Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

An End Run Around Employment Obstacles: Small Business Development Programs For Returning Citizens, Dylan Rogers Elliott

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Ride-Hailing Drivers As Autonomous Independent Contractors: Let Them Bargain!, Ronald C. Brown

Washington International Law Journal

“Autonomous” workers include most gig-platform drivers, like those working globally for Uber and Lyft, who are usually classified as independent contractors and are ineligible for labor protections and benefits. The “new economy” and its business model, with its fissurization and increased use of contingent and outsourced workers hired as independent contractors, provide employers flexibility and lower costs by shifting labor costs to the workers. Many of these workers operate more as employees rather than genuine independent contractors or self-employed entrepreneurs, causing lost employee labor benefits and costing the government billions of lost tax dollars. Legal attempts continue to classify these …

Labor And Employment, W. Jonathan Martin Ii, Patricia-Anne Brownback

Mercer Law Review

This Article focuses on case law concerning federal laws pertaining to labor and employment. The following is a discussion of those opinions.

Accommodating Absence: Medical Leave As An Ada Reasonable Accommodation, Sean P. Mulloy

Michigan Law Review

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is widely regarded as one of the most significant pieces of civil rights legislation in American history. Among its requirements, Title I of the ADA prohibits employers from discriminating against people with disabilities and requires that employers make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals. Many questions about the scope of the reasonable-accommodation mandate remain, however, as federal circuit courts disagree over whether extended medical leave may be considered a reasonable accommodation and whether an employee on leave is a qualified individual. This Note argues that courts should presume finite unpaid medical leaves of absence are …

The Folly Of Credit As Pandemic Relief, Pamela Foohey, Dalié Jiménez, Christopher K. Odinet

Faculty Scholarship

Within weeks of the coronavirus pandemic appearing in the United States, the American economy came to a grinding halt. The unprecedented modern health crisis and the collapsing economy forced Congress to make a critical choice about how to help American families survive financially. Congress had two basic options. It could enact policies that provided direct and meaningful financial support to people, without the necessity of later repayment. Or it could pursue policies that temporarily relieved people from their financial obligations, but required that they eventually pay amounts subject to payment moratoria later.

In passing the CARES Act, Congress primarily chose …

The Bumpy Road Of Home States’ Regulation Of Globalized Businesses—Legal And Institutional Disruptions To Supply Chain Disclosure Under The Modern Slavery Act, Shuangge Wen, Jingchen Zhao

Catholic University Law Review

In response to the paradigm shift from territorial corporations to global businesses and supply chains, states are increasingly engaging in regulating extraterritorial business activities, supply chain disclosure regulation being a primary example. Much ink has thus far spilled on the intrinsic doctrinal and conceptual aspects of this regulatory approach, with its interactions to the external regulatory and institutional environment far less considered. This article seeks to correct the scholarly imbalance by critically examining how s.54 of the UK Modern Slavery Act (MSA) – a prominent attempt among state-level initiatives designed to promote human rights protection within global supply chains – …

Seeking Justice: Reform To The Resolution Of Sexual Harassment Workplace Claims, Maygen Martinez

Honors College Theses

The era of the #MeToo Movement has brought about significant change in both personal and professional lives. With support from the community, many survivors of sexual assault are now able to publicly confront the atrocities that have happened to them. Further, and as a result of this impetus, historic legislation and internal action have caused many companies to end their mandatory arbitration practices for sexual harassment complaints. The ending of mandatory employer-sponsored arbitration opens the door to a significant change in the way discrimination and harassment complaints are resolved in the workplace. More employees than ever are now able to …

Class Crimes: Master And Servant Laws And Factories Acts In Industrializing Britain And (Ontario) Canada, Eric Tucker, Judy Fudge

Articles & Book Chapters

This chapter compares the historical development and use of criminal law at work in the United Kingdom and in Ontario, Canada. Specifically, it considers the use of the criminal law both in the master and servant regime as an instrument for disciplining the workforce and in factory legislation for protecting workers from unhealthy and unsafe working conditions, including exceedingly long hours work. Master and servant legislation that criminalized servant breaches of contract originated in the United Kingdom where it was widely used in the nineteenth century to discipline industrial workers. These laws were partially replicated in Ontario, where it had …

Gender-Stereotyping Theory, Freedom Of Expression, And Identity, Carlos A. Ball

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Article argues that the expressive components of gender-stereotyping theory serve to delink the equality protections afforded by that theory from fixed and predetermined identity categories in helpful and positive ways. Many have viewed American antidiscrimination law as being normatively grounded in the notion that there are certain identities that, because of their stable and immutable characteristics, deserve equality-based protections. Gender-stereotyping theory can help make the normative case for a more pluralistic understanding of equality, one that is grounded in the need to protect the fluid and multiple ways in which gender is performed or expressed rather than focusing, as …

Expungement Of Criminal Convictions: An Empirical Study, J.J. Prescott, Sonja B. Starr

Articles

Laws permitting the expungement of criminal convictions are a key component of modern criminal justice reform efforts and have been the subject of a recent upsurge in legislative activity. This debate has been almost entirely devoid of evidence about the laws’ effects, in part because the necessary data (such as sealed records themselves) have been unavailable. We were able to obtain access to de-identified data that overcome that problem, and we use it to carry out a comprehensive statewide study of expungement recipients and comparable nonrecipients in Michigan. We offer three key sets of empirical findings. First, among those legally …

Making Employment Arbitration Fair And Accessible, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Mandatory arbitration agreements require employees, as a condition of employment, to agree to arbitrate all employment disputes instead of filing court suits. The Supreme Court has approved such agreements but many labor experts oppose them. The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill to prohibit pre-dispute agreements, the common form for mandatory arbitrations. This article argues that the House bill would have the practical effect of virtually eliminating employment arbitration. Instead, proposals are presented for either legislative or judicial steps to ensure that employment arbitration is fair and accessible. Requirements would include: (1) voluntary agreements on the part of …

Richard Musenyesa V. Indo Zambia Bank Limited Appeal No. 214/2016 (2020), Chanda Chungu

SAIPAR Case Review

In Richard Musenyesa v. Indo Zambia Bank Limited, the Supreme Court dealt with an employee whose conditions of service were altered by their employer. The entitlement to gratuity at the end of the employment relationship was not mentioned in the new conditions of employment despite being in the previous conditions that regulated his employment.

The Supreme Court provided that where acquiescence is intended to be assumed from conduct, credible evidence will have to be led, showing that the employee was by clear notice given by the employer indeed aware of the variation, understood the implications and its full extent, before …

A Textuary Ray Of Hope For Lgbtq+ Workers: Does Title Vii Mean What It Says?, Eduardo Juarez

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

A More Perfect Pickering Test: Janus V. Afscme Council 31 And The Problem Of Public Employee Speech, Alexandra J. Gilewicz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In June 2018, the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited—and, for the American labor movement, long-feared—decision in Janus v. AFSCME Council 31. The decision is expected to have a major impact on public sector employee union membership, but could have further impact on public employees’ speech rights in the workplace. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito’s broad interpretation of whether work-related speech constitutes a “matter of public concern” may have opened the floodgates to substantially more litigation by employees asserting that their employers have violated their First Amendment rights. Claims that would have previously been unequivocally foreclosed may now …

Dignity Transacted: Emotional Labor And The Racialized Workplace, Lu-In Wang, Zachary W. Brewster

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In interactive customer service encounters, the dignity of the parties becomes the currency of a commercial transaction. Service firms that profit from customer satisfaction place great emphasis on emotional labor, the work that service providers do to make customers feel cared for and esteemed. But performing emotional labor can deny dignity to workers by highlighting their subservience and requiring them to suppress their own emotions in an effort to elevate the status and experiences of their customers. Paradoxically, the burden of performing emotional labor may also impose transactional costs on some customers by facilitating discrimination in service delivery. Drawing on …

Workplace Wellness Programs: Empirical Doubt, Legal Ambiguity, And Conceptual Confusion, Camila Strassle, Benjamin E. Berkman

William & Mary Law Review

Federal laws that protect workers from insurance discrimination and infringement of health privacy include exceptions for wellness programs that are “voluntary” and “reasonably designed” to improve health. Initially, these exceptions were intended to give employers the flexibility to create innovative wellness programs that would appeal to workers, increase productivity, and protect the workforce from preventable health conditions.

Yet a detailed look at the scientific literature reveals that wellness program efficacy is quite disputed, and even highly touted examples of program success have been shown to be unreliable. Meanwhile, the latest administrative regulations on wellness programs were vacated by a district …

Mediating Psychiatric Disability Accommodations For Workers In Violent Times, Michael Z. Green

Faculty Scholarship

Most workers in the United States are unhappy. Manifestations of that dissatisfaction can result in many workplace dilemmas when confronted with the situation of an employee dealing with mental illness. Fears of violence in our society have become prevalent with the increasing ferocity of high-profile and mass attacks in and out of the workplace. In believing mental illness contributes to some of these incidents, employers and co-workers have become extremely sensitive when a co-worker with a psychiatric disability has exhibited harassing or threatening behavior.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was amended by the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA), …

When Women’S Silence Is Reasonable: Reforming The Faragher/Ellerth Defense In The #Metoo Era, Elizabeth C. Potter

Brooklyn Law Review

The incredible force of the #MeToo movement has created momentum for long-overdue reform of workplace sexual harassment laws. One problematic element of the sexual harassment scheme is the Faragher/Ellerth defense, a defense to a claim of hostile work environment under Title VII. The Faragher/Ellerth defense allows an employer to escape liability for actionable sexual harassment if it can show that it had a policy against harassment with a procedure for making complaints, but the victim of harassment did not complain using that procedure. But the vast majority of victims of sexual harassment never make a formal complaint to their employer …

Drug Testing In The Nonunionized Workplace: Search And Seizure, Procedural Due Process, And Maine's Drug-Testing Statute, Shawn K. Bell

Maine Law Review

As former President Reagan stated in Executive Order No. 12,564, "[d]rug use is having serious adverse effects upon a significant pro- portion of the national work force .... " One survey by the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that between ten and twenty-three percent of all employees use drugs at work. The costs to industry in lost productivity due to drugs are equally staggering. Employee drug and alcohol abuse resulted in an estimated $100 billion in lost productivity in 1986. Furthermore, employees with drug or alcohol abuse problems have an absentee rate sixteen times greater than the average employee, …

Arbitration Of Health And Safety Issues In The Workplace: Employees Who Refuse Work Assignments Because Of Fear Of Aids Contagion, Madelyn C. Squire

Maine Law Review

Horror stories concerning the abuse suffered by the AIDS victim in the workplace are plentiful. There have been numerous reports about employees who have refused to work with or touch the AIDS worker, or use the same bathroom, telephone, water fountain, or pencil. It was reported that one AIDS victim was not even allowed to use his pregnant co-worker's word processor; she claimed she had once seen him sweat on the keyboard. Paul Cronan became painfully aware that his employer of twelve years, the New England Telephone Company, had breached his privacy by divulging in large group meetings of employees …