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Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, the contours of neoliberalism took shape, as individual corporations implemented new strategies seeking to shift the frontier of control in their favor and increase their profits. Their actions began to shape the political and economic practices of both major political parties, and the orientation of capitalists as a class towards their workers and their workers' unions. This included free trade; deregulation; privatization; a new centrality of financial instruments and transactions; the commodification of services and goods which had formerly been available on the basis of citizenship or community membership; the combination of privatization and commodification to facilitate a new round of capital accumulation; the reduction of labor costs, including benefits; the reduction of the social wage and the provision of services. This article describes how, according to Rachleff, the pursuit of these practices challenged unions, undercut workers' economic status and security, and fueled inequality. [This article is an excerpt of "From Against Labor: How U.S. Employers Organized to Defeat Union Activism," edited by Rosemary Feurer and Chad Pearson. Copyright 2017 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with permission of the University of Illinois Press.

Despite three decades of scholarship on economic restructuring in the United States, employers' violations of minimum wage, overtime and other workplace laws remain understudied. This article begins to fill the gap by presenting evidence from a large-scale, original worker survey that draws on recent advances in sampling methodology to reach vulnerable workers. Our findings suggest that in America's three largest cities, violations of employment and labor laws are pervasive across low-wage industries and occupations, affecting a wide range of workers. But while worker characteristics are correlated with violations, job and employer characteristics play the stronger role, including industry, occupation and measures of informality and nonstandard work. We therefore propose a framework in which employers' noncompliance with labor regulations is one axis of a competitive strategy based on labor cost reduction, contributing to the reorganization of work and production in the 21st century labor market.

Employment law is a "must-cover" subject in business environment courses. Comparing the plethora of topics requiring coverage with the limited time devoted to employment law during a typical academic term, other important employment subjects--such as negotiation and collective bargaining--commonly receive short shrift. This article offers a creative solution designed to cover these oft-omitted topics with maximum effectiveness and within a brief period of time. The author discusses an exercise that utilizes a student-led collective bargaining negotiation as a vehicle to: (1) cover management and labor issues within the professional sports environment (specifically, the National Hockey League Lockout of 2004-05) and apply lessons to the broader workplace; (2) teach valuable negotiation techniques; and (3) provide insight into an interesting, formidable, and real-world business issue. The author proceeds by describing laws governing the collective bargaining process and categorizing and analyzing four hot-button issues in contemporary collective bargaining negotiations. Then, the author focuses on negotiation by identifying and discussing the six primary stages of a typical collective bargaining negotiation--including specific examples from the professional sports context. Next, the author introduces the National Hockey League (NHL) and its labor history and addresses the pertinent events leading to the 2004-05 lockout. He also demonstrates the negotiation exercise by running through the activity in step-by-step detail. Finally, the author summarizes the resolution to the real-world lockout and presents ideas for applying the exercise to other professional sports dealing with expiring collective bargaining agreements (CBAs). (Contains 153 footnotes.)

Time and resources are becoming increasingly scarce in most higher education institutions today. As a result, colleges and universities are looking to streamline and simplify many costly, labor-intensive administrative processes. In this article, Tracy Williams examines how Web-based time-entry systems can help institutions save valuable time and money and also ensure compliance with state and federal labor laws.

As workers throughout the globe struggle to gain control over the conditions in which they labor as well as the means by which capital is produced, the importance of understanding class struggle, class formation and class consciousness as they relate to education and schooling takes on a new urgency. In the early part of the twenty-first century, neo-liberal ideology persists in normalizing relations of capital, just as contemporary educational theory has tended to subrogate class struggle for social movement. As such, the category of class as a potent historical actor with specific temporal qualities suffers for legitimacy in an age characterized by end-of-history prophets and profiteers; "bio-identity" movements; neo-corporate hegemony; quasi-sovereign nation-states; global financiers monetarily and ideologically supported by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization; increasing local and global disparities between wealth and poverty; and violence. A more comprehensive understanding of social class and education will not eradicate or transform all of these social realities. However, by erasing class as a historical actor, social and educational theorists as well as other political workers miss significant pedagogical opportunities to heighten class consciousness, create class formations, and enliven class struggle so that the future has an opportunity to become something other than what the present suggests it will be. But in an age characterized by a fear of freedom, radicalizing our thinking is a necessary step in imagining the possibility of collective struggle over a future that has yet to be determined. (Contains 87 notes.)

According to its president, Marcel Pepin, the World Confederation of Labour (W.C.L.) offers man a way to follow his ideals of fraternity and solidarity within an intellectual framework open to discussion and world-wide point of view. The W. C. L. has tried in recent years to become in particular a mouthpiece for workers in underdeveloped countries. This review is comprised of brief reports on recent W.C.L. activities (th fight against apartheid, participation in UNESCO and in conferences on immigration and amnesty, W.C.L. press releases and news of interventions); information on international trade federations; brief reports of living and working conditions for laborers in 13 countries of five continents; and a final section titled "Documents," containing four lengthier pieces: a description of the effects of repressive government on living and working conditions of workers in Brazil; a review of the book "The Multinationals Which Control Us;" an account of a strike in Belgium; and a history of the South African "Bantustan" Policy. (AJ)

This article presents an interview with Wilma B. Liebman, the new chair of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). In this interview, Liebman talks about labor law, academics, and reversing ossification.

Several significant court decisions involving labor cases are discussed including a series of decisions concerning constitutional protections afforded aliens; the First Amendment and national labor relations laws; and the bifurcated backpay rule. (BM)

In the conditions of the democratization of the Ukrainian state, the reform of labor legislation is an objective necessity, about which there are many discussions. The current labor legislation was developed during the existence of strict legal regulation of labor relations, when state property was their economic basis. The relevance of the chosen research topic lies in the fact that the current legislation regulating labor relations is outdated and unbalanced, has problems, shortcomings, conflicts and gaps, and is simply not suitable for regulating this area in a market economy. The present study used a set of general and special methods of scientific knowledge. The purpose of this study is to establish the nature of problems, shortcomings and gaps in the legal regulation of labor relations in Ukraine, identify some of them and find ways to solve them, and formulate proposals to improve existing labor legislation in our country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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All bilateral U.S. trade agreements ratified since 2001 have included labor provisions within the main body of the agreement, though the scale, scope, and appropriateness of such provisions – and their enforcement mechanisms – have varied slightly between different FTAs. But little has been written on whether such agreements have, in the short time before and after their passage, tangibly transformed labor legislation and respect for workers’ rights within partner countries. By examining the successes and failures of trade-labor linkage within four bilateral U.S. FTAs, I attempt to demonstrate that tying increased market access with minimum labor standards can foster improved and updated foreign labor legislation and greater respect for workers’ rights. I also argue that the primary concerns over trade-labor linkage at the multilateral level have far less relevance at the bilateral level, where the scope of the provisions can be tailored to each particular trading partner, and the leverage of the United States allows it to exert significant influence during the negotiating process. Recent bilateral U.S. FTAs have shown that incremental improvements in labor standards can be achieved through the combined efforts of negotiating trade partners, the International Labor Organization, and domestic and international NGOs. Ultimately, it is argued, the effectiveness and viability of labor provisions at the bilateral level is most dependent on the political will of the negotiating countries to adequately address labor issues during trade negotiations and within signed agreements. With the U.S.-Jordan FTA, the U.S. demonstrated its commitment to “hard” labor standards by including sufficiently enforceable and appropriate labor provisions within the body of the agreement. Since Jordan, however, the labor provisions in U.S. FTAs, including those with Morocco, Bahrain, and Oman, have been relaxed, as “soft” trade-labor linkage – or the linking of trade and labor issues in the negotiating process – has played a more significant role.

In the first months of 1904, in a context of intense labor unrest, the Argentine executive branch presented to Congress a bill that became known as the 'National Labor Law' (Ley Nacional del Trabajo). It comprised a very extensive set of rules designed to regulate the labor market, the labor process and workers' organizations. By that time, Argentina had a growing capitalist economy, a young and radical labor movement and no labor regulations whatsoever – in this context, the bill was the first attempt of regulating the relations between capital and labor and, not surprisingly, it sparked an important debate. Although it never became a law, the bill became an iconic reference in the history of labor regulations in Argentina. This article introduces the main characteristics of the proposed bill and focuses on the reactions that working-class organizations developed toward it. While anarchist-oriented groups and unions made clear its complete rejection toward an initiative that was seen as another intervention of an authoritarian state, the Socialist Party found itself in a much more complicated position. This article addresses these debates and tensions in order to better understand the reactions of working-class organizations with regard to the first attempt of labor regulation made by the Argentine state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unfortunately, labor legislation also includes insufficiently clear, parallel or contradictory provisions. Some of these provisions relate to the probationary period for persons with disabilities, and others relate to the cancellation of the penalty, consisting of disciplinary termination of the employment contract. In this study, the author analyzes the views expressed in the legal literature on the two institutions and also draws his own solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]