Workplace Prof Blog

Transnational Perspectives in Equality

The AALS is hosting a Workshop June 22-24 in Washington DC on Transnational Perspectives on Equality Law. The full program is here, and this is a summary:

Workshop on Transnational Perspectives on Equality Law

 

Sunday, June 22 - Tuesday, June 24, 2014

The Renaissance Mayflower Hotel

Washington, DC

 

REGISTER HERE!

 

Antidiscrimination law is an American invention that has spread all around the world.  During the American civil rights movement of the 1960s, antidiscrimination law promised radical social transformations towards equality for women and minorities in the workplace, in politics, and in education.  But recent developments in Equal Protection and Title VII doctrine have paralyzed this trajectory.  Meanwhile, the last decade has seen the unprecedented globalization of antidiscrimination law, as well as its expansion and alternative development outside the United States, catalyzed largely by the European Union's two directives in 2000, on race equality and on equal treatment in employment.  Over the last few years, a new body of equality law and policy experimentation has emerged not only in the EU and in European countries, but also in South Africa, Canada, Latin America, and Asia. There is a range of public policies adopted to mitigate the disadvantages of vulnerable groups such as racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, women, the disabled, the elderly, and the poor, constituting an "equality law" that goes beyond norms prohibiting discrimination.  

 

At the same time, antidiscrimination law in the United States seems to be changing. U.S. Supreme Court decisions over the last several years (Ricci v. DeStefano, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District, Wal-Mart v. Dukes, and Shelby County v. Holder) have signaled the end of antidiscrimination law as envisioned by the civil rights movement in the United States.  In response, there is growing scholarly interest in finding new approaches to the persistent problem of structural inequality.  Comparative reflection is a productive tool, particularly when energy and optimism surrounds the trajectory of antidiscrimination law and equality policy outside of the United States.  Now that there is over a decade's worth of new antidiscrimination activity in the EU countries following the 2000 equality directives, the time is ripe for scholarly reflection and evaluation of these developments. From an intellectual, practical, and strategic perspective, antidiscrimination scholars in the United States can no longer ignore developments in antidiscrimination law in other countries.

 

While a growing number of American legal scholars are lamenting the limits of antidiscrimination law, the recent growth of this body of law outside of the United States has largely gone unnoticed. The central purpose of this mid-year meeting is to widen the comparative lens on U.S. equality law - its failures, its achievements, and its potential - across a variety of subject areas.  The meeting will provide a unique and much-needed opportunity to bring together scholars from various fields - constitutional law, employment discrimination law, comparative law, comparative constitutional law, election law, education law - to deepen and enrich the scholarship and teaching of equality.   The meeting will also provide a unique opportunity for U.S. scholars to interact with a wide, varied, and stimulating group of antidiscrimination scholars working around the world.

 

Additionally, law schools are increasingly making their curricula more transnational and comparative.  This conference will assist teachers in integrating comparative perspectives to illuminate constitutional law, employment discrimination law, employment law, and other traditional subjects.

 

This Workshop will explore a number of critical questions including what is at stake in looking comparatively when doing equality law; how affirmative action is understood in other legal systems; understanding disparate impact, accommodation, and positive rights.  There will be discussions of religion, profiling, and equality and social movements.  Transnational perspectives on equality law will be a greater component of antidiscrimination scholarship going forward. This meeting should not be missed.

 

AALS Planning Committee for 2014 AALS Workshop on Transnational Perspectives for Equality Law

• Timothy A. Canova, Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center

• Guy-Uriel E. Charles, Duke University School of Law, Chair

• Richard T. Ford, Stanford Law School

• Reva B. Siegel, Yale Law School

• Julie C. Suk, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law Yeshiva University

 The program has a great lineup. Register by June 4 to get the early bird rate.

MM

Registration Open for the 9th Annual Colloquium on Labor and Employment Law at U. of Colorado

From conference organizers Scott Moss and Melissa Hart, at the University of Colorado Law school comes word that registration is open for the Ninth Annual Colloquium on Labor and Employment Law Scholarship. The dates will be September 11th to the 13th in Boulder. 

As many of you already know, this is a terrific opportunity to get to know colleagues in an informal setting and exchange ideas as we discuss works-in-progress. Past participants likely would agree that the friendly, low-key atmosphere and productive sessions, as well as the chance to socialize with our colleagues, make this gathering especially fun and valuable.

The Colloquium will follow the familiar format. We will workshop papers all day Friday through Saturday afternoon. Exact times TBD; check the event webpage for updates as the Colloquium approaches.

To register, click here.

MM

Bauries on Academic Freedom and on Supreme Court Review

Scott Bauries (Kentucky) has posted two new papers on TWEN. the first is Individual Academic Freedom: An Ordinary Concern of the First Amendment, which Scott says he views as Part I of what he sees as a three-part series directed at identifying a better constitutional “home” for academic freedom than the First Amendment.  It is forthcoming in the Mississippi Law Journal, and here is the abstract:

This contribution to the Mississippi Law Journal's symposium on education law makes the case that individual academic freedom is not a "special concern of the First Amendment," as the Supreme Court has often said it is. The article tracks the academic freedom case law in the Court and establishes that, while the Court has often extolled the value and virtues of individual academic freedom in its opinion rhetoric, no case it has ever decided has depended for its resolution on a "special" individual right to speech or association that inheres only in academics. The article then fleshes out the implications of this claim for the speech rights of publicly employeed academics following the Court's decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos, concluding both that the decision is here to stay, and that recent efforts to craft exceptions to it are unavailing due to the underlying doctrinal structure of the First Amendment.

The second article is a short review of the labor and employment cases the Supreme Court decided in the last term that Scott did for the Louisville Law Review as a follow-up to his presentation on the same topic at the Warns Institute at Louisville this past June. It's entitled, Procedural Predictability and the Employer as Litigator: The Supreme Court's 2012-2013 Term, and here is its abstract: 

In this contribution to the University of Louisville Law Review’s Annual Carl A. Warns Labor and Employment Institute issue, I examine the Supreme Court’s labor and employment-related decisions from the October Term 2012 (OT 2012). I argue that the Court’s decisions assisted employers as litigators — as repeat players in the employment dispute resolution system — in two ways. First, the Court established simple contract drafting strategies that employers may use to limit their exposure to employment claims. Second, the Court adopted bright-line interpretations of employment statutes. Both forms of assistance served a formalist interest in what I term “procedural predictability” — enhanced employer predictability and control of both the duration and costs of resolving employment disputes.

Great work, Scott!

MM

Teaching Employment and Labor Law

Last spring, the Wefel Center for Employment Law at Saint Louis University held a fantastic symposium on Teaching Employment and Labor Law. I can say that with appropriate modesty because I had very little to do with it. The symposium was organized by Tonie Fitzgibbon, my amazing colleague, who has been the Director of our center for twenty years, and who was the Assistant Director at its inception. I'm pretty sure it was my colleague Miriam Cherry's idea, and Matt Bodie, Elizabeth Pendo, and I all agreed it would be a good topic. In addition to us, Marion Crain and Pauline Kim (Wash. U.), Rachel Arnow-Richman (Denver), Laura Cooper (Minnesota), Marty Malin (Chicago-Kent), Nicole Porter (Toledo), Joe Slater (Toledo), and Kerri Stone (Florida International) all gave presentations.

The Saint Louis University Law Journal has just published the papers connected with the symposium, so now everyone can read about what we who were there got to hear. From the table of contents:

Forward

Teaching Employment and Labor Law Symposium
Susan A. FitzGibbon

Teaching Employment and Labor Law

A Holistic Approach to Teaching Work Law
Marion Crain & Pauline T. Kim

Employment Law Inside Out: Using the Problem Method to Teach Workplace Law
Rachel Arnow-Richman

Collaboration and Community: the Labor Law Group and the Future of Labor Employment Casebooks
Matthew T. Bodie

Teaching Employment Discrimination Law, Virtually
Miriam A. Cherry

The Capstone Course in Labor and Employment Law: A Comprehensive Immersion Simulation Integrating Law, Lawyering Skills, and Professionalism
Laura J. Cooper

Constructing a Comprehensive Curriculum in Labor and Employment Law
Martin H. Malin

From Podcasts to Treasure Hunts—Using Technology to Promote Student Engagement
Marcia L. McCormick

Identifying (with) Disability: Using Film to Teach Employment Discrimination
Elizabeth Pendo

A Proposal to Improve the Workplace Law Curriculum from a Compliance Perspective
Nicole Buonocore Porter

Teaching Private-Sector Labor Law and Public-Sector Labor Law Together
Joseph E. Slater

Teaching the Post-Sex Generation
Kerri Lynn Stone

You should check them out.

MM

Race, Labor, & the Law at UCLA

Friend of the blog Wendy Greene (Cumberland, Samford U) writes to tell us of an upcoming conference at UCLA that might interest our readers. The topic is Race, Labor, and the Law, the sponsor is the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, and the program looks great:

Friday, February 28, 2014

8:00 AM - 8:10 AM

Welcome

• Chris Tilly, Ph.D. | Director, UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment; Professor of Urban Planning, UC Los Angeles

8:10 AM - 8:55 AM

Opening Keynote

• Ruben J. Garcia, J.D., LL.M. | Professor of Law, William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
• "The Relationship Between Racism and Anti-Union Animus"

9:00 AM - 10:30 AM

Transformation of the Labor Movement

• Héctor Cordero-Guzmán, Ph.D. | Professor of Sociology and Urban Education, School of Public Affairs, Baruch College, City University New York
• "Worker Center, Worker Center Networks, and the Promise of Protections for Low Wage Workers under the FLSA"
• Victor Narro, J.D. | Project Director, Center for Labor Research and Education, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, UC Los Angeles
• Saru Jayaraman, M.P.P., J.D. | Director, Food Labor Research Center, University of California, Berkeley; Co-Founder & Co-Director, Restaurant Opportunities Center United
• "Racial Segregation in the Restaurant Industry: Challenges & Opportunities"

10:35 AM - 12:05 PM

Concurrent Panels

Panel A: The Politics of Prison and Labor: How Incarceration Affects Reentry, Employment Opportunities, and the Labor Movement as a Whole

• Kelly Lytle Hernandez, Ph.D. | Associate Professor of History, UC Los Angeles; Director, UCLA Department of History's Public History Initiative
• Marta Lopez Garza, Ph.D. | Professor of Gender and Women's Studies and Chicana/o Studies, California State University, Northridge
• "When Will the Punishment End?"
• Heather Ann Thompson, Ph.D | Associate Professor of History and African American Studies, Temple University
• "Making Mass Incarceration Matter to the American Labor Movement"

Panel B: Bringing Workers Into Focus: Worker Cooperatives, Black-Latino Relations in the Workplace, and Racial Alliance Building in the Labor Movement

• Jassmin Poyaoan | J.D. Candidate, UCLA School of Law, UC Los Angeles
• Vanessa Ribas, Ph.D. | Assistant Professor of Sociology, UC San Diego
• "The Value of Being Negro, the Cost of being Hispano: 'Disposability' and Challenges for Cross-Racial Solidarity in the Workplace"
• Alexandra Suh, Ph.D. | Executive Director, Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA)

12:05 PM - 1:05 PM   Lunch

1:05 PM - 2:35 PM     Concurrent Panels

Panel A: Intimate Labor

• Mireille Miller Young, Ph.D. | Associate Professor of Feminist Studies, UC Santa Barbara
• "Illicit Eroticism: The Politics of Intimate Labor in Black Women's Porn Work"
• Grace Chang, Ph.D. | Associate Professor of Feminist Studies, UC Santa Barbara
• Elena Shih | Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology, UC Los Angeles
• "Rehabilitating Intimate Labor: Transnational Racial Formations of 'Good Work' in Human Trafficking Rescue"

Panel B: Labor Law Through a Critical Race Theory Lens

• Maureen Carroll, J.D. | Greenberg Law Review Fellow, UCLA School of Law, UC Los Angeles
• "Privilege and Invisibility in Labor Practice"
• Nayla Wren | J.D. Candidate, UCLA School of Law, UC Los Angeles
• Sanjukta Paul, M.A., J.D. | Attorney & Clinical Teaching Fellow, UCLA School of Law, UC Los Angeles
• "Normative Obstacles to Empowerment Lawyering in the Workers Rights Context"

2:40 PM - 4:40 PM     Concurrent Panels

Panel A: Intersectional Analysis of Women in Low Wage Labor, Organizing, and Combating Workplace Discrimination

• Sarah Haley, Ph.D. | Assistant Professor of Gender Studies, UC Los Angeles
• Eileen Boris, Ph.D. | Hull Professor and Chair, Department of Feminist Studies, UC Santa Barbara
• "(In)Visibility and the Color of Home Care: Law, Recognition, Justice"
• D. Wendy Greene, J.D., LL.M. | Professor of Law, Cumberland School of Law, Samford University
• Ellen Reese, Ph.D. | Professor of Sociology and Chair of Labor Studies, UC Riverside
• "Intersecting Inequalities Among Latina/o Warehouse Workers in Inland Southern California: Challenges and Prospects for Justice"

 

Panel B: Safe Jobs, Healthy Jobs, Good Jobs

• Anne E. Fehrenbacher MPH | Ph.D Student in Community Health Sciences, UC Los Angeles
• "Job Insecurity and Quality of Life: Testing a Causal Model of Job Stress Proliferation Moderated by Race, Gender, and Education"
• Kevin Riley, MPH, Ph.D | Director of Research and Evaluation, UCLA Labor Occupational Safety & Health (LOSH), Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, UC Los Angeles

4:45 PM - 5:45 PM     Wine and Cheese Reception

Saturday, March 1, 2014

9:20 AM - 9:25 AM

Welcome

• Pamela A. Izvănariu, J.D., LL.M. | Director of Research & Development, UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, UC Los Angeles

9:25 AM - 11:15 AM

Labor and Employment Issues Facing Indigenous Peoples in the U.S.

• Matthew L.M. Fletcher, J.D. | Professor of Law & Director of the Indigenous Law & Policy Center, Michigan State University
• "On Treaties and Internal Tribal Sovereignty"
• James Kawahara, J.D. | Adjunct Professor in Practice, UCLA School of Law, UC Los Angeles; Attorney, Kawahara Law P.C.
• "Judicial Application of Federal Labor and Employment Laws to Indian Tribes When Congress is Silent: What Fills the Vacuum?"
• Lynn Stephen, Ph.D. | Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies, University of Oregon
• "Indigenous Mexican Workers in the U.S.: Labor Conditions, Health, and Identity"
• David Kamper, Ph.D. | Associate Professor and Chair of American Indian Studies, San Diego State University
• "The Work around Tribal Sovereignty: Negotiating Notions of Labor, Jobs, & Class in Tribal Governmental Gaming and Economic Development"

11:20 AM - 1:10 PM

Race, Labor, and Immigration

• Hiroshi Motomura, J.D. | Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law, UC Los Angeles
• "Race, Labor, and the Making of Immigration Outside the Law"
• Sameer Ashar, J.D. | Clinical Professor of Law, Irvine School of Law, UC Irvine
• "Immigration Enforcement, Race, and Resistance"
• Shannon Gleeson, Ph.D. | Associate Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies, UC Santa Cruz
• "Precarious Labor, Tenuous Rights: Lay v. Legal Conceptions of Justice at the Workplace"
• David Cook-Martin, Ph.D. | Associate Professor of Sociology, Grinnell College
• "A House Divided: Labor and its Contrasting Roles in Shaping Ethnically Selective Immigration Law in the Americas"

1:10 PM - 2:10 PM     Lunch

2:10 PM - 4:00 PM     Worker Voice, Labor Speech

• Leticia M. Saucedo, J.D. | Professor of Law, UC Davis
• Camille Gear Rich, J.D. | Associate Professor of Law, Gould School of Law, University of Southern California
• "Post-Racial Hydraulics: The Role of the Fair Labor Standards Act in the Repackaging of Race and Gender Discrimination Claims"
• Nicholas Espiritu, J.D. | Staff Attorney, National Immigration Law Center
• Catherine Fisk, J.D. | Chancellor's Professor of Law, Irvine School of Law, UC Irvine
• "Worker Voice and Labor Speech After Harris v. Quinn and Citizens United: Why Unions Should Have the Same Free Speech Rights as Corporations and Why the Supreme Court Thinks They Do Not"

4:00 PM - 4:45 PM

Closing Keynote

• Ian F. Haney-López, J.D., M.P.A. | John H. Boalt Professor of Law, UC Berkeley
• "Dog Whistle Politics/Dog Whistle Racism"

If you will be in the area, it seems like a great opportunity to hear from a broad mix of subject areas, disciplines, topics, academics, and people in the field. For more information and to register, see here.

MM

Hofstra Conference on the ACA/ADA/FMLA and the Workplace

Friend of the blog Marcy Karin (ASU) writes to remind us of a symposium/CLE that readers of the blog will be interested in, especially those of you in the New York area. On Friday, Hofstra's Labor and Employment Law Journal will be holding a symposium on health legislation and the workplace. Forging a Path: Dissecting Controversial Health Legislation in the Workplace. The symposium will take place at Hofstra University Club, David S. Mack Hall, North Campus, Hofstra University, on Friday, November 1, 2013, from 9 am to 3 pm.

 The lineup is impressive. Here are the details:

Keynote Speaker: Phyllis Borzi, Assistant Secretary for Employee Benefits Security, U.S. Department of Labor

Panel 1: The Evolution of Anti-Discrimination Disability Laws: Defining Reasonable Accommodation and Disability

• Rick Ostrove ’96, Partner, Leeds Brown Law, PC
• Keith Frank ’89, Partner, Perez & Varvaro
• Marcy Karin, Clinical Professor of Law and Director, Work-Life Policy Unit, Civil Justice Clinic, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University
• Jeffrey Schlossberg ’84, Of Counsel, Jackson Lewis LLP
• E. Pierce Blue, Special Assistant and Attorney Advisor, Office of Commissioner Chai Feldblum, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

Panel 2: Workplace Uncertainties Under the ACA: Preparing the Employer and Employee for the Road Ahead

• Jill Bergman, Vice President of Compliance, Chernoff Diamond & Co., LLC
• Steven Friedman, Shareholder and Co-Chair, Employee Benefits Practice Group, Littler Mendelson P.C.

Panel 3: The FMLA 20 Years Later: What Have We Learned and Where Do We Go From Here?

• Robin Runge, Professorial Lecturer in Law, George Washington University Law School
• Rona Kitchen, Assistant Professor of Law, Duquesne University School of Law
• Joseph Lynett, Partner, Jackson Lewis LLP
• Nicole Porter, Professor of Law, The University of Toledo College of Law

Registration is $100 per person. Includes continental breakfast, lunch and CLE credits. Free for Hofstra University students, faculty, staff and administrators.

 Sponsored by: Littler Mendelson P.C.

MM

Kramer Sued over Law Review Article

Zachary Kramer (Arizona State) wrote a law review article describing an employment discrimination case in which a bank executive allegedly equated vegetarianism with homosexuality and taunted/harassed an employee on the basis of both.  Now the bank executive is suing Kramer for defamation and invasion of privacy.  The executive also is suing Washington University Law because its law review published the article, and Western New England College of Law because Kramer presented his article there.

Kramer's article is Of Meat and Manhood.  The discussion of the underlying discrimination case begins at page 305.  The article describes in detail the facts as alleged in the plaintiff's complaint that had been filed in a New York State court; the footnotes clearly indicate that Kramer's source is the complaint itself and that Kramer was not claiming an independent source of knowledge of the facts giving rise to the discrimination claim.

A plaintiff's recitation of facts in a complaint are of course subject to an absolute judicial privilege from defamation suits.  Kramer's republication of those facts, in a context in which he makes it clear that he is claiming no independent source of knowledge of the facts, should be similarly privileged.  A ruling to the contrary would stifle not only academic debate, but would preclude newspapers from reporting on just about any type of case filed in just about any type of court.  12(b)(6)?

On the upside: at least we know someone is reading our articles!

Here's the complaint; here's a detailed story in the ABA Journal; here's a note from Brian Leiter. 

rb

Secunda Named to DOL's ERISA Advisory Council

Congratulations to our own Paul Secunda (Marquette).  Today Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis announced his appointment to the 2013 Advisory Council on Employee Welfare and Pension Benefit Plans – known as the ERISA Advisory Council.  Here's a description; Paul will be representing the public:

The 15-member council provides advice on policies and regulations affecting employee benefit plans governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. By law, members of the council serve for staggered three-year terms. Three members are representatives of employee organizations (at least one of whom represents an organization whose members are participants in a multiemployer plan). Three members are representatives of employers (at least one of whom represents employers maintaining or contributing to multiemployer plans). Three members are representatives of the general public. There is one representative each from the fields of insurance, corporate trust, actuarial counseling, investment counseling, investment management and accounting.

Congrats, Paul!

rb

Call for Papers: Young Scholars Workshop, Biagi Foundation

Susan Bisom-Rapp (Thomas Jefferson), writes to tell us of an exciting workshop for newer scholars. Here is her note:

I am pleased to attach the Marco Biagi Foundation’s Call for Papers for its Young Scholars Workshop, which will be held during the afternoon of March 19, 2013 at the University of Modena in Modena, Italy.  In addition to PhD candidates and post-docs, JSD students are welcome.  The deadline for the submission of abstracts is November 3, 2012.  Presenters of papers will receive free admission to the Eleventh International Conference in Commemoration of Professor Marco Biagi, hotel accommodations from March 18-20 (two nights), and breakfast and other meals on March 18 -19.

Abstracts, papers and any questions about submissions should be sent to: iacopo.senatori@unimore.it

The 2012 workshop, featuring 10 papers presented by doctoral and post-doctoral students from two continents, and two poster sessions, was an exciting and successful event.  I was honored to participate in the event last year as an organizer and commentator, and found the workshop to be a highlight of the International Conference.  Please spread the word to potential participants.

This looks like an incredible opportunity. A few more details are in this call for papers:  Download Call YSW

MM

Call for Papers on Institutional Responsibility for Sex and Gender Exploitation

Friend of the blog, Nancy Levit (UMKC) sends along this call for papers likely of interest to your readers:

Call for Papers Announcement

AALS Section on Women in Legal Education

 “Institutional Responsibility for Sex and Gender Exploitation”

2013 AALS Annual Meeting

January 4-7, 2013

New Orleans, Louisiana

The AALS Section on Women in Legal Education will hold a program during the AALS 2013 Annual Meeting in New Orleans, with paper presentations on the topic of Institutional Responsibility for Sex and Gender Exploitation.  We have the below committed moderator and speakers, and are seeking paper submissions to fill the fifth speaker slot.  The papers will be published as a Symposium in the Iowa Journal of Gender, Race & Justice.

Moderator: Professor Cheryl Wade

Protection for Children in Club Sports (Professor Ellen Bublick)

Theories to Holding Insurance Companies Liable for Third Party Exploitation (Dean Jay Mootz)

Employer Liability for Family Responsibilities Discrimination (Professor Joan Williams)

Finding Institutional Tort Responsibility for Sex and Gender Exploitation (Professor Deleso A. Alford)

Submissions should be of scholarship relating to the topic of Institutional Responsibility for Sex and Gender Exploitation, but they can be on any dimension or strand of the general topic.  There is a maximum 25,000 word limit (inclusive of footnotes) for the submission. People submitting papers for consideration must be willing to have the paper published as part of the symposium, if the author is selected as the fifth speaker for the panel. Each professor may submit only one paper for consideration.

Papers will be reviewed anonymously. The manuscript should be accompanied by a cover letter with the author’s name and contact information. The manuscript itself, including title page and footnotes, must not contain any references that identify the author or the author’s school. The submitting author is responsible for taking any steps necessary to redact self-identifying text or footnotes.

To be considered, papers must be submitted electronically to Professor Kirsten Davis, Stetson University College  of Law, kkdavis@law.stetson.edu. The deadline for submission is Wednesday, August 1, 2012. The author of the selected paper will be notified by October 1, 2012.  The Call for Paper participant will be responsible for paying his or her own annual meeting registration fee and travel expenses.

Full-time faculty members of AALS member law schools are eligible to submit papers. Foreign, visiting (and not full-time on a different faculty), and adjunct faculty members, graduate students, and fellows are not eligible to submit.

Papers will be selected after review by an ad hoc committee composed of Section Executive Committee members.

Any inquiries about the Call for Papers should be submitted to:  Professor Kirsten Davis, Stetson University College of Law, kkdavis@law.stetson.edu, or 727-562-7877.

MM

Secunda on the Wisconsin Public Labor Dispute

Our own Paul Secunda (Marquette) will be speaking at the Centre for Labour Management Relations of Ryerson University in Toronto on April 16. From the school's website advertising the event:

The enactment in June 2011 of Wisconsin Act 10, legislation that eliminated most collective bargaining rights for most public employees in Wisconsin, did not necessarily follow from the economic conditions surrounding the global recession. The argument here is that it was a blatant power grab with political, social and economic implications. Governor Walker's claim that Act 10's anti-collective bargaining approach was required to balance Wisconsin's budget is belied by two unassailable facts.

First, there were a number of provisions in the law, including an annual union recertification requirement and an anti-dues checkoff provision, which had absolutely nothing to do with cost-savings.

Perhaps even more tellingly, when Act 10 was finally enacted by the State Legislature, Walker and his allies employed a legislative procedure which could only be utilized if Act 10 did not have any impact on state fiscal policy. In short, Governor Walker used the global economic crisis, and Wisconsin's budget situation more specifically, as a ruse to enact a punative bill against public sector unions.

Although unions and their allies have drafted, and continue to draft, procedural and substantive legal challenges to Act 10 based on state open meeting laws and constitutionally-based freedom of association and equal protections provisions, these legal challenges have so far been unsuccessful. If such efforts continue to be unsuccessful, it indeed may be a long time before any real public sector collective bargaining will be permitted in Wisconsin. The subsequent loss of workplace rights not only adversely impacts public sector workers, but also the citizens of Wisconsin who will be that much poorer for having to live in a society where internationally-recognized rights of association and collective bargaining are not taken seriously.

MM

DePaul Symposium: Class Action Rollback?

Next month, the DePaul Law Review will be hosting a symposium on class actions after the Supreme Court's Decision in Wal-Mart v. Dukes. The speakers and panelists look like a pretty interesting mix of folks, and I'm excited to be among them. I'm sure the day will give me lots to think about.

Here are the details:

Class Action Rollback? Wal-Mart v. Dukes and the Future of Class Action Litigation

 The 22nd Annual DePaul Law Review Symposium 
Friday, February 24, 2012, 9:00 am - 4:30 pm
DePaul Center 80051 E Jackson Blvd.Chicago, IL 60604

Registration and continental breakfast from 8:30 - 9:00 a.m. 

The morning session will begin at 9:00 am: Suja Thomas (Illinois) will deliver an opening presentation entitled Oddball Cases. Mark Perry (Gibson Dunn, Georgetown Adjunct), who represented Wal-Mart in the Dukes case, will next deliver a presentation entitled Defending Against Class Actions in the Post-Dukes Environment. Finally, Suzette Malveaux (Catholic) will deliver our Keynote presentation, The Power and Promise of Procedure: Examining the Class Action Landscape After Wal-Mart v. Dukes.

Our afternoon session will consist of three panel discussions on topics ranging from civil procedure to employment practices and practitioner strategies.

Confirmed Panelists: Marcia McCormick (St. Louis); William Hubbard (U. Chicago); Wendy Netter Epstein (Chicago Kent, Kirkland & Ellis); Lesley Wexler (Illinois); Steven Greenberger (DePaul); Tony Fata (Cafferty Faucher); Andrew Trask (McGuire Woods); Linda Friedman (Stonewell & Friedman); Naomi Schoenbaum (U. Chicago)

This event is approved for 5.5 hours of CLE credit.  A continental breakfast and lunch will be provided.
Please RSVP no later than February 17, 2012 to RSVP to Chris Burrichter at lawreview@depaul.edu

MM

WFRN Preliminary Conference Program Available

Friend of the blog Marcy Karin (Arizona State) writes to let us know that the Work and Family Researchers Network or WFRN (formerly the Sloan Work and Family Research Network) has released the program for its inaugural conference. The WFRN

is an international membership organization of interdisciplinary work and family researchers. The WFRN also welcomes the participation of policy makers and practitioners as it seeks to promote knowledge and understanding of work and family issues among the community of global stakeholders.

The WFRN facilitates virtual and face-to-face interaction among work and family researchers from a broad range of fields and engages the next generation of work and family scholars. As a global hub, we provide opportunities for information sharing and networking via our website, which includes the only open access work and family subject matter repository, the Work and Family Commons. 

The inaugural conference is this June in New York City and features over 600 speakers from thirty countries. a quick glance at the program reveals that amont them are Joan Williams (UC Hastings), Nina Pilard (Georgetown), Beth Burkstrand-Reid (Nebraska), Michelle Travis (San Francisco), Robin Runge (North Dakota), Keith Cunningham-Parmeter (Willamette), Deborah Widiss (Indiana-Bloomington), Melissa Hart (Colorado), Ruth Milkman (CUNY, Sociology) and Marcy Karin (Arizona State).

It looks like a great conference and a great organization to become involved with for anyone working on these work and family issues.

MM 

Snapshot

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Thanks so much to everyone at the LEL Colloquium for tolerating my luncheon presentation and giving me all the terrific ideas for follow-up!  Please please please send those comments to me by email, or add a comment to this post.

rb

Williams Delivers Piper Lecture

Today, Chicago-Kent held its 32nd annual Kenneth M. Piper Lecture, always a great event. I can't find a link to the video yet, but when I do I'll post it.

Joan Williams (UC Hastings/Worklife Law Center) spoke on Family Responsibilities Discrimination in the Great Recession: Impact of EEOC Guidelines. Commenting were Deidra Byrd (Walgreens) and Stephen Moldof (Cohen, Weiss & Simon LLP). It was a great discussion, focusing in large part on the trends detailed in the Worklife Law Center's report of earlier this year.

One of the most interesting things, from my perspective, on family responsibilities discrimination litigation is the very varied forms the litigation takes. While over sixty municipalities and several states prohibit this kind of discrimination explicitly, the majority of jurisdictions don't have this carved out in their antidiscrimination statutes. So some cases are brought under Title VII, particularly the Pregnancy Discrimination Act provision, but others are brought under the EPA, ADA, ERISA, and various state tort causes of action, to name a few. The success rate for these cases is relatively high: about 50%, in large part because penalizing people for taking care of others rubs most judges and juries the wrong way. It's an interesting case study on how activists and ordinary people, both employees and management, begin to shape the law and workplace norms in new ways.

MM

ABA Section on Labor and Employment Law Ethics Committee Meeting

The ABA Section on Labor and Employment Law Ethics and Professional Responsibility Committee will be meeting this weekend in Coronado California for a midwinter meeting.  Among myriad other speakers will be:

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• Gwen Handelman (Nova Southeastern), moderating a panel on Attorney-Client Privilege in Employee Benefits Practice: Who's Your Client and When?
• Michael Green (Texas Wesleyan), moderating a panel on The Allure of Electronic Communications: Forgetting Your Professional Responsibilities When Involved with Email, Facebook, Twitter, and Blogging.
• Ruben Garcia (Cal Western), moderating a panel on The Role of Attorneys in Policing Professionalism.

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CLE on Plausibility in Labor and Employment Cases

The ABA Section of Labor and Employment Law and Center for Continuing Legal Education are presenting a CLE program (teleconference and live audio webcast) on the effect of Iqbal and Twombly on labor and employment cases. According to the program description:

The pleading standard for a viable cause of action, as defined by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, requires “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.”  In 2007, the United States Supreme Court’s Twombly v. Bell Atlantic Corp., 550 U.S. 544 (2007),decision re-examined the pleading standard and rejected Conley v. Gibson’s “no set of facts” test. 

In 2009, the Supreme Court expanded Twombly’s reach in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. 1937 (2009), holding Rule 8’s newly-crafted pleading standard applies to all civil cases. No matter your focus and no matter who your client is, the Court’s decision in Iqbal marks an abrupt shift in pleading standards, and that shift has affected all labor and employment cases.  Hear from our panel of employment law experts, who will cover such critical areas as: 

• The impact of Iqbal on labor and employment law cases to date;
• How labor and employment practitioners are adjusting to the new pleading standard;
• What the future trend in labor and employment adjudications holds; and
• The proposed legislation to overturn Iqbal.

Panelists include Suja Thomas (Illinois), Josh Civin (NAACP LDF), and Jonathan Youngwood (Simpson & Thatcher), and the moderator is Samuel Miller (Outten & Golden). It should be an interesting discussion.

MM

St. Antoine to Speak on Employment Arbitration

Ted St. Antoine (Michigan) will speak next Thursday (November 19) at Case Western Reserve University School of Law on the topic Mandatory Employment Arbitration: Keeping It Fair, Keeping It Lawful.  He'll be giving the Rush McKnight Labor Law Lecture presented by the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Conflict and Dispute Resolution.  Here's a preview:

Agreements requiring employees to arbitrate all disputes with their employers, including statutory claims, instead of taking them to court, have become highly controversial. As a condition of getting or keeping a job, employees must waive their right to go before a judge and jury to pursue their cases. Yet in addition to saving the employer high litigation costs and devastating jury awards, so-called mandatory arbitration may give ordinary lower-paid employees the only practical means of enforcing their job rights. Courts are increasingly insisting on due process safeguards in these systems. Practitioners in the employment field should know about the pros and cons of mandatory arbitration agreements, and about the fast-moving legal developments concerning their validity.

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Estlund on Regulating Self-Regulation

CCH Work Week reports:

As union representation has declined and employment law regulations that offer no collective representation have proliferated, employees must find different ways to assert themselves in the workplace to make sure their rights are protected, according to Cynthia A. Estlund, the Catherine A. Rein professor or law at New York University School of Law. As employers implement internal compliance programs to deflect employment regulations and potential litigation and employees are shut out of those self-regulatory schemes, there will be no workplace democracy, Estlund argued, speaking on "Corporate Self-Regulation and the Future of Workplace Governance" at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

I agree with Cindy and would take her point one step further. Cindy has argued for procedural due process rights which would act as a right to expression in the workplace. I think we should be careful of depending too much on such due process rights, especially where such process is given by an employer in a perfunctory manner. This can be especially problematic in a politicized public employment environment, but in the private sector as well.

So pushing for due process-type rights in the workplace is part of the response to this self-regulation movement/self-governance movement, but other responses are necessary, including introducing  corrective legislation on the federal and state level and fashioning arguments to overcome employee-unfriendly, judicially-made law.

PS

Reminder: Registration Deadline for Labor/Employment Conference is Approaching

Monday is the deadline for registering for the Second Annual Colloquium on Current Scholarship in Labor/Employment Law, which will be held Sept. 28-29 at U. Denver and U. Colorado.  I didn't make it last year and wish I had; I'll be attending and presenting this year.  Scott Moss reports that registrations are way up from last year, which itself was quite an impressive collection of scholars.  Scott also requests:

Please pass this information on to others, especially those who may be new to, or completely outside, legal academia.  Last year, it was nice that word of the event somehow reached a lot of aspiring profs, non-profs, and others who really needed the work-in-progress audience more than those of us who already have been prof'ing for a few years. I hope we can draw a similar amount of new blood to this year's event.

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