Congress to Administrative Agencies: Creator, Overseer, and Partner

Ultimately, all questions of administrative law, judicial review of agency action, and the degree of congressional oversight revolve around attempts to discover where the true congressional intent lies. All of our congressional oversight activities seek to advance an administrative agency outcome that most reflects congressional understanding of the dictates of law. In our system of government the non-legislative branches all pursue the same goal-determining and ultimately following congressional intent. The system affords each branch a great deal of leeway to pursue its own view of congressional intent, and naturally each branch seeks to assert its own perspective as much as possible. In the author\u27s opinion, from the vantage point of a congressional subcommittee chair, some views should be granted greater deference than others

Part-time Employment, Gender and Employee Participation in the Workplace: An Illawarra Reconnaissance

The growth in non-standard forms of employment has major implications for the effectiveness of employee participation mechanisms in the workplace, whether direct or indirect (representative). This seems to be especially the case with representative forms, such as consultative committees, because they effectively assume permanent or long-term employment and are not as easily accessible to part-time employees. However, the literature on participation rarely addresses this major contextual aspect. The issue is of further significance since the majority of part-time and casual employees are female. Consequently, to the extent that non-standard employees do not have the same access to participatory mechanisms in the workplace that their full- time permanent colleagues enjoy, then women also are disproportionately excluded from participation. This paper begins to redress the insularity in the literature by analysing survey data from the Illawarra Regional Industrial Relations Survey (IRWIRS). It tests the hypothesis that the growth of non-standard forms of employment diminishes the access to participation in the workplace enjoyed by part-time workers in comparison with their full-time colleagues.Illawarra Regional Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, workplace employee relations, Australia

Gender, Part-time Employment and Employee Participation in the Workplace: Comparing Australia and the European Union

The international trend in the growth and incidence of 'no n-standard employment', and its highly gendered nature, is well documented. For ease of definition, and because of the nature of the available data, we focus upon part-time employment in this paper. Employee participation may be defined as any workplace process which 'allows employees to exert some influence over their work and the conditions under which they work' (Strauss 1998). It may be divided into two main approaches, direct participation and indirect or representative participation. Direct participation involves the employee in job or task-oriented decision-making in the production process at the shop or office floor level. Indirect or representative forms of participation include joint consultative committees, works councils, and employee members of boards of directors or management. In the EU context statutory works councils are the most common expression of representative participation, but in Australia, consultative committees resulting from union/employer agreement or unilateral management initiative are the more common form. All of these forms of employee participation raise important issues concerning part time employees. Effective participation has two further major requirements which also may disadvantage part timers. First, there is a ge neral consensus in the participation literature that training is required for effective direct or representative participation. Secondly, effective communication between management and employees is required for participation, preferably involving a two-way information flow. The issue is of further significance since it has decided gender implications. This paper seeks to redress this relative insularity in the literature by examining some broad trends in this area in Australia and the EU. It analyses survey data at a national level in Australia and compares with some survey data generated in the EU by the EPOC project and analysed by Juliet Webster along the lines which we suggest here. It tests the hypothesis that the growth of one non-standard form of employment, part-time employment, diminishes the access to participation in the workplace enjoyed by female workers in comparison with their male colleagues, and finds that the hypothesis is strongly confirmed. This has major implications for workplace equity, and for organisational efficiency.gender, part-time employment, employee participation, Australia, European Union

FOREWORD

On October 29, 2021, the Western New England Law Review hosted its annual Symposium: Post Pandemic Digital World: Platforms, Algorithms, Cybersecurity, and Justice. This event aimed to begin a larger conversation about approaches to regulation of digital platforms, at a time when they are rapidly gaining significance, and the issues they create are becoming increasingly complex. Today, people are more dependent on technology to work and communicate with one another. Social media and financial platforms are at the center of these financial communications. While these platforms, on their face, are a brilliant way to connect the world, many of these platforms have become ground zero for breeding intolerance, misinformation, ignorance, violence, theft of personal information, and other criminal activity. Demand for self-regulation and government regulation from across the political spectrum has led to congressional hearings and debates on how to best address the spread of this activity. However, efforts to combat these issues have reached an impasse, leaving many platforms with only limited regulation. The Western New England Law Review would like to thank U.S. Senator Edward J. Markey for his contribution to our event. Senator Markey is leading the way in telecommunications technology policies, and he joined us to speak about these issues and one potential solution: the Algorithmic Justice and Online Platform Transparency Act