LABOR LAW

PENN LAW FACULTY

PUBLIC SERVICE PROGRAM PARTNERS AT PENN

PUBLIC SERVICE PLACEMENTS

SPRING 2007 COURSES

Employment Discrimination
This course will introduce the basic theories and legal principles underlying equal employment opportunity law in the United States. The course will focus on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and the Americans With Disabilities Act: the fundamental federal statutes prohibiting employment discrimination based on race, gender, religion, age and disability. Students will become familiar with the role of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the administrative prerequisites to bringing a discrimination case to court. Topics will include current developments in the law of affirmative action and sexual harassment, and an employer's duty to provide reasonable accommodations in the work place.

Employment Law
The focus will be on the rights, or limitation on rights, of those 85% of workers who are not covered by collective agreements. The emphasis will be on underlying values and assumptions of the legal rules, and the practical application of these rules in the workplace. The course will examine problem areas such as the making of the employment contract and employment at will with its judicially developed exceptions and legislative limitations, the employee's obligations of loyalty and confidentiality, the employee's rights of privacy and personal dignity, wage and hour regulation, protection of health and safety compensation for employee illness and injury, unemployment compensation and rights on retirement.

Research in International and Foreign Law
This course will provide an opportunity for students to get acquainted with the basic sources available for research in public and private international law, as well as in the law of selected foreign countries. Students will learn how to find international treaties, European Union documents, decisions of international courts, statutes and court decisions of the United Kingdom, Canada and selected civil law jurisdictions such as France and Germany. The emphasis will be on English language materials. International trade, human rights and foreign constitutional and labor law research will be singled out for special attention.
The course is strongly recommended for journal editors working in this area and for participants in the Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition.

OTHER COURSES

Arbitration
This course will deal with a number of legal issues, both substantial and procedural, relating to arbitration of grievances under collective contracts and individual contracts of employment, including the union's duty of fair representation and due process in arbitration. The course will also examine the relative roles of the arbitrator, the NLRB and the courts.

Comparative and International Labor Law
The first third of the seminar will be a comparative study of the collective bargaining systems and labor law of four countries, which are quite different from the United States and each other---Great Britain, Germany, Sweden and Japan---with some side references to various other countries such as Italy, Spain and South Africa. The remainder of the seminar will study the role of various international agencies, the International Labor Organization, the World Trade Organization, and the European Union; international treaties and conventions such as the Convention on Human Rights and the Convention on Economic Rights, and the labor protocol of NAFTA as they relate to protection of workers' rights. Special attention will be given to the problems and potentials of cross-boundary litigation such as suing American corporations in American courts under the Alien Tort Claims Act for use of slave labor in Burma, or use of toxic chemicals in Costa Rica.

Employee Benefits
This course covers the labor-law and tax aspects of laws governing employee benefit plans. The course will include an analysis of the Internal Revenue Code ("IRC"), Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), the Age Discrimination in Employment Act ("ADEA"), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act ("Title VII"), the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA") and the Labor Management Relations Act ("LMRA") as they relate to employee benefit plans. The IRC requirements relating to retirement type plans (i.e., pension, profit sharing and stock bonus plans) will be covered generally. In addition, benefits frequently included as part of an employer's benefits package will be discussed.

Labor Arbitration
This course will deal with a number of legal issues, both substantial and procedural, relating to arbitration of grievances under collective contracts and individual contracts of employment, including the union's duty of fair representation and due process in arbitration. The course will also examine the relative roles of the arbitrator, the NLRB and the courts. Primary emphasis will be on labor arbitration as a form of alternative dispute resolution. Focus will be on how labor arbitrators apply the principles of contract interpretation to collective contracts, and the industrial jurisprudence they have developed in areas of employee discipline, seniority, subcontracting, management rights and various fringe benefits. The materials studied will be primarily arbitration decisions and articles on the arbitration process. Students will be required to attend "real" arbitration hearings, and will also engage in mock negotiations of contract provisions, presenting arguments in arbitration of grievances arising under the clauses they negotiated, sitting as arbitrators in other students' arbitrations, and writing an award in that arbitration. Much of this will be outside of and apart from scheduled class discussions. There may be other assignments of writing arbitration awards. At the end there will be brief re-examination of the relative roles of courts and arbitrators, and the use of arbitration of statutory rights of individual employees.

Labor Law
This course is a combination of collective labor law and individual employment law. The focus is on the political and social values recognized and protected by both branches of labor law. It examines both judge-made law and statutory law, the administration and enforcement of both bodies of law and the practical effectiveness of the remedies provided. The values examined include freedom of contract, freedom of speech and association, worker participation and industrial democracy, fair and equal treatment, protection of physical integrity and rights of privacy. Substantial attention is given to the special problems of collective labor law--unionization, strikes and lockouts, and enforcement of the collective agreement through arbitration. Some attention is given to how all of these problems are dealt with in other countries.

Law & Economics of Work and Family Seminar
This interdisciplinary course brings together topics in employment law, labor economics, domestic relations, tax law, employment discrimination, industrial organization, and feminist jurisprudence. The course will focus on an issue of increasing social importance: the need for fair, efficient, and flexible structures to help individuals reconcile the demands of family and work. The course will examine how family dynamics and labor markets affect the choices and the well-being of men, women, and children, and will investigate the effects of various legal interventions and private and public policies on those choices and on individual and social welfare. The class will have an analytical and empirical focus and will make use of materials in sociology, economics, and psychology.

Public Employee Bargaining
This course will be a study of the special rights of public employees, constitutional and statutory, and the special character of public sector collective bargaining. It will examine the traditional areas of exclusive representation, unfair labor practices, representation elections, subjects of bargaining, strikes, and arbitration, but with emphasis on how the problems are different because the employer is a political entity and the bargaining process is one of political decision making. Substantial attention will be given to the relation between collective bargaining and budget making and taxation. Focus will be on bargaining at the local level and will be as much a study of local government and local finance as collective bargaining.