Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

Municipal Minimum Wage Ordinances In Ohio: A Home Rule Analysis, Paul J. Lysobey

Cleveland State Law Review

In 2016, a grassroots proposal in Cleveland, Ohio sought to raise the minimum wage in the City of Cleveland to fifteen dollars per hour. But before Cleveland residents could vote on the proposal, the Ohio legislature enacted Senate Bill 331, prohibiting Ohio municipalities from setting their own minimum wage rates. However, the Ohio Home Rule Amendment gives municipalities the right to self-governance in certain instances, and there is question as to whether the Ohio legislature’s action is a violation of the right to home rule for Ohio cities. This Note evaluates the constitutionality of Senate Bill 331’s minimum wage provision …

Comment: Microchipping Employees And Privacy Implications - Does My Boss Know Where I Am Right Now?, Samuel E. Simpson

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

Existing law surrounding employee privacy does not adequately address privacy concerns raised by microchip programs. A handful of states have passed laws that prohibit mandatory employee microchipping programs, but the vast majority have not passed any preventative legislation. In states that have passed laws, the limited protections that do exist fail to address a wide range of issues that have not yet come up in the context of employer-provided technology. This comment will briefly overview employee privacy law to highlight some of the issues that will arise if the law remains untouched. Then, it will propose solutions that would serve …

Surviving The “Pretext” Stage Of Mcdonnell Douglas: Should Employment Discrimination And Retaliation Plaintiffs Prove “Motivating Factors” Or But-For Causation?, Alexandra Zabinski

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

Bias In The Boardroom: Implicit Bias In The Selection And Treatment Of Women Directors

Marquette Law Review

In light of the stagnation in growth of women directors on corporate boards, board diversity advocates and corporate leaders should look to the role implicit gender bias plays in the board nomination process and in challenges women directors face while serving on boards. Relevant stakeholders often overlook how implicit bias barriers prevent women from reaching the boardroom and persist as obstacles once women directors have earned their seats on the board. Incorporating social psychological research on implicit bias and recognized strategies to work around bias, such as objective assessments and guidelines, data analytics, and accountability mechanisms, this Article encourages companies …

Fifth Indifference: Clarifying The Fifth Circuit's Intent Standard For Damages Under Title Ii Of The Americans With Disabilities Act, Derek Warden

Texas A&M Law Review

The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities. Title II of the ADA applies to public entities. That same Title allows plaintiffs to obtain damages upon a showing that the discrimination was intentional. There are generally two possible standards of intent: (1) deliberate indifference or (2) animus. While most Circuit Courts expressly adopted the deliberate indifference model, the Fifth Circuit has not. Indeed, the Fifth Circuit has not adopted any standard and this has led to confusion. The confusion is not helped, moreover, by the sheer lack of justification offered by a number of the Circuit Courts …

Big Data And Artificial Intelligence: New Challenges For Workplace Equality, Pauline Kim

Scholarship@WashULaw

This essay contains remarks delivered in a keynote speech at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law’s 35th Annual Carl A. Warns and Edwin R. Render Labor and Employment Law Institute. Big data and artificial intelligence are increasingly being used by employers in their human resources processes in ways that control access to employment opportunities. This essay describes some of those developments and explains how practices like targeted online recruitment strategies and the use of hiring algorithms to screen applicants raise a significant risk of discriminating against protected groups such as women and racial minorities. It then considers some …

Data Mining And The Challenges Of Protecting Employee Privacy Under U.S. Law, Pauline Kim

Scholarship@WashULaw

Concerns about employee privacy have intensified with the introduction of data mining tools in the workplace. Employers can now readily access detailed data about workers’ online behavior or social media activities, purchase background information from data brokers, and collect additional data from workplace surveillance tools. When data mining techniques are applied to this wealth of data, it is possible to infer additional information about employees beyond the information that is collected directly. As a consequence, these tools can alter the meaning and significance of personal information depending upon what other information it is aggregated with and how the larger dataset …

Janus V Afscme, Council 31: Judges Will Haunt You In The Second Gilded Age, William A. Herbert

Publications and Research

The United States Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Janus v American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31 reversed four decades of precedent by holding that a stat tory or a negotiated agency shop in public sector labour relations is unconstitutional under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. This essay, published in Relations Industrielles / Industrial Relations places the Janus decision in historical and legal context, describe the judicial activism underlying the decision, and review measures being taken by unions and state legislatures to minimize the decision’s adverse impact

Age Discrimination In The On-Demand Economy And Crowdwork, Miriam A. Cherry

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

The dominant narrative about the on-demand or gig economy focuses on the plight of Millennials, the generation born between 1982 and 2004. Reporters, bloggers, and commentators have largely confined their account of gig platforms to what the on-demand economy means for Millennials who are just beginning their careers. Media sources have spotlighted the hardships facing young, tech-savvy workers who are forced to cobble together a living through a combination of part-time work, entrepreneurial activities, and insecure gigs online. These sources note that these Millennials are barely scraping by and often lack job security or benefits. When discussing the problems …

Finding Balance: Using Employment Law Problems To Achieve Multiple Learning Goals In Persuasive Legal Writing, Rosa Castello

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Legal Writing professors, like myself, face the same challenge each new semester: how can I effectively and efficiently help students learn one of the most important skills for a practicing lawyer? And one large hurdle in this quest to make our students good legal writers is creating a trial motion or appellate brief problem that helps them develop the particular skills required for persuasive legal writing. The act of creating the problem is sometimes like tightrope walking̶ finding just the right balance of facts and law to challenge students and help develop and enhance vital research, analytical, organizational, writing, …

The (Limited) Constitutional Right To Compete In An Occupation, Rebecca Haw Allensworth

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Is there a constitutional right to compete in an occupation? The “right to earn a living” movement, gaining steam in policy circles and winning some battles in the lower courts, says so. Advocates for this right say that the right to compete in an occupation stands on equal footing with our most sacred constitutional rights such as the right to be free from racial discrimination. This Article takes a different view, arguing that while there is a limited constitutional right to compete in an occupation, it is—and should be—weaker than these advocates claim. Some state licensing laws run afoul of …

Efficient Deterrence Of Workplace Sexual Harassment, Joni Hersch

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Although sexual harassment imposes costs on both victims and organizations, it is also costly for organizations to reduce sexual harassment. Legislation, education, training, and litigation have all been unsuccessful in eradicating workplace sexual harassment. My proposal is to establish financial incentives of sufficient magnitude to incentivize organizations to eliminate sexual harassment. The key challenge is in monetizing the harm caused by sexual harassment. I propose a new approach that draws on my research, which calculated the risk of sexual harassment by gender, industry, and age based on charges filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Using these risk measures, I …

No Longer A Second-Class Class Action? Finding Common Ground In The Debate Over Wage Collective Actions With Best Practices For Litigation And Adjudication, Scott A. Moss, Nantiya Ruan

Publications

Rule 23 class actions include all potential members, if granted certification. For wage claims, 29 U.S.C. § 216(b) allows not class but collective actions covering only those opting in. Courts have practiced Rule 23-style gatekeeping in collective actions – requiring certification motions, which they deny if members lack enough commonality. Our 2012 article argued against this practice. No statute or rule grants judges the § 216(b) gatekeeping power early cases assumed, and with good reason: opt-in reduces the agency problems justifying Rule 23 gatekeeping; and Congress passed § 216(b) as not a stricter, opt-in form of class action, but liberalized …

A Common-Sense Defense Of Janus: Forthcoming Changes In The Public Sector, Maria O'Brien

Faculty Scholarship

Many scholars and others have, for some time now, been calling attention to the alarming growth in post-employment and other benefits for unionized employees in the public sector. ¹⁷ A fairly well-understood phenomenon is thought to explain the inability of state and local governments to resist outsized demands from their public unions. As ¹⁸ Is and others ¹⁹ have argued, the central problem with public sector unions is that they find it easy to capture their employers (taxpayers) in ways that private sector unions cannot. The role played by often eager and feckless elected officials in this process has also …

Exploration Of The Nfl Franchise Tag Functioning As A Non-Compete Clause, David B. Borsack

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Sticking To The Union? A Study On The Unionization Of Academic Law Libraries, Sarah C. Slinger

Scholarly Works

This article analyzes the responses of law library directors to a survey assessing rates of unionization, experience with unionization, and attitudes on unionization. These results ultimately show that while there is a low rate of unionization in academic law libraries, unions may become more prevalent in the future.

Labor Law Illiteracy: Epic Systems Corp. V. Lewis And Janus V. Afscme, Michael Yelnosky

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Permitted Incentives For Workplace Wellness Plans Under The Ada And Gina: The Regulatory Gap, Elizabeth Pendo

Articles

Although workplace wellness plans have been around for decades, they have flourished under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“PPACA”) into a $6 billion-dollar industry. Under PPACA, a “wellness plan” is a program of health promotion or disease prevention offered by an employer that is designed to promote health or prevent disease and which meets the other applicable requirements of that subsection. Employers look to these programs to promote healthy lifestyles, improve the overall health of employees and beneficiaries, and reduce rising healthcare costs.

PPACA’s amendments to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) permit employers to offer …

Following The Fifth Circuit: Title Vii As The Sole Remedy For Employment Discrimination On The Basis Of Sex In Educational Institutions Receiving Federal Funds, Alicia Martinez

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

The Right To Be An Asshole: The Need For Increased First Amendment Public Employment Protections In The Age Of Social Media, Alexis Martinez

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.