AFSCME Information Highway

Source: Working USA, March 2008

The essays and commentary in this issue mark six decades since an overwhelming majority of Congressional Republicans and Democrats joined forces to vilify and castigate the specter of "big labor" haunting the postwar economy. In June of 1947, the U.S. had a new labor policy when both houses of Congress handily overrode Harry Truman's presidential veto to pass the Taft-Hartley Act amending the national Labor Relations Act of 1935. Future amendments to federal labor law have not mitigated the fundamental antilabor impact of Taft-Hartley. Despite tumultuous shifts in the U.S. and world economy and the precipitous decline in private-sector union membership, Taft-Hartley's amendments to the NLRA remain integral to the legal framework for twenty-first-century labor relations. This regime of antilabor law provides the thematic backdrop for the essays and commentary in this special issue of Working USA.

Articles include:
Labor Law Inside Out by Wilma Liebman
Preemption and Civic Democracy in the Battle Over Wal-Mart by Catherine Fisk and Michael Oswalt
More Democratic Than a Secret Ballot? The Case for Majority Sing-Up by Gordon Lafer
Labor's New Opening to International Human Rights Standards by Lance Compa
The Employee Free Choice Act and a long-Term Strategy for Winning Workers' Rights by James Pope, Peter Kellman and Ed Bruno

Posted by William at 9:51 AM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Ellen Dannin, Labor Law Journal, Spring 2008

The issue of who is an employee is now before the National Labor Relations Board in New York New York Hotel, LLC. The importance of this case is signaled by the Board's decision to hold oral argument and invitation to file amicus briefs. Briefly, the case raises the question whether employees of a subcontractor, the Ark Las Vegas Restaurant Corporation, who perform their work for Ark on the premises of the New York New York Hotel and Casino, have a statutory right to distribute handbills to guests and customers while on New York New York's property during the Ark employees' off-duty hours. The handbills protested the Ark's nonunion status and wages.

Posted by William at 10:12 AM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: Norma M. Riccucci, Review of Public Personnel Administration, Vol. 28, no. 1, March 2008
(subscription required)

Pay inequities based on gender continue to pervade the public and private sector landscapes. Although Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as amended and the Equal Pay Act of 1963 proscribe unequal pay for equal work, the newly formed U.S. Supreme Court has issued a ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (2007) that ignores Court precedents as well as provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, making it more difficult for employees to file suit for pay inequities. Ultimately, the problem of pay disparities in the workplace can only worsen.
See also:
S. 1843 Fair Pay Restoration Act

Posted by Info Center at 12:24 PM in Discrimination | Income Inequality/Gap | Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: Jeffrey S. Bosley, Employee Relations Law Journal, Vol. 33, no. 4, Spring 2008

The author discusses the National Labor Relations Board's recent decision in Dana Corp., which materially changed the landscape concerning voluntary recognition agreements.

Posted by Info Center at 5:52 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: Scott Lilly, Center for American Progress, December 10, 2007

From the summary:
The problem of unfair and unequal application of the law, however, extends well beyond the Justice Department. Failure by a wide range of regulatory agencies to enforce federal law has benefited some segments of society at the expense of others. There is ample evidence that in recent years the laws protecting the public against air and water pollution, workers against health and safety risks, and consumers against unsafe foods, drugs, and commercial products have all been laxly enforced to the significant financial benefit of certain businesses and at the expense of those whose health and safety those laws were designed to protect.

Lax regulatory enforcement, however, has not been a government-wide policy. In at least one instance, rigorous and in fact pernicious regulatory enforcement was the course chosen by the Bush administration. That instance involved the regulatory authorities of the U.S. Department of Labor under the Landrum-Griffin Act aimed at improving the governance of the nation's organized labor organizations.

Rather than relax these regulatory responsibilities, the Bush administration shoveled significantly more federal tax dollars into the department's Office of Labor-Management Services so that key political operatives in OLMS could expand and exercise regulatory authority to:

• Impose costly and confusing new reporting requirements
• Attempt to increase the number of criminal prosecutions
• Disclose the results to the public in seriously misleading ways
• Mischaracterize the published data through a variety of false analyses

The underlying purpose, of course, is to undermine the reputation of the labor union movement through a classic political misinformation campaign--all under the supervision of a lifelong partisan political operative whose career has been dedicated to the destruction of his political opponents.

Posted by Info Center at 1:25 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, January 2008
Articles include:
● State labor legislation enacted in 2007
● Changes in State unemployment insurance legislation, 2007
● Older workers: increasing their labor force participation and hours of work

Posted by Info Center at 12:19 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Unemployment | Workforce | Permalink

Source: Brian Walter and Cepideh Roufougar, IPMA-HR News, December, 2007
(Scroll down) (subscription required)

Throughout the state of California and the United States, police officers are demanding compensation for time spent putting on and taking off their police uniforms. This rash of "donning and doffing" cases is based on a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court involving employees working in a meat processing plant. Courts all over the country are now facing the question: "What do police officers have in common with meat processing plant workers?" Public employers are anxiously awaiting an answer to this question, as the answer could cost employers and the public tens of millions of dollars.

Posted by Info Center at 2:22 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Law Enforcement | Permalink

Source: Jane Lauer Barker and Carlos E. Beato, Labor Law Journal, Vol. 58 no. 4, Winter, 2007

One year later, we examine the fall-out from the Kentucky River cases to see whether these fears have been realized and whether the Kentucky River cases have, indeed, created a new class of workers unprotected by federal labor law.

Posted by Info Center at 2:18 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: Henry H. Drummonds, Labor Law Journal, Vol. 58 no. 4, Winter, 2007

This article sketches developments in the card majority debate and several related issues reflected in developing case law concerning the use of "salts," "neutrality" agreements, and accretion clauses in union attempts to expand representation rights. It also briefly mentions other significant recent decisions that make it more difficult for unions to win, and keep, representation rights. ... A major public policy issue faces the Congress, state legislatures, and federal and state labor boards. How is the ideal of employee free choice best actualized? The law is changing. From the union side one sees legislative attempts to win card majority recognition/certification rights and to avoid elections in which employers are free to campaign against unionization at all costs. And from the perspective of the NLRB's General Counsel and the NLRB's current majority, concerns for employee free choice create persistent questioning of long-assumed principles of card check recognition. For the private sector unions, especially, this issue may decide their ultimate fate as the percentage of represented employees shrinks toward the vanishing point.

Posted by Info Center at 2:15 PM in Future of Unions | Labor Laws/Legislation | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Megha Bahree, Forbes, Vol. 181 no. 4, February 25, 2008

That garden stone, handmade carpet or embroidered T-shirt you just bought was probably made by child labor.

Every time you buy an imported handmade carpet, an embroidered pair of jeans, a beaded purse, a decorated box or a soccer ball there's a good chance you're acquiring something fashioned by a child. Such goods are available in places like GapKids, Macy's, ABC Carpet & Home, Ikea, Lowe's, and Home Depot. These retailers say they are aware of child-labor problems, have strict policies against selling products made by underage kids and abide by the laws of the countries from which they import. But there are many links in a supply chain, and even a well-intentioned importer can't police them all.

"There are many, many household items that are produced with forced labor and not just child labor," says Bama Athreya, executive director of the International Labor Rights Forum in Washington, D.C. It's a fact of a global economy, and will continue to be, as long as Americans (and Europeans) demand cheap goods--and incomes in emerging economies remain low. If a child is enslaved, it's because his parents are desperately poor.

Posted by Info Center at 4:41 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Workforce | Permalink

Source: Melinda Tuhus, In These Times, February 5, 2008

Foxwoods Resort Casino rises from the hills of rural southeastern Connecticut like a gambler's Oz.

It is one of the country's biggest Indian casinos and it is the largest employer in the state, with 10,000 workers. Of those employees, about 2,600 are dealers of games such as poker and blackjack. And on Nov. 24, 2007, many of these dealers placed a bet on a better life with the United Auto Workers (UAW). ....

It's the first election at an Indian casino to be overseen by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which made a groundbreaking ruling last year that allowed Indian casinos to be unionized. But casino management has appealed the vote, claiming it violates tribal sovereignty.

Posted by Info Center at 10:58 AM in Gambling | Labor Laws/Legislation | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Wilma B. Liebman, Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law, Volume 28, no. 2, 2007

In this essay, the senior member of the National Labor Relations Board reflects on the aging of American labor law and the agency that administers it. In her view, the National Labor Relations Act, which has not been updated in 60 years, is now out of sync with a transformed economy. Meanwhile, the Board, even accounting for the statutory, judicial and political constraints under which it operates, has failed in its duty to apply the statute dynamically. The author suggests, however, that the stakes are too high to abandon hope for a revitalization of labor law and policy.

Posted by Info Center at 2:49 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: James B. Jacobs and Dimitri D. Portnoi, Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law, Volume 28, no. 2, 2007

This article is a comprehensive case study of the most important civil RICO labor racketeering case in American history, U.S. v. IBT. It provides the first empirical study of the effort by DOJ and the federal courts to purge organized crime from the IBT and to reform the union so that it will be resistant to future corruption and racketeering. Drawing on 18 years of litigation generated by the effort of court-supervised monitors to enforce the 1988 settlement, it utilizes a database of all disciplinary charges brought by and the sanctions imposed by the court-supervised monitors. This article traces the remedial phase which has generated an immense amount of litigation right up to the present and focuses on the disciplinary (as opposed to the election) part of the remedial effort. The magnitude of this effort can hardly be exaggerated. The two remedial entities that the settlement established to enforce the consent order have expelled more than 600 officers and members from the IBT and placed some 40 IBT locals and joint councils under the international union's trusteeship. This work has been accomplished via the creation of an IBT-specific criminal justice system that has evolved into an elaborate system of procedural and substantive disciplinary law. U.S. v. IBT is an experiment in institution building. It may allow us to determine, or at least to knowledgeably assess, the potential and limits of civil RICO as a methodology for attacking deeply entrenched systemic criminality in powerful formal organizations.

Posted by Info Center at 1:51 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Ken Ward Jr., Charleston Gazette, January 27, 2008

Federal regulators have allowed mine operators to avoid fines for thousands of health and safety citations, despite a federal law that requires monetary penalties for such violations, government officials have confirmed.

Over the last six years, the Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration did not assess civil penalties for about 4,000 violations, according to preliminary MSHA data.

Posted by Info Center at 10:22 AM in Health & Safety | Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: John Logan
Journal of Labor Research
Fall 2007

This article analyzes the critical obstacles in the path of labor law reform during the 1990s. It stresses the importance of the lukewarm support of the Clinton Administration for labor law reform, organized labor's failure to frame the debate on labor law reform to its advantage and its inability to convince key Senators to support its reform agenda, and, especially, the determined opposition to reform of employer groups and their allies in Congress. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the lessons of the legislative defeats of the 1990s for the AFL-CIO's current campaign to revise the National Labor Relations Act.

Posted by Info Center at 1:38 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: Cynthia Estlund
Journal of Labor Research
Fall 2007

This article argues that the ineffectuality of American labor law and the shrinking scope of collective representation and collective bargaining are partly traceable to the law's "ossification"--to its having been essentially sealed off for several decades from democratic revision and renewal and from local experimentation and innovation. The elements of this process of ossification, once assembled, make up an imposing set of barriers to innovation. The basic law has been cut off from legislative revision at the national level by Congress; from "market"-driven competition by employers; from the entrepreneurial and creative energies of private litigation; from variation at the state or local level by representative or judicial bodies; from changing constitutional doctrine; and from emerging transnational legal norms. Moreover, the National Labor Relations Board--the designated institutional vehicle for adjusting the labor laws to modern conditions--is increasingly hemmed in by the age of the text and the large body of judicial interpretations that has grown up over the years. The resulting statutory scheme is drastically out of date and out of sync with the needs of 21st century workers and labor markets.

Posted by Info Center at 1:36 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: Ronald Miller, Labor Law Journal, Vol. 58 no. 3, Fall 2007

It's been thirty years since the U.S. Supreme Court decided Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, holding that requiring nonunion members of a bargaining unit in the public sector to provide financial support for the collective bargaining activities of a union in the form of agency fee payments did not violate the nonmembers' First Amendment rights. However, three recent decisions, including one by the Supreme Court, make it clear that implementing an agency fee program that meets constitutional muster is still a troubling issue in a number of respects.

Posted by Info Center at 5:21 PM in Collective Bargaining | Labor Laws/Legislation | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Raymond Hogler Labor Law Journal, Vol. 58 no. 3, Fall 2007

Conditions for collective bargaining in the United States are poor and deteriorating. A large body of labor law scholarship documents the weakness of legal protections and processes designed to promote unionism in this country. Professor Morris's theory about minority union bargaining is offered as a means of strengthening unions in a hostile environment. This article argues that the strategy is a risky one because it invites a resurgence of company unions, which threatened to overwhelm the modern American labor movement at its inception in the 1930s. A better option would be for labor to attack the root source of its contemporary decline. The three pillars of collective bargaining as envisioned by Wagner are independent unions, exclusive representation, and organizational security. The malignancy of right to work laws has destroyed one of those pillars. Morris's vision of going back to the future would eliminate the other two.

Posted by Info Center at 5:19 PM in Collective Bargaining | Future of Unions | Labor Laws/Legislation | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Mark Harcourt and Helen Larri, WorkingUSA, Vol. 10 no. 3, September 2007
(subscription required)

The North American union certification system has not met the representation needs of most workers. In this essay, certification's effectiveness is critically examined. The exclusive representation and winner-take-all approach satisfies only two out of seven categories of union and nonunion workers with different representational preferences. The "winners" are those who successfully exercise their choice to be either unrepresented or represented by their most preferred union. All others are "losers." A compulsory proportional representation alternative is proposed which allows for both union and nonunion forms of representation, representative election based on proportional votes, and mandatory workplace representation. The merits of this alternative in balancing the needs of both voting majorities and minorities and protecting worker rights from management encroachment are discussed. Some preliminary suggestions on its implementation are offered.

Posted by Info Center at 5:49 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Gordon Lafer, American Rights at Work Report, July 2007

From press release:
American Rights at Work today releases “Neither Free Nor Fair: The Subversion of Democracy Under National Labor Relations Board Elections.” The report by University of Oregon political scientist Gordon Lafer, Ph.D., lays bare the realities of how unscrupulous employers undermine workers’ rights to freedom of association during government-administered union representation elections. “Anti-union employers are making a mockery of the principles governing American elections,” says Lafer. “Weak labor laws allow anti-union employers to manipulate the outcome of union elections in a manner that is inherently unfair and undemocratic.”

“Neither Free Nor Fair” details the strategies - both legal and illegal - that typically comprise employers’ efforts to deny their workers’ rights to form unions and collectively bargain. Says Lafer, “Unionbusting activity in the weeks leading up to the union election resembles practices that our government routinely denounces when performed by rogue regimes abroad.”

+ Executive Summary
+ Fact Sheet
+ Full Report

Posted by Info Center at 1:45 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Labor-Management Relations | Permalink

Source: John E Lyncheski, Nursing Homes: Long Term Care Management, Vol. 56 no. 7, July 2007

Misunderstood or misapplied provisions of the Department of Labor’s regulations can have explosive consequences. The Department of Labor has long-term care in its sights for nonexempt employee overtime infractions.

Posted by Info Center at 10:56 AM in Health Care Workers | Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: Ted Smukler, Interfaith Worker Justice

The Department of Labor and State Departments of Labor are important allies for working people. The Department of Labor and State Departments are responsible for enforcing the nation’s labor laws, and educating both workers and employers about the nation’s labor laws.

In the past few years, the Interfaith Worker Justice and local interfaith committees have been building partnerships with local, state, and national Department of Labor (DOL) staff. These partnerships have sought to:

• Inform workers, especially low-wage and immigrant workers, of their rights in the workplace. At the national level, bulletin inserts were jointly created in nine languages that have been and continue to be distributed to workers through congregations. In local communities, DOL staff have provided educational workshops to workers.

• Train advocates to better support workers in seeking justice in the workplace. Because many worker advocates—pastors, social workers, immigrant advocates, and community organizers— are unfamiliar with the basic labor laws, they often don’t recognize basic law law violations that workers experience. Local DOL staff have partnered with local interfaith groups to train advocates about labor laws, so they can be more effective advocates.

• Create safe spaces and ways for workers to file complaints with DOL offices. Many workers, especially immigrant workers, are fearful of government agencies. And no one would suggest that the DOL procedures are particularly user-friendly. Thus, many concerned DOL staff and religious advocates have partnered to find new ways to support workers in filing complaints. Some groups are testing new simplified complaint forms. Other groups are forming workers’ centers, where workers can drop in for help. Others are looking to revive parish-based labor schools that create a safe space for workers to both file complaints and learn to organize.

Posted by Info Center at 3:00 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: Gerald Mayer, Congressional Research Service, Order Code RL32930, April 02, 2007

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA) gives private sector workers the right to join or form a labor union and to bargain collectively over wages, hours, and other working conditions. An issue before Congress is whether to change the procedures under which workers choose to join, or not to join, a union.

Under current law, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) conducts a secret ballot election when a petition is filed requesting one. A petition can be filed by any union, worker, or employer. Workers or a union may request an election if at least 30% of workers have signed a petition or authorization cards (i.e., cards authorizing a union to represent them). The NLRA does not require secret ballot elections. An employer may voluntarily recognize a union if a majority of workers have signed authorization cards.

Legislation introduced in the 110th Congress would, if enacted, change current union recognition procedures.

Posted by Info Center at 11:04 AM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: John J. Fitzpatrick, Jr., Monthly Labor Review, Vol. 130 no. 1, January 2007

Minimum wages, workplace security, prevailing wages, equal employment opportunity, wages paid, time off, drug and alcohol testing, child labor, human trafficking, and immigrant protections were among the most active areas in which legislation was enacted or revised during the year.

Posted by Info Center at 10:22 AM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: Richard Michael Fischl, Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law, Vol. 28 no. 1, 2007

In this article, Professor Fischl argues that the boundaries separating the constituent subjects of American work law—employment discrimination, labor law, and employment law—are becoming increasingly porous. He contends the continued embrace of the conventional subject-matter division reflects and reinforces an increasingly false opposition between the struggle for workplace democracy and the struggle for racial, gender, and other forms of workplace justice.

Posted by Info Center at 10:08 AM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: Harris Freeman, WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society, Vol. 10 no. 1, March 2007
(subscription required)

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has finally issued the long-awaited Oakwood Healthcare, Inc. decision, holding that registered nurses who nominally coordinate and guide the work of other nurses or health care workers are supervisory personnel who fall outside the coverage of the National Labor Relations Act. Oakwood Healthcare is a seminal NLRB decision, articulating a remarkably expansive rule for determining whether or not an employee is a supervisor. By radically redefining who is a worker and who is a boss, Oakwood Healthcare has the potential to do what no other single case in the history of the NLRB has ever done—deprive more than eight million professionals and skilled workers of their right to join a labor union. If Oakwood Healthcare is not reversed by the federal courts or undermined by statutory labor law reform, as many as eight million professional employees and skilled workers will join the 32 million members of the U.S. workforce—one out of four workers—who, according to the General Accounting Office, do not have the legal right to join unions. As dissenting Board member Wilma Liebman ominously noted, Oakwood Healthcare creates a class of workers existing in a legal limbo "hav[ing] neither the genuine prerogatives of management, nor the statutory rights of ordinary employees."

Posted by Info Center at 10:32 AM in Health Care Workers | Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: Mental Health Weekly, Vol. 17 no. 17, April 30, 2007
(subscription required)

Legislation, which includes violence protection training, soon to become law.

House bill 1456, also known as the Marty Smith bill would provide backup for mental health professionals during home visits. The bill is names in honor of Smith, a County Designated Mental Health Professional (CDMHP) at Kitsap Mental Health, a private not-for-profit community mental health center in Bremerton, Wash., who was killed on Nov. 4, 2005 when he went to provide care for a client during a home visit.

Posted by Info Center at 1:30 PM in Health & Safety | Health Care Workers | Labor Laws/Legislation | Mental Health | Permalink

Source: Maureen Minehan, Employment Alert, Vol. 24 no. 5, March 1, 2007
(subscription required)

In November, voters in San Francisco approved proposition F, a bill that requires employers within San Francisco’s city and county limits to provide an hour of sick leave to full-time, part-time, and temporary employees for every 30 hours worked. While it may be tempting to dismiss the law as something only a liberal city such as San Francisco would pass, doing so would be a mistake. Similar laws have been introduced in state legislatures and a federal paid sick leave bill is pending before Congress.

Posted by Info Center at 5:17 PM in Benefits | Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: Judith L. King and Laurel C. Catlett-King, Labor Studies Journal, Vol.. 32 no. 1, March 2007
(subscription required)

The 2001 right-to-work referendum in Oklahoma provided unique challenges for the labor movement. This article examines the Oklahoma campaign in the context of right-to-work and other labor referendums and discusses the consequences of particular strategies used by the labor and business campaigns. The authors argue that despite a strong member mobilization campaign, the impact of September 11 and the influence of the print media may have been determining factors in the campaign.

Posted by Info Center at 4:43 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: David Rosenfeld, Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law, 2006, Volume 27, no. 2

... Two new books dramatically illustrate the long-term failures of workers and their traditional institutions and effectively describe the efforts of the worker center movement to fill the void in advocacy for low-income workers. ... Predictably, the employer filed a charge with the NLRB asserting that CULA was acting as a "labor organization" within the meaning of the NLRA and was engaged in illegal picketing. ... Moreover, it would not seem likely that a worker center could easily shed the attachment of labor organization status without taking decisive steps to eliminate activity which reflected "dealing with employers." ... Thus, the worker center would have to cease dealing with every employer to stop acting as a labor organization. ... The Board in CULA flatly rejected the suggestion that representation of employees before state agencies was "dealing" with employers and related to its labor organization status. ... If the NLRB, the Department of Labor, or other agencies that enforce workplace laws determine that worker centers meet the test of "labor organization," this would create a substantial impediment, if not an insurmountable barrier, to the growth of the worker center movement. ... For low-wage immigrant workers, the activity may encompass walkouts, picketing, confronting the employer, demanding higher pay, and many other activities all without the involvement of any labor organization. ... Morris has no choice but to accept full labor organization status since he is arguing for NLRA sanction for bargaining. ...

Posted by Info Center at 5:18 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: Sarah Stewart Holland, Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law, 2006, Volume 27, no. 2

... Pregnancy, childbirth, and bonding with a newborn are part of a continuous experience and should be treated as such under the Family and Medical Leave Act and complementary state leave laws. ... As the Gerety decision shows, however, pregnant employees facing gaps in coverage have not always been successful when alleging disparate impact under anti-discrimination statutes. ... The FMLA does not automatically cover a pregnant employee, like Gerety, who wants to use medical leave for illness related to gestation before childbirth. ... While some employees, like Gerety, may be able to meet this higher standard because of the high-risk nature of their pregnancies, a pregnant employee attempting to receive medical leave for normal pregnancy-related illness would face a much stricter standard than a pregnant employee attempting to receive medical or parental leave for childbirth. ... Specifically, Gerety would have exhausted her pregnancy-related illness leave two months before the birth of her twins, and she would have faced a larger gap without coverage then she actually faced under Hilton's leave policy and the FMLA. ... Second, courts continually refuse to see pregnancy as a medical condition unique to women and, therefore, that any leave policy affecting only pregnant women should be seen as per se discrimination as stated in the PDA. ...

Posted by Info Center at 5:16 PM in Family & Work | Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: Julie Martínez Ortega, Labor Studies Journal, Winter 2007, Volume 31, no. 4

….The proposed legislation, if enacted, would make a real impact on workers trying to form unions and bargain collectively. It would also provide a vehicle for educating the public and elected leaders about the obstacles that workers face when they try to organize. We agree with Professor Adams that workers’ rights are under attack both in the United States and abroad. However, we disagree with his critique of EFCA. We believe it to be a critical part of the strategy to achieve workplace democracy.

Adam’s critique of EFCA centers on three main points. He argues that it would not significantly advance the ability if U.S. workers to organize, that an international human rights approach would be better that altering U.S. labor law, and that real change in labor law will not happen without a broad social movement.

Posted by Info Center at 4:59 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: Sheldon Friedman, Labor Studies Journal, Winter 2007, Volume 31, no. 4

As Roy Adams correctly notes, the workplace rights crisis in the United States is so dire that it demands urgent attention from every thinking person who cares about democracy, human rights, and social and economic justice. Of the sixty million nonunion workers who tell pollsters that they want a union in their workplace, last year fewer than seventy thousand - a proportion so small as to be almost insignificant –succeeded in forming one via the NLRB process.

Of these, many will never attain an initial collective bargaining agreement and fewer still will forge an enduring collective bargaining relationship with their employer. …. In at least a quarter of these NLRB organizing campaigns, one or more of the union supporters was illegally fired, and in more than half, the workers faced direct or thinly veiled threats that their workplace would close or move if they formed a union (Bronfenbrenner 2000; Mehta and Theodore 2005). Illegal firings and threats of workplace closure, moreover, were just the tip of the iceberg of the employer campaigns that these workers were forced to endure (Logan 2002)…

…Many more workers than that tiny few did form unions and win initial contracts last year, but they did it in spite of the Board’s stacked-deck process by circumventing it via successful campaigns for card check and employer neutrality.

Posted by Info Center at 4:56 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: Roy Adams, Labor Studies Journal, Winter 2007, Volume 31, no. 4

The AFL-CIO, along with its ally American Rights at Work, has invested a great deal of time, energy, and money in promoting passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Those of us who believe in collective representation hope that this initiative will fulfill the hopes of its promoters and produce a major advance in the number of workers with a collective voice at work. However, with Republicans in continuing control of Congress and the White House, the odds against passage if the Act would seem to be high. However, there are reasons to believe that, even if the Act should pass, the results will, unfortunately, fall short of expectations.

Among the key elements of the Free Choice Act that are intended to spark new organizing are card check certification, first contract arbitration, and stiffer penalties for employers who offend the law. Since employers commonly commit unfair labor practices during certification election campaigns and stonewall during the negotiation of first contracts, American unionists believe that the establishment of procedures designed to counter those practices will significantly improve the labor movement’s organizing prospects.

Posted by Info Center at 4:51 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: Lance Compa, Perspectives on Work, Summer 2006, Volume 10, no. 1

United States labor law on workers’ right to strike meets international human rights standards—up to a point. The law does not ban strikes in the private sector. Unlike many countries that nominally allow strikes but create onerous procedural obstacles (Mexico is a prime example), the United States, aside from modest notice requirements, lets workers decide to strike. In a handful of states, public-sector workers can strike.

So far, so good. But beyond this point, U.S. labor law and practice deviate from international standards. In the public sector, most strikes are prohibited even with no threat to public health or safety (the main proviso developed by the International Labor Organization). In the private sector, employers’ power to permanently replace workers who exercise the right to strike effectively nullifies that right.

Posted by Info Center at 4:22 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Strikes | Permalink

Source: John Logan, Perspectives on Work, Summer 2006, Volume 10, no. 1

In 1990, the AFL-CIO started a campaign to reform the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to ban permanent striker replacements, hoping to set the stage for more comprehensive revision of the NLRA. Ultimately, however, the campaign served only to illustrate organized labor’s inability to win labor law reform over the opposition of the business community. Campaigns such as that for striker replacement legislation—in which the AFL-CIO spent tens of millions of dollars on a Washington-based campaign focused on a handful of “swing” legislators and ended up with absolutely nothing to show for it—are precisely the type of campaigns that the dissident Change to Win unions have criticized as a waste of union finances that would be better spent on organizing.

Posted by Info Center at 4:06 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Permalink