Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

A Modern Theory Of Direct Corporate Liability For Title Vii, Sandra F. Sperino

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Something is missing from Title VII-a modern and fully functional theory of direct employer liability for individual discrimination claims. Courts largely focus on finding employers indirectly liable for discrimination through the acts of their agents, rather than viewing the employer as the culpable actor in appropriate circumstances. This Article posits that five major problems with Title VII can be eliminated or reduced by once again recognizing the importance of direct employer liability and by re-theorizing direct liability using modern conceptions of corporate character.

Borrowing the emerging concept of corporate character from criminal law and corporate law scholarship, this Article attempts …

Walking The Legal Tightrope: Solutions For Achieving A Balanced Life In Law, Leslie L. Cooney

Faculty Scholarship

For over twenty years, issues surrounding women and their status in the legal profession have been documented, analyzed, and reported. The American Bar Association (ABA) Commission on Women in its 1988 study concluded that a thorough reexamination of attitudes and structures within the legal profession was needed to remedy the underrepresentation of women in the positions of power within the profession-law firm partnerships and judicial appointments. Nearly a decade later, the ABA Commission on Women found that little progress had been made in female representation and concluded the mere passage of time alone would not render sufficient corrections. Although the …

Promoting Worker-Owned Cooperatives As A Ced Empowerment Strategy: A Case Study Of Colors And Lawyering In Support Of Participatory Decision-Making And Meaningful Social Change, Carmen Huertas-Noble

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Uses And Misuses Of Statistical Proof In Age Discrimination Claims, Tom Tinkham

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

When it comes to statistics, age discrimination is different than other forms of discrimination. In most discrimination cases we can take the protected population and make appropriate adjustments for necessary characteristics like education and compare the results to the other employee groups. With age discrimination this method does not work. It doesn’t work because the normal patterns of aging and promotion or wage increase distort the statistical result. Employees typically are promoted more quickly and receive the highest percentage wage increases in early years. However, they generally retain those benefits for life. Employees reach a high point in their careers …

Winds Of Change Are Blowing From The Obama Nlrb, J. Michael Lightner

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Take Your Paws Off Me: An Argument In Favor Of Revising The Occupational Safety And Health Act And The Protecting America's Workers Act, Jaime Rigel, Alexi T. Poulianos

Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Tackling Disability Discrimination At Work: Toward A Systematic Approach, Dianne Pothier

Dianne Pothier Collection

Approaching disability discrimination in systemic terms is the most fundamental challenge that disability human rights law currently faces. Achieving fundamental change in relation to disability at work necessitates challenging able-bodied norms. To that end, a social construction of disability entails adapting the environment to meet the needs of those with a variety of dis-abilities. Tackling disability discrimination requires contesting what is deemed “normal” be­cause it is the way most able-bodied persons function, necessitating a thorough understanding of adverse effects discrimination, which looks behind purportedly neutral practices to uncover detrimental effects on those who do not function “normally”.

The fact that …

What Are You Afraid Of?, Rebecca Minton, Linnea Christine Kennedy, Chapman University, Candy Rodriguez, Rachael Bridgens, Chelsey Coleman, Krista Xvx, Leticia Dessire Mayorga, Stephanie Bovis, Lorene Spiller Gambill

Women’s Studies, Feminist Zine Archive

Writings and art about self-care, the judicial system, Adrienne Rich, the portrayal of women in advertising, Andrea Dowrkin, sex roles and pornography, rape culture, Rita Gross, human trafficking, welfare, contraception, Margaret Sanger, The Vagina Monologues, Guerilla Girls, feminism and religion, Sandra Harding, tenure at Chapman based on gender, and Delores Huerta.

The Florida Minimum Wage Act: Thoughts On The Impending Notice Debate, Christopher M. Pardo

St. Thomas Law Review

Although litigation has yet to erupt in this arena, the 2005 Minimum Wage Amendment to the Florida Constitution laid the groundwork for what may soon become a hotbed of litigation. Specifically, the Minimum Wage Amendment ("Amendment") set a minimum wage above the federal standard and created a civil cause of action and specifically allowed the Florida legislature or Agency for Workforce Innovation to "adopt any measures appropriate for the implementation of this amendment." The result has led to little litigation to date, but the two initial cases examining the implementing legislation - Throw v. Republic Enter. Sys., Inc. and Resnick …

The State Of Erisa After 35 Years: Complex, Yet Arguable Simplistic, Which Federal Statute May Be Unraveled With A Touch Of Supreme Common Sense, H. Michael Muniz

St. Thomas Law Review

No abstract provided.

Walking The Legal Tightrope: Solutions For Achieving A Balanced Life In Law, Leslie Larkin Cooney

Faculty Scholarship

Leslie Cooney, Walking the Legal Tightrope: Solutions for Achieving a Balanced Life in Law, 47 San Diego Law Review 421 (2010). For over twenty years, issues surrounding women and their status in the legal profession have been documented, analyzed, and reported. The American Bar Association (ABA) Commission on Women in its 1988 study concluded that a thorough reexamination of attitudes and structures within the legal profession was needed to remedy the underrepresentation of women in the positions of power within the profession-law firm partnerships and judicial appointments. Nearly a decade later, the ABA Commission on Women found that little …

Conference Highlight: Fifteenth Annual Lat.Crit. Conference, Alex Bernshteyn

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

The Relative Bargaining Power Of Employers And Unions In The Global Information Age: A Comparative Analysis Of The United States And Japan, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt, Benjamin C. Ellis

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In this paper, we examine and compare the impact of American and Japanese labor law on the relative bargaining power of the labor and management within the context of the new global economy based on information technology. We begin by providing a simple economic definition of bargaining power and examining how it can be influenced by economic and legal factors. Next, we discuss the impact of new information technology and the global economy on the employment relationship and how this has decreased union bargaining power relative to management bargaining power. Finally, we compare various facets of American and Japanese labor …

Freedom Not To Listen: A Constitutional Analysis Of Compulsory Indoctrination Through Workplace Captive Audience Meetings, Roger C. Hartley

Scholarly Articles

Workplace captive audience meetings are assemblies of employees during paid work time in which employers compel employees to listen to antiunion and other types of proselytizing. Employers enforce attendance at workplace captive audience meetings by threats of discharge. Typically, employers deny employees the right to ask questions or express disagreement with the anti-union views presented during these mandatory meetings. Soon after the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) concluded that workplace captive audience meetings discussing unionization are per se unlawful. However, the NLRB reversed course following the enactment of the 1947 Taft-Hartley …

Show Me The Money The Applicability Of Contract Laws Ratification And Tenderback Doctrines To Title Vii Releases, Daniel P. O'Gorman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Complimentary And Complementary Discrimination In Faculty Hiring, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

This Article focuses on one form of discrimination in faculty hiring. Specifically, this Article concentrates on discrimination against the "overqualified" minority faculty candidate, the candidate who is presumed to have too many opportunities and thus gets excluded from faculty interview lists and consideration. In so doing, this Article poses and answers the question: "Can exclusion from interviewing pools and selection based upon the notion that one is just 'too good' to recruit to a particular department constitute an actionable form of discrimination?" Part I of this Article begins by briefly reviewing the changes in faculty diversity and inclusion at colleges …

A Crumbling Pyramid: How The Evolving Jurisprudence Defining “Employee” Under The Adea Threatens The Basic Structure Of The Modern Large Law Firm, Jessica Fink

Faculty Scholarship

Part I of this article describes the legal framework for analyzing whether a partner can sue under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act ("ADEA"), focusing on two fairly recent decisions in this area: (i) The U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 decision in Clackamas Gastroenterology Assoc., P.C. v. Wells, a case in which the Court had to determine whether director-shareholder physicians in a medical clinic should be deemed employees for purposes of the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"); and (ii) the Seventh Circuit's 2002 decision in a lawsuit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") against the law firm Sidley & …

Gina's Genotypes, David H. Kaye

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

In August 2009, the Board of Trustees of the University of Akron added to the university's employment policy the following proviso: "any applicant may be asked to submit fingerprints or DNA sample for purpose of a federal criminal background check." Although the federal government does not do background checks with DNA, the policy is significant because it highlights a largely unexplored feature of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 ("GINA"). Hailed by the late Senator Edward Kennedy as "the first civil rights bill of the new century of life sciences," GINA generally prohibits employers from asking for "genetic information." …

Legal And Ethical Issues Associated With Employee Use Of Social Networks, Gundars Kaupins, Susan Park

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter can help employees enhance a company’s marketing, recruiting, security, and safety. However, employee’s use of social networking sites and employers’ access of those sites can result in illegal and unethical behavior, such as discrimination and privacy invasions. Companies must gauge whether and how to rely upon employees’ use of personal social networking sites and how much freedom employees should have in using networks inside and outside of the companies. This research summarizes the latest legal and ethical issues regarding employee use of social networks and provides recommended corporate policies.

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

Reviews

Any attempt to analyze China’s comprehensive labor reform over the past three decades faces at least two dilemmas. First, the analyst must confront the task of describing how the Chinese state has dismantled the “work unit” (or danwei)- based “iron rice bowl” employment and entitlements system, replacing that comforting but low-production employment and social security scheme with formally-proclaimed legal rights and institutions apparently designed to protect employees in a functioning labor market. Second, the analyst must track how the state’s commitment (at all levels of government) to implementation of proclaimed legal and institutional protections has waxed and waned, based upon …