Labor Law
Elon Law School
Spring 2016
Room 105
Monday & Wednesday, 3:45-5:15 pm
Eric M. Fink
efink@elon.edu
+1 336 279 9334
Office hours by appointment
Schedule & Assignments
Origins of the Modern U.S. Labor Law Regime
Casebook, Chapter 1
Rex v. Journeymen-Taylors of Cambridge, 88 Eng.Rep. 9 (1721)
Commonwealth v. Pullis (1806), reprinted in Commons, et al, 3 A Documentary History of American Industrial Society 59 (2d ed. 1910)
Commonwealth v. Hunt, 45 Mass. 111 (1842)
Vegelahn v. Guntner, 167 Mass. 92 (1896)
In re Debs, 158 U.S. 564 (1895)
Clayton Antitrust Act, § 6 (15 U.S.C. § 17) (1914)
State v. Beal, 199 NC 278 (1930)
The Gastonia Strikers Case, 44 Harvard Law Review 1118 (1931)
Theodore Draper, Gastonia Revisited, 38 Social Research 3 (1971)
Norris-LaGuardia Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 101-115 (1932)
National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 151-169 (1935)
Coverage of the NLRA
Casebook, Chapter 2
George Gonos, The Contest Over “Employer” Status in the Postwar United States: The Case of Temporary Help Firms, 31 Law & Society Review 81 (1997)
Julia Tomassetti, Who Is a Worker? Partisanship, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Social Content of Employment, 37 Law & Social Inquiry 815 (2012)
Katherine V.W. Stone, Legal Protections for Atypical Employees: Employment Law for Workers without Workplaces and Employees without Employers, 27 Berkeley Journal of Employment & Labor Law 251 (2006)
Employee Protections
Protected Concerted Activity
Casebook, Chapter 3
Employer Domination & Discrimination
Casebook, Chapter 4
Kate Bronfenbrenner, Hard Bargaining, 52 Labour/Le Travail 361 (2003)
Union Organizing
Communicating with Employees
Casebook: Chapter 5
Andrew W. Martin, Resources for Success: Social Movement, Strategic Resource Allocation, and Union Organizing Outcomes, 55 Social Problems 501 (2008)
Establishing & Ending Union Representation
Casebook, Chapter 6
Collective Bargaining
Exclusive Representation & The Duty to Bargain
Casebook, Chapter 7
Subjects of Collective Bargaining
Casebook, Chapter 8
Enforcement of Collective Bargaining Agreements
Casebook, Chapter 13
Labor Disputes
Strikes & Lockouts
Casebook, Chapter 9
Jim Pope,Worker Lawmaking, Sit-Down Strikes, and the Shaping of American Industrial Relations, 24 Law and History Review 45 (2006)
Marc Dixon & Andrew W. Martin, We Can’t Win This On Our Own: Unions, Firms, and Mobilization of External Allies in Labor Disputes, 77 American Sociological Review 946 (2012)
Ahmed A. White, The Crime of Staging an Effective Strike and the Enduring Role of Criminal Law in Modern Labor Relations, 11 Working USA 23 (2008)
Picketing, Boycotts, & Corporate Campaigns
Casebook, Chapter 10
Timothy J. Minchin, “Don’t Sleep With Stevens!”: The J.P. Stevens Boycott and Social Activism in the 1970s, 39 Journal of American Studies 511 (2005)
Internal Union Affairs
Unions Duties to Members & Non-Members
Casebook, Chapter 12
Marc Dixon, Union Threat, Countermovement Organization, and Labor Policy in the States, 1944–1960, 57 Social Problems 157 (2010)
Union Democracy & Corruption
Labor-Management Reporting & Disclosure Act
Sickman v. Communications Workers of America Local 13000, 1999 WL 1045145 (E.D. Pa. 1999)
Herman Benson, Landrum-Griffin Act at 50: Has it Been Good or Bad for Unions?, 13(2) New Politics (2011)
U.S. v. Local 560 International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 581 F. Supp. 279 (D.N.J. 1984)
David Witwer, The Racketeer Menace & Antiunionism in the Mid-Twentieth Century U.S., 74 International Labor & Working Class History 124 (2008)
James B. Jacobs & Ellen Peters, Labor Racketeering: The Mafia and the Unions, 30 Crime & Justice 229 (2003)
Labor Outside the NLRA
Unions in the Public Sector
King v. Priest, 206 S.W.2d 547 (Mo. 1947)
Joseph E. Slater, The Court Does Not Know “What a Labor Union Is”: How State Structures and Judicial (Mis)constructions Deformed Public Sector Labor Law, 79 Oregon Law Review 981 (2000)
North Carolina General Statutes, Chap. 95, Art. 12: Collective Bargaining & Strikes by Public Employees
Atkins v. City of Charlotte, 296 F. Supp. 1068 (W.D.N.C. 1968)
Winston-Salem/Forsythe County Unit of the North Carolina Ass’n of Educators v. Phillips, 381 F. Supp. 644 (M.D.N.C. 1974)
Ann C. Hodges & William Warwick, The Sheathed Sword: Public-Sector Union Efficacy in Non-Bargaining States, 27 ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law 275 (2012)
Martin H. Malin, The Legislative Upheaval in Public-Sector Labor Law: A Search for Common Elements, 27 ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law 149 (2012)
Labor in the Shadow of the Law
Daniel Gross & Staughton Lynd, Solidarity Unionism at Starbucks (PM Press Pamphlet Series No. 9, 2011)
Sameer M. Ashar & Catherine L. Fisk, Democratic Norms and Governance Experimentalism in Worker Centers, 82 Law & Contemporary Problems 141 (2019)
David Bacon, A Union for Tobacco Workers, 15 Working USA 417 (2012)
Not Just the “White (Male) Working Class”: Race, Gender, Immigration & the Labor Movement
Larry J. Griffin & Robert R. Korstad, Class as Race & Gender; Making & Breaking a Labor Union in the Jim Crow South, 19 Social Science History 425(1995)
Martha R. Mahoney, What’s Left of Solidarity? Reflections on Law, Race, and Labor History, 57 Buffalo Law Review 1515 (2009)
Kate Bronfenbrenner, Organizing Women: The Nature and Process of Union-Organizing Efforts Among U.S. Women Workers Since the mid-1990s, 32 Work & Occupations 441 (2005)
Jillian Crocker and Dan Clawson, Buying Time: Gendered Patterns in Union Contracts, 59 Social Problems 459 (2012)
Brian Burgoon, et al, Immigration and the Transformation of American Unionism, 44 International Migration Review 933 (2010)
Future Directions in Labor Law
Kate Andrias, The New Labor Law, 126 Yale Law Journal 2 (2016)
Bill Fletcher Jr., Kate Bronfenbrenner, & Donna Dewitt, The Future of Organized Labor in the U.S.: Reinventing Trade Unionism for the 21st Century, Monthly Review (Feb. 21, 2005)
Moshe Marvit & Leigh Ann Schriever, With Traditional Unions on the Decline, Can Members-Only Unions Breathe Life Back Into Labor?, In These Times, (Oct. 21, 2015)