EREPJ Call for Papers!

Great call for papers opportunity with EREJP!  From Michael Green...

CALL FOR PROPOSED PAPERS: Final papers due February 1, 2021, Employee Rights & Employment Policy Journal, Annual Symposium: “What Matters for Black Workers after 2020?” As we approach the end of a tumultuous year for all of us and, in particular for black workers, we are seeking papers for publication in Issue 1, Volume 25 of the Employee Rights & Employment Policy Journal on the topic of “What Matters for Black Workers after 2020?”

In 2020, we saw the senseless killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and so many others that led to national and international protests in support of Black Lives Matter (BLM). Unions and many black workers joined in further BLM solidarity during the Strike for Black Lives Matter held on July 20, 2020. Black athletes have engaged in several prominent acts supporting BLM, including kneeling by Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players, the longstanding activism efforts by members of the WNBA, and the NBA wildcat strike in response to the Jacob Blake shooting. Likewise, COVID-19 disproportionately affected black individuals, many of whom were considered essential workers, in substantial and different ways than other groups.

Divisive political actions created many hostilities for black workers in 2020, including the issuance of an executive order banning discussions of implicit bias and critical race theory in training programs of federal contractors as well as the increasing prevalence of white supremacist and militias groups who openly carried weapons threatening many black protesters and poll workers. Unfortunately, 2020 resulted also in the loss of many black civil rights leaders including John Lewis, Elijah Cummings, C.T. Vivian, and Joseph Lowery. After the 2020 election, there remains considerable uncertainty about legislative, executive, and judicial actions in response to the political appointments and agendas of the last four years that may create significant benefits or burdens for black workers. Black persons also continue to have lower salaries and levels of employment with greater opportunities to be arrested or imprisoned.

With these topics and any others that may affect black workers in mind, we ask all the phenomenal, experienced, developing, and budding scholars who have an intellectual interest in matters that affect black workers as we end 2020 to consider this call for proposals to submit a paper. If you are working on or contemplating writing about the above issues or any other key issues that black workers will have to face after 2020, please consider submitting your work for publication. We would like to have initial proposals by December 11, 2020 and final drafts, by Monday, February 1, 2021. This Symposium on “What Matters for Black Workers after 2020?” is sponsored by The Labor Law Group, a non-profit trust of labor and employment scholars who collaborate on various educational projects. Labor Law Group member Michael Green (Texas A&M) will serve as Symposium editor working with journal co-editors and Labor Law Group members, Martin Malin (Chicago Kent) and Noah Zatz (UCLA).

Submission Format and Instructions. We know this is a short window. But to know what the prospects for consideration are, we ask you by Friday, December 11, 2020 to please submit a Microsoft Word document as an abstract, précis, and/or introduction of the article that is developed enough to allow the editors to evaluate the thesis and proposed execution of the project as a proposal to Michael Z. Green, at [email protected] and Andrea Hudson at [email protected]. Selected authors of proposals will be notified by December 21, 2020, if not sooner, of the interest in potential publication. Completed papers will be expected by the Monday, February 1, 2021 deadline. Any inquiries about the Call for Papers should be submitted to Michael Z. Green at [email protected].

Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal is a faculty-edited, peer-reviewed journal co- published by The Labor Law Group and IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law’s Institute for Law and the Workplace. Authors uniformly praise the Journal’s editing process. The Journal has a student staff who provide cite checking and Bluebooking, but their work is reviewed by the faculty editors, and authors do not deal directly with students.