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Cambridge Law Handbooks
The Cambridge Handbook of U.S. Labor Law for the Twenty-First Century
Over the last fifty years in the United States, unions have been in deep decline, while income and wealth inequality have grown. In this timely work, editors Richard Bales and Charlotte Garden - with a roster of thirty-five leading labor scholars - analyze these trends and show how they are linked. Designed to appeal to those being introduced to the field as well as experts seeking new insights, this book demonstrates how federal labor law is failing today's workers and disempowering unions; how union jobs pay better than nonunion jobs and help to increase the wages of even nonunion workers; and how, when union jobs vanish, the wage premium also vanishes. At the same time, the book offers a range of solutions, from the radical, such as a complete overhaul of federal labor law, to the incremental, including reforms that could be undertaken by federal agencies on their own.
426 pages, Hardcover
Published December 5, 2019
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June 18, 2023
This book is very academic. Mainly dry, professional essays by law professors. It's not a book for union activists like me, but for academics wrestling with legal problems for their own sake. The overall premise of the collection is that U.S. labor law is out of date and inappropriate for the new world of work, and therefore should be reconsidered and reformed.
The oddest essay in the collection, and my favorite, argues that union organizing should be considered as a civil right. That it should be added as a protected category, along with race, gender or age, to U.S. civil rights law. This would make it a civil rights violation for employers to discriminate on the basis of union organizing activity. I appreciate this very creative approach. The authors, Kahlenberg and Marvit, also offer a model legal statute as an appendix to their essay.
Taken on the whole, this book difficult and boring - unless you want to think really hard through some of the complicated legal thickets U.S. workers face in the 21st century.
The oddest essay in the collection, and my favorite, argues that union organizing should be considered as a civil right. That it should be added as a protected category, along with race, gender or age, to U.S. civil rights law. This would make it a civil rights violation for employers to discriminate on the basis of union organizing activity. I appreciate this very creative approach. The authors, Kahlenberg and Marvit, also offer a model legal statute as an appendix to their essay.
Taken on the whole, this book difficult and boring - unless you want to think really hard through some of the complicated legal thickets U.S. workers face in the 21st century.
Displaying 1 of 1 review