Twenty-First Century Labor Law: Striking the Right Balance Between Workplace Civility Rules that Accommodate Equal Employment Opportunity Obligations and the Loss of Protection for Concerted Activities Under the National Labor Relations Act

Employees who engage in protected concerted activities relating to work generally are shielded from discipline by Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Where otherwise protected work-related activity involves profanity or offensive speech or actions, whether in or out of the workplace, on a picket line, or on social media, such may violate employer civility rules and/or equal employment opportunity laws. Important interests are at stake, including for employers to maintain a safe, discrimination-free workplace; and for employees to exercise their right to communicate about workplace matters. This Article analyzes recent cases on the question when offensive employee conduct loses NLRA protection, highlighting the National Labor Relations Board’s reconsideration and revision of its standards in the General Motors case, July 2020. The Article analyzes the prior context-dependent tests applied by the NLRB to assess whether an employee should lose the protection of the Act, finding these tests more than adequate to balance the important public policies underlying both the NLRA and equal employment opportunity laws, as well as employer and employee rights to manage and work in a place with a desired level of consideration for others. The Article concludes that the Board’s new application of the forty-year-old Wright Line standard to these cases increases management rights and latitude at the expense of hindering employee rights to gather together to discuss and object to problems in the workplace

YOUTH HARVEST: EXPLORING AN EMPLOYMENT-BASED, SERVICE-ORIENTED, THERAPEUTIC PROGRAM FOR “AT-RISK YOUTH”

In the mid-1990s, juvenile courts began establishing youth drug courts that blended the principles of restorative justice and the philosophy of therapeutic jurisprudence in an attempt to process juvenile drug offenders in a way that emphasizes rehabilitation of the offenders and restoration to the community. Over recent decades, wilderness therapy programs and horticultural therapy programs have become popular as alternative approaches for treating adjudicated and/or “at-risk” youth. The Youth Harvest program, which operates in conjunction with the Missoula Youth Drug Court, is a unique, therapeutic program that blends the goals of National Drug Courts and the principles of restorative justice with elements of both wilderness therapy programs and horticultural therapy programs. Through qualitative research, I have explored the goals and characteristics of Youth Harvest. The study, which began in the summer of 2008 and concluded in December of 2009, included in-depth interviews with program managers and program participants, a photovoice project, and participant observation of the program’s operation. By way of these research methods, I have determined that Youth Harvest is an experiential therapeutic program that offers benefits to its primary participants and to wider community members alike. I have identified the goals and intentions of the program as well as the individual “therapeutic factors” that, altogether, create the experience in which the therapy is embedded. I have concluded that Youth Harvest can serve as a valuable example of a unique way of trying to reach and serve adolescents in need. Due to the limited size of the study group (five adults, four adolescent participants), this research project was intended only to determine the goals and intentions of the program, from the perspective of its adult coordinators, to establish an understanding of what the Youth Harvest experience entails, and to provide a profile of several youths’ responses to participation in the program. It is exploratory in nature and offers recommendations for improvement within the program, as well as ideas for future research

Employment Discrimination Claims Remain Valid Despite After-Acquired Evidence of Employee Wrongdoing

This article explores the legal practice area of employment discrimination and adverse decisions based on after-acquired evidence. A division among the circuits courts arose concerning the impact of after-acquired evidence of employee wrongdoing upon an employer\u27s liability for employment discrimination. When pre-trial discovery unveiled a separate nondiscriminatory reason for termination, numerous circuits allowed such previously unknown information to constitute a legitimate basis for the employment decision, following the model of a mixed-motive discharge. A trend developed however, among other circuits that after-acquired evidence of employee misconduct should not prevent the establishment of employer liability, but that it should be considered at the remedies phase. The United States Supreme Court affirmed the latter approach in /McKennon v. Nashville Banner Publishing Company

Analytical chemistry at the interface between materials science and biology

This work describes several research efforts that lie at the new interfaces between analytical chemistry and other disciplines, namely materials science and biology. In the materials science realm, the search for new materials that may have useful or unique chromatographic properties motivated the synthesis and characterization of electrically conductive sol-gels. In the biology realm, the search for new surface fabrication schemes that would permit or even improve the detection of specific biological reactions motivated the design of miniaturized biological arrays. Collectively, this work represents some of analytical chemistry\u27s newest forays into these disciplines;This dissertation is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 is an introductory chapter that provides background information pertinent to several key aspects of the work contained in this dissertation. Chapter 2 describes the synthesis and characterization of electrically conductive sol-gels derived from the acid-catalyzed hydrolysis of a vanadium alkoxide. Specifically, this chapter describes our attempts to increase the conductivity of vanadium sol-gels by optimizing the acidic and drying conditions used during synthesis. Chapter 3 reports the construction of novel antigenic immunosensing platforms of increased epitope density using Fab\u27-SH antibody fragments on gold. Here, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), thin-layer cell (TLC) and confocal fluorescence spectroscopies, and scanning force microscopy (SFM) are employed to characterize the fragment-substrate interaction, to quantify epitope density, and to demonstrate fragment viability and specificity. Chapter 4 presents a novel method for creating and interrogating double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) microarrays suitable for screening protein:dsDNA interactions. Using the restriction enzyme ECoR1, we demonstrate the ability of the atomic force microscope (AFM) to detect changes in topography that result from the enzymatic cleavage of dsDNA microarrays containing the correct recognition sequence. Chapter 5 explores more fully the microarray fabrication process described in Chapter 4. Specifically, experiments characterizing the effect of deposition conditions on oligonucleotide topography and as well as those that describe array density optimization are presented. Chapter 6 presents general conclusions from the work recorded in this dissertation and speculates on its extension