Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

Legal And Ethical Implications Of Corporate Social Networks, Gundars Kaupins, Susan Park

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Corporate social networking sites provide employees and employers with considerable opportunity to share information and become friends. Unfortunately, American laws do not directly address social networking site usage. The National Labor Relations Act, civil rights laws, and various common law doctrines such as employment at-will and defamation provide the pattern for future social networking laws. Ethical considerations such as productivity, security, goodwill, privacy, accuracy, and discipline fairness also affect future laws. Corporate policies on corporate social networking should balance the employer‘s and employee‘s interests. Existing laws and ethical issues associated with social networking should impact social networking policies related to …

Pedagogy And Critique: Values And Assumptions In The Law School Classroom, Richard Michael Fischl

The Docket

Michael Fischl offers further reflections on the importance of Emeritus Professor James Atleson's scholarship, in response to our Symposium on James Atleson's Values and Assumptions in American Labor Law: A Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Retrospective, 57 Buff. L. Rev. 629.

Discrimination Outside Of The Office: Where To Draw The Walls Of The Workplace For A "Hostile Work Environment" Claim Under Title Vii, Douglas R. Garmager

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it "an unlawful employment practice for an employer . . . to discriminate against any individual" on the basis of sex. Accordingly, in Meritor Savings Bank, FSB v. Vinson, the Supreme Court recognized that sex discrimination in employment can give rise to a hostile work environment claim under Title VII. The scope of a hostile work environment claim has not been interpreted uniformly by the lower courts, however, as a circuit split exists today over whether conduct occurring outside the workplace is relevant to a hostile work environment claim. …

Closing The Gap Legislatively: Consequences Of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Carolyn E. Sorock

Chicago-Kent Law Review

With the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, Congress both reversed the result of the widely criticized Ledbetter Supreme Court case and expanded the statute of limitations for all employment discrimination claims relating to compensation. Under the Act, a compensation-based employment discrimination claim's statute of limitations period of three hundred days begins to run whenever an employee is "affected" by a discriminatory practice. The language of the Act is far-reaching, but just five months after the Act was signed into law, the Supreme Court stepped in again to narrow the Act's application to pension benefits in AT&T Corp. v. …

The Statute Of Frauds And Oral Promises Of Job Security The Tenuous Distinction Between Performance And Excusable Nonperformance, Daniel P. O'Gorman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Review Of 'Understanding Labor And Employment Law In China' By Ronald C. Brown, Nicholas C. Howson

Law & Economics Working Papers

Review of Ronald C. Brown's UNDERSTANDING LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT LAW IN CHINA (Cambridge University Press, 2010) which review describes an alternative way of describing and analyzing law and legal institutions in contemporary China generally, and labor law specifically.

Respecting Working Mothers With Infant Children: The Need For Increased Federal Intervention To Develop, Protect, And Support A Breastfeeding Culture In The United States, Heather M. Kolinsky

Faculty Scholarship

The author argues that the benefits of breastfeeding are overwhelming and that more needs to be done to ensure that all women have a viable option to continue breastfeeding upon returning to work, particularly the working poor and minorities. Those least likely to breastfeed are more likely to be part of an at risk population in terms of health. Most significantly, the lack of a cohesive policy in the workplace has had a disparate impact on the most vulnerable populations of breastfeeding mothers and their children. The lack of federal protection and a patchwork of protection in the states have …

Arbitration Clauses In Ceo Employment Contracts: An Empirical And Theoretical Analysis, Randall Thomas, Erin O'Hara, Kenneth Martin

Vanderbilt Law Review

A bill currently pending in Congress would render unenforceable mandatory arbitration clauses in all employment contracts. Some perceive these provisions as employer efforts to deprive employees of important legal rights. Company CEOs are firm employees, and, unlike most other firm employees, they can actually negotiate their employment contracts, very often with attorney assistance. Moreover, many CEO employment contracts are publicly available, so they can be examined empirically. In this paper, we ask whether CEOs bargain to include binding arbitration provisions in their employment contracts. After exploring the theoretical arguments for and against including such provisions in these agreements, we use …

The Opeb Tsunami: Riding The Wave Of Public Sector Postemployment Health Benefits, Jenna Amato Moran

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Erasing Boundaries: Masculinities, Sexual Minorities, And Employment Discrimination, Ann C. Mcginley

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article analyzes the application of employment discrimination law to sexual minorities-lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and intersex individuals. It evaluates Title VII and state anti-discrimination laws' treatment of these individuals, and is the first article to use masculinities research, theoretical and empirical, to explain employment discrimination against sexual minorities.

While the Article concludes that new legislation would further the interests of sexual minorities, it posits that it is neither necessary nor sufficient to solving the employment discrimination problems of sexual minorities. A major problem lies in the courts' binary view of sex and gender, a view that identifies men and …

Sprawl, Family Rhythms, And The Four-Day Work Week, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

We evaluate the four-day work week against the background of other institutional and social practices and constraints. But we fix these other variables when considering the value of this work reform. For example, workers enjoy the commute time and expense savings associated with a four-day week. These savings would mean little if the commutes in question were negligible. Therefore, the value of the four-day work week depends in part on the social history that gave us increasingly substantial commutes. This Article seeks to highlight some of the institutional practices that influence the adoption of a four-day work week, particularly those …

Liability For Unconscious Discrimination? A Thought Experiment In The Theory Of Employment Discrimination Law, Patrick S. Shin

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

A steadily mounting body of social science research suggests that ascertaining a person’s conscious motives for an action may not always provide a complete explanation of why he did it. The phenomenon of unconscious bias presents a worrisome impediment to the achievement of fair equality in the workplace. There have been numerous deeply insightful articles discussing various aspects of this problem and canvassing its implications for antidiscrimination law. My purpose in this paper is to focus directly on what might be called a more naïve question: should implicit bias be a basis of disparate treatment liability under Title VII? The …

Vol. 27, No. 2, Michael J. Duggan, Julie E. Lewis, Mallory Milluzzi

The Illinois Public Employee Relations Report

Contents:

Labor Relations in Hard Times, by Michael J. Duggan, Julie E. Lewis, and Mallory Milluzzi

Recent Developments

Sadowski V. United States Postal Service: One Step Closer To Delivering A Resolution To The Dispute On Individual Liability For Public Employees Under The Family And Medical Leave Act Of 1993, Leila Early

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reforming The United States' Economic Model After The Failure Of Unfettered Financial Capitalism, Richard B. Freeman

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This Article is based on the 2009 Kenneth M. Piper Lecture at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. The 2008–2009 financial meltdown and ensuing economic developments have shown three things about modern capitalism: First, that unfettered financial markets remain the Achilles heel of capitalism with the capability of destroying economic stability and bringing misery to all. Second, that high-powered incentives paid to "talent" in finance are a fundamental cause of the excessive risk-taking, chicanery, and financial fraud that contributes to instability. Without a new compensation system that rewards banking and finance for contributing to sustainable economic progress rather than for economic …

Pitfalls Of Fmla And Collective Bargaining Agreements, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Mika discusses union contracts and how employers must be aware of family and medical leave rights when applying contract provisions.

(Re)Constructing The Framework Of Work/Family, Nancy E. Dowd

UF Law Faculty Publications

When we talk about the connections between work, family, and marriage, what are our assumptions or our implicit model? In this essay, I hope to expose the importance of questioning the framework within which we operate. Marriage continues to be a core focus of the typical family law course. As a matter of public policy, supporting and valuing marriage, and concern about the conflict between work and family because of the strains it imposes on marriage, makes balancing work and family within a marital framework a focus of law and policy.

In this essay, I argue that we need to …

Heeding "The Best Of Prophets": Historical Perspective And Potential Reform Of Public Sector Collective Bargaining In Indiana, Todd C. Dvorak

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Extending The Vision: An Empowerment Identity Approach To Work-Family Regulation As Applied To School Involvement Leave Statuses, Kirsten K. Davis

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Using school involvement leave legislation as the focus for analysis, this article proposes the “empowerment identity” approach to work-family legislation as an alternative or complement to the commonly used accommodation and antidiscrimination approaches. In many households, working parents struggle to meet routine demands of parenting, such as caring for a sick child or attending a child’s school activity. Interestingly, one of the most common forms of state-level legislation designed to address the routine demands of parenting is school involvement leave legislation. Although state school involvement leave statutes vary widely in how and for what reasons they permit time away from …

Erasing Boundaries: Masculinities, Sexual Minorities, And Employment Discrimination, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

This Article analyzes the application of employment discrimination law to sexual minorities--lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and intersex individuals. It evaluates Title VII and state anti-discrimination laws' treatment of these individuals, and is the first article to use masculinities research, theoretical and empirical, to explain employment discrimination against sexual minorities. While the Article concludes that new legislation would further the interests of sexual minorities, it posits that it is neither necessary nor sufficient to solving the employment discrimination problems of sexual minorities. A major problem lies in the courts' binary view of sex and gender, a view that identifies men and …