Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

The Continuing Battle Over Economically Targeted Investments: An Analysis Of The Department Of Labor's Interpretative Bulletin 2015-01, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

In Interpretive Bulletin 2015-01 (IB 2015-01), the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) renewed the now two-decades old battle over “economically targeted investments” (ETIs). As a matter of statutory interpretation, IB 2015-01, like its predecessors, is unpersuasive. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) requires plan trustees to invest “solely” to provide participants’ retirement benefits. A trustee who invests in ETIs violates this statutory obligation by pursuing collateral economic benefits for persons other than plan participants. As a matter of policy, the social investing which ETIs exemplify is unsound. At best, such social investing in practice merely shuffles investment …

Diy Solutions To The Hobby Lobby Problem, Kristin Haule

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

Post Quon: An Analysis Of The Evolution Of New Media And The Employment Relationship, John H. Shannon, Susan A. O’Sullivan-Gavin

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Addressing Employee Use Of Personal Clouds, Philip Favro

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Cloud computing is one of the most useful innovations in the digital age. While much of the attention on recent advances has focused on smartphones, tablet computers, and wearable technology, the cloud is perhaps unrivaled in its utility for organizations. From simplified data storage to innovative software platforms, enterprise-grade cloud solutions provide cost-effective alternatives to acquiring expensive computer hardware and software. Enterprise clouds also offer a collaborative work environment for a mobile and widespread work force, enabling businesses to maximize worker productivity.

Just Jobs, Anita Bernstein

University of Baltimore Law Review

Activists who pursue gender justice in the United States have always focused on work, both the paid and unpaid kind. In her magisterial Sex Equality, Catharine MacKinnon chose "Work" as her first section, or illustrative locus, in the chapter titled "Sex and Sexism."' At the workplace, MacKinnon wrote, begins "the mosttraveled terrain" of sex equality law.2 Unpaid work fills the waking hours of most women. Women's labor makes the domestic economies of nation-states possible, even though it continues almost entirely uncounted in measurements of national output.' Injustices in both categories of work, the paid and unpaid, buttress each other.4

Mindful …

Pension De-Risking, Brendan Maher

Faculty Articles and Papers

The United States is facing a retirement crisis, in significant part because defined benefit pension plans have been replaced by defined contribution retirement plans that, whatever their theoretical merit, have left significant numbers of workers unprepared for retirement. A troubling example of the continuing movement away from defined benefit plans is a new phenomenon euphemistically called “pension de-risking.” Recent years have been marked by high-profile companies engaging in various actions designed to reduce the company’s exposure to pension funding risk (hence the term “pension de-risking”). Some de-risking strategies convert a federally-guaranteed pension into a more risky private annuity. Other approaches …

Serving In The Master’S House: Legal Protection For In-Home Care Workers In The United States, Michael Fischl

Faculty Articles and Papers

This essay will focus on the developing forms of legal protection available in the United States to those whose principal place of work is another person’s home and who are paid to do what is broadly referred to as “care work.” The particular services vary widely – from housecleaning, to child care, to companionship and routine health care management for the elderly and the infirm – but the labor market demographics do not: This is low-wage/no-benefit work performed almost exclusively by women and primarily by women of color and of extra-national origin

The Future Of The Cadillac Tax, Kathryn L. Moore

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The Affordable Care Act includes a 40 percent excise tax on high-cost employer-sponsored health care coverage. Often referred to as the “Cadillac tax,” this excise tax is one of the most controversial elements of the Affordable Care Act.

Currently scheduled to go into effect in 2020, the Cadillac tax poses serious challenges and uncertainty for employers. On the one hand, recent estimates suggest that the Cadillac tax may hit as many as 20 percent of employers with health care plans in 2020. On the other hand, there is a serious question as to whether the tax will be repealed before …

'And Ain't I A Woman?': Feminism, Immigrant Caregivers, And New Frontiers For Equality, Shirley Lin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article argues that feminist and other critical legal theories can address the profound inequalities that immigrant workers face. Part I draws from a body of feminist, political, and social science theories regarding social reproduction to assess the situation of immigrant domestic workers and their recent efforts to claim inclusion in workplace laws and protections. It locates the increasingly carceral dynamics that are expressed in the law and in state infrastructure and continuously undermine immigrant women's economic and social stability, as explained in further detail in Parts L.A and I.B.2, infra. Unbeknownst to many, the present period is the most …

Workers' Compensation: Necessary Changes In Favor Of The Injured Worker

Nova Law Review

Florida's workers' compensation is intended to provide a "reasonable alternative to tort litigation" by providing medical and wage- loss benefits to injured workers.

Politics At Work After Citizens United, Ruben J. Garcia

Scholarly Works

There are seismic changes going on in the political system. The United States Supreme Court has constitutionalized the concentration of political power in the "one percent" in several recent decisions, including Citizens United v. FEC. At the same time, unions are representing a shrinking share of the workforce, and their political power is also being diminished. In order for unions to recalibrate the balance of political power at all, they must collaborate with grassroots community groups, as they have done in several recent campaigns. There are, however, various legal structures that make coordination between unions and nonunion groups difficult, …

Workplace Law Cases In The Tenth Term Of The Roberts Court: Between The Usual Ideological Lines, Ruben J. Garcia

Scholarly Works

My review of the Supreme Court's October 2014 Term will focus on cases involving workplace law statutes such as the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 (LMRA) and the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 (WPA). These cases can be viewed through the lens of the following trends: 1) the Court continues its judicial narrowing of the Fair Labor Standards Act and federal labor law; 2) plaintiffs who have the backing of the administrative agencies are more likely to be successful; and …

"An Equally Divided Court": Workplace Law In The U.S. Supreme Court 2015-2016, Ruben J. Garcia

Scholarly Works

The 2015-2016 Term of the United States Supreme Court was scarcely halfway over when Justice Antonin Scalia passed away on February 12, 2016. This event and the political gridlock over his successor defined the Term in some ways more than the actual decisions of the Court, particularly when the resulting vacancy led an “equally divided” Supreme Court to affirm the courts below in a one sentence judgment. The most watched of these cases in workplace law was Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, where the Supreme Court’s 4-4 tie avoided the overruling of decades of precedent upholding the constitutionality of agency …

Controlling Health Care Spending: More Patient "Skin In The Game?", David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

In this article, Professor Orentlicher explores the high cost of healthcare and the trend in health insurance to shift the cost of health care to patients in an attempt to influence their behavior and health decisions. He examines such strategies as reference pricing, scaled cost-sharing, and employee wellness programs.

Subsidized Egg Freezing In Employment: Autonomy, Coercion, Or Discrimination?, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

In 2014, Apple and Facebook announced that they would provide up to $20,000 for female employees to freeze their eggs as an employment benefit. These announcements raised mixed reviews. Some applauded the decision because they believe that egg freezing may offer to women more control over their reproductive choices. Others argued that the new benefit sends the wrong message to women and that encouraging good parenting by giving better parental leave and child care policies would be more beneficial to families. Others were concerned that this “benefit” applies only to professional or managerial-class women, but may not be helpful to …

Fired Anti-Gay Atlanta Fire Chief Strikes Back In Lawsuit, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Outsourcing And Supply Chains In Canada, Eric Tucker, Leah F. Vosko, John Grundy, Alec Stromdahl

Articles & Book Chapters

While data on the extent of outsourcing by Canadian businesses is scant, there is general agreement that over the last several decades the phenomenon has increased and taken a variety of forms including the use of global supply-chains (offshoring) and domestic subcontracting (outsourcing).175 In this way, large businesses have been able to shed responsibility for the employees who actually perform the work. David Weil has aptly characterized this phenomenon as “fissuring”, which can take a variety of forms including sub-contracting, franchising, and other arrangements.176 A related phenomenon that will be addressed here is the use of temporary employment agencies through …

Workplace Rumors About Women's Sexual Promiscuity As Gender-Based Insults Under Title Vii, Wendy Hess

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Union Representation In Employment Arbitration, Ann C. Hodges

Law Faculty Publications

Employers in recent years have promulgated arbitration programs to resolve disputes with their present and former employees. Arbitration may in many cases provide a lower-cost forum than litigation for resolving such disputes. But the problem of representation of Americans of modest incomes still remains. Ann Hodges explores in this chapter whether labor unions can help address that representation gap.

Expanding The Core: Pregnancy Discrimination Law As It Approaches Full Term, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The advocates behind the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) of 1978 had one very specific mission: to override the Supreme Court’s 1976 decision in General Electric v. Gilbert, in which it had curiously held that pregnancy discrimination had nothing to do with gender and was thus not a form of actionable sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Court was not acting on a blank slate; it had used the same reasoning two years earlier to hold, in Geduldig v. Aiello, that pregnancy discrimination was not sex discrimination for equal protection purposes and therefore was …