits for discharge in contravention of public policy by employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement, and by at-will employees. Part I discusses the rationale behind the preemption doctrine and outlines the tests the Supreme Court has adopted for determining when the NLRA preempts state laws. Part II argues that the specific rationale behind the Court's preemption tests are inapplicable to the typical public policy wrongful discharge action. Part III identifies the ways in which public policy wrongful discharge actions might infringe on the NLRA. It …

The Possible Final Word On Employment Discrimination Relief, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Bottom Line Limitation To The Rule Of Griggs V. Duke Power Company, James P. Scanlan

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Part I of this article analyzes the background to the Teal decision and the treatment by the majority and dissent of the issue known in employment discrimination law as the "bottom line" limitation to the disparate impact theory of employment discrimination. Part II explains why, for reasons beyond those considered by the Teal majority, not only was the Court's rejection of the bottom line theory manifestly correct, but a contrary result would have had grievous consequences. Part III then argues for a similar rejection of the bottom line limitation in those situations where most observers have taken for granted that …

Permanent Replacements Of Strikers After Belknap: The Employer's Quandry, 18 J. Marshall L. Rev. 321 (1985), Burr E. Anderson

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Accommodating Employees' Sabbaths: Is It The Government's Job?, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Director, Office Of Workers' Compensation Programs V. Perini North River Associates: Judicial Dilution Of The Longshoremen's And Harbor Workers' Compensation Act's 'Status' Requirement, Roberto L. Corrada

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

In Director, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs v. Perini North River Associates, the Supreme Court effectively deleted from the LHWCA the section 2(3) "status" requirement as it pertains to workers injured on actual navigable waters of the United States. The Court's generous view of the 1972 amendments will clearly result in more workers being able to recover benefits under the Act. At the same time, however, the Court's means of expanding the Act without relying on clear congressional intent disturbs traditional notions of judicial review and implies an attempt at judicial legislation.

Although the Court noted that it intended to …

Did The Stotts Decision Really Spell The End Of Race-Conscious Affirmative Action?, William L. Robinson, Stephen L. Spitz

NYLS Journal of Human Rights

No abstract provided.

Discrimination Bans Demonstrate Approaching Maturity Of Employment Law, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

The pervasive message of this symposium sponsored by the Labor Relations Law Section, whether or not intended by the individual authors, is that American employment law is moving beyond adolescence and may be approaching maturity.

The Bildisco Case And The Congressional Response, James J. White

Articles

Section 365 of the Bankruptcy Reform Act authorizes one in bankruptcy to "assume or reject any executory contract ...of the debtor." The most frequent use of the section arises when a lessee goes into Chapter 11 and decides either to reject its real estate lease with its lessor or, if the lease is at a favorable rental rate, to assume it and assign it to another. A less frequent but more controversial use of section 365 is to reject one's collective bargaining agreement with his employees.

Are Residential Quotas Constitutional?, Neal Devins

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Legal Barriers To Worker Participation In Management Decision Making, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Collective bargaining lies at the heart of the union-management relationship. It is the end and purpose of the whole effort to protect employees against reprisals when they form an organization to represent them in dealing with their employers. Collective bargaining is grounded in the belief that industrial strife will be checked, and the workers' lot bettered, if workers are given an effective voice in determining the conditions of their employment. My thesis is that federal law, even while placing the force of government behind collective bargaining, has so artificially confined its scope that the process has been seriously impeded from …

Individual Rights In The Work Place: The Burger Court And Labor Law, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Book Chapters

The Supreme Court, like other institutions, must play the part that the times demand, often with small regard for the personal predilections of its membership. The Warren Court and the Burger Court, in their respective contributions to the law of union-employer-employee relations, almost reversed the roles they might have been expected to assume. The major accomplishment of the Court in the labor area during the Warren era was a fundamental restructuring of intergovernmental relationships, while the Court's overriding concern throughout the Burger decade of the 1970s and beyond has been the defining of individual rights in the work place.

Leveling The Road From Borg-Warner To First National Maintenance: The Scope Of Mandatory Bargaining, Michael C. Harper

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court's most recent effort to distinguish nonmandatory bargaining topics, First National Maintenance Corp. v. NLRB, ¹⁹ illustrates the Court's lack of clarity in this area and vindicates Cox's and Wellington's criticisms of the Court's approach in Borg-Warner. In First National Maintenance (F.N.M.), the Court held that an employer's decision "to shut down part of its business purely for economic reasons" was outside the scope of mandatory bargaining.²⁰ The Court could cite no evidence that Congress intended to prevent employee representatives from obtaining full effective bargaining over such decisions, nor did it articulate any general principle to …

Free Speech Or Economic Weapon? The Persisting Problem Of Picketing, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

"Peaceful picketing," the United States Supreme Court has said, "is the workingman's means of communication."' One line of analysis is that, as a means of communication, picketing is free speech and is therefore entitled to every constitutional protection afforded other forms of expression. This means that it cannot be subjected to special restrictions, such as antiboycott curbs, simply because it is picketing. The opposing line of analysis is that picketing is not simply speech; it is "speech plus." The "plus" element removes picketing from the realm of pure speech and enables it to be regulated in ways that the Constitution …

The Role Of Law, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Book Chapters

In the early New Deal days, workers' placards in the coal fields proudly proclaimed, "President Roosevelt wants you to join the union." If not literally true, that boast was well within the bounds of poetic license. After the brief interval of federal laissez-faire treatment of labor relations ushered in by the Norris-La Guardia Act of 1932, the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act of 1935 declared the policy of the United States to be one of "encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining." Employers, but not unions, were forbidden to coerce or discriminate against employees because of their organizational activities. …

Federalism As A Fundamental Value: National League Of Cities In Perspective, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

No abstract provided.

Union Waiver Of Employee Rights Under The Nlra: Part Ii - A Fresh Approach To Board Deferral To Arbitration, Michael C. Harper

Faculty Scholarship

The author applies the non-waiverprinciple developed in Part I of this article to Board deferral to arbitration. Former Chairman Murphy's concurring opinion in General American Transportation Corp. is evaluated in light of the non- waiver princple. The author analyzes the issues not properly resolved in that opinion, while demonstrating its basic insight.

In Part 1 of this essay, I explored the implications of the Supreme Court's holding in NLRP v. Magnavox Co. that exclusive bargaining agents do not have the authority to waive certain rights protected by section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act. Drawing on Magnavox, …

Rationalizing Administrative Searches, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

At the outset, this Note examines the major decisions concerning administrative searches. Specifically, it traces the development of a warrant requirement and of the corresponding lower standard of probable cause announced in the Camara and See decisions. Subsequent modifications of that seemingly absolute rule are then analyzed. To develop a framework for evaluating administrative search cases, Section II groups those principal Supreme Court cases, along with pertinent lower court opinions, into three tiers of fourth amendment protection: administrative searches that require a warrant based on a traditional criminal standard of probable cause; administrative searches that require a warrant based on …

Judicial Review Of Labor Arbitration Awards: A Second Look At Enterprise Wheel And Its Progeny, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Logic, so the cliche goes, is not the life of the law. But logic is very much like the DNA of the law-the structural principle without which all is sprawl and muddle. In the last ten years a controversy has raged over the role of the labor arbitrator in issuing awards, and the role of the courts in reviewing and enforcing those awards. This controversy has largely taken the form of a continuing debate among scholars and practicing arbitrators at the annual meetings of the National Academy of Arbitrators. With due respect to the thoughtful and experienced persons who have …

National League Of Cities V. Usery: Its Implications For The Equal Pay Act And The Age Discrimination In Employment Act, Ellen B. Spellman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In National League of Cities v. Usery, the Supreme Court invalidated the application of the FLSA minimum wage and maximum hours provisions to certain essential state government activities as an unconstitutional intrusion on state sovereignty. This article will explore the implications of that decision with respect to the application of the EPA and the ADEA to state and local governments.

Part I contains a brief discussion of the Fair Labor Standards Act and Amendments. Part II discusses National League with reference to traditional commerce clause interpretation. Part III analyzes the difficulties of applying the decision, particularly the problem of …

The Impact If Howard Johnson On The Labor Obligations Of Successor Employer, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note assesses the impact of Howard Johnson on the labor-law obligations of successor employers. Part I analyzes the prior case law; part II critiques the reasoning of the Howard Johnson opinion; part III considers the merits of a new approach to the successorship problem, suggested in a footnote in Howard Johnson.

Connell: Antitrust Law At The Expense Of Labor Law, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

From the outset, the difficulty in applying the antitrust concept to organized labor has been that the two are intrinsically incompatible. The antitrust laws are designed to promote competition, and unions, avowedly and unabashedly, are designed to limit it. According to classical trade union theory, the objective is the elimination of wage competition among all employees doing the same job in the same industry. Logically extended, the policy against restraint of trade must condemn the very existence of labor organizations, since their minimum aim has always been the suppression of any inclination on the part of working people to offer …