Statement of Theodore J. St. Antoine Before the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations

Testimony_St_Antoine_040694.pdf: 205 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Gilmer in the Collective Bargaining Context

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Gilmer in the Collective Bargaining Context

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Why Mandatory Arbitration May Benefit Workers

Would employees-including union employees-be better off with mandatory arbitration, even of statutory employment claims? The answer to this important question should depend less on abstract notions about the importance of statutory claims and the sanctity of the right to a jury trial, and more on a pragmatic assessment of what is likely to be best for the great majority of workers. Employing this type of analysis, which would take into account an overworked, underfunded Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, backlogged court dockets and other practical problems, my view is that most employees might well be better off with mandatory arbitration, provided that due process guarantees are in place and statutory remedies are available

Employment-at-Will—Is the Model Act the Answer?

Over the last quarter century, the most significant development in the field of labor and employment law has been a nationwide movement toward a revision of the at-will employment doctrine. Courts in over forty-five jurisdictions have used one or more of three main theories to carve out exceptions to the previously allpervasive principle. Unfortunately, though one can applaud the values embodied in these decisions, there are serious deficiencies in the common law modifications. The purpose of this Article is to outline those defects and to demonstrate that the interests of employees and employers alike would be better served by new remedial legislation, such as the Model Employment Termination Act

Offshore Outsourcing and Worker Rights

For the workers in the Rust Belt of the United States, concentrated in Southern New England, Western New York State, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois, it doesn\u27t make much difference whether their jobs are outsourced or lost to North Carolina or Mexico or China. In any event the sources of income that have existed for generations are gone and the economic and psychic pains are much the same. Nonetheless, for purposes of national policy it plainly matters whether the work is moving to another part of the country or is leaving the United States entirely. I am going to focus on what has become a growing concern everywhere in this country-the flight of jobs abroad as business seeks the advantages of dramatically lower wage scales. That is known as offshore outsourcing or contracting

Mandatory Arbitration of Employee Discrimination Claims: Unmitigated Evil or Blessing in Disguise?

One of the hottest current issues in employment law is the use of mandatory arbitration to resolve workplace disputes. Typically, an employer will make it a condition of employment that employees must agree to arbitrate any claims arising out of the job, including claims based on statutory rights against discrimination, instead of going to court. On the face of it, this is a brazen affront to public policy. Citizens are being deprived of the forum provided them by law. And indeed numerous scholars and public and private bodies have condemned the use of mandatory arbitration. Yet the insight of that great Nineteenth Century English social philosopher, W.S. Gilbert\u27s Little Buttercup, may apply here: Things are seldom what they seem. Perhaps the validity of mandatory arbitration should depend more on a pragmatic assessment of what is likely to be best in practice for the great majority of workers, employers, and the public, rather than on abstract notions about the inviolability of statutory claims and the sanctity of the right to a jury trial. At least arguably, in light of an overworked, underfunded Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and backlogged federal court dockets, most employees might be better off with mandatory arbitration, even of statutory claims, provided there were due process guarantees and the arbitrator could furnish the full range of statutory remedies

National Labor Policy: Relfections and Distortions of Social Justice

This article is based on the fifteenth annual Pope John XXIII Lecture delivered by the author on November 9, 1979, at the Catholic University School of Law, Washington, D.C

Review of Labor and the Legal Process, by H. H. Wellington

If there is a more acute intellect than that of Harry Wellington at work today in labor law, I am unaware of it. This makes his new book all the more troubling, for it reveals the limitations, or perhaps I should even say the deficiencies, of a highly rational approach to the regulation of industrial relations. Professor Wellington has two stated objectives (he disclaims any attempt at a comprehensive text on labor law). First, he wishes to appraise the role of the legal process in moving collective bargaining to its present position at the center of national labor policy. Second, he wants to examine in detail a variety of problems created for government by collective bargaining. \u27 It is in the pursuit of his first goal, especially, that Professor Wellington seems handicapped by his penchant for a priori reasoning