October 18, 2019
Over 90 percent of McDonald’s restaurants in the United States are franchises. Franchising has many benefits for both the franchisor (who saves substantial operating expenses) and the franchisee (who can leverage the franchisor’s brand name and startup resources). But there are serious drawbacks to the franchise model for employees, whose legal recourse against a franchisor…
August 7, 2019
Congress framed the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, during a period of confidence in the administrative state, using broad language and excluding a private right of action. The Labor Act thereby delegated significant authority to the National Labor Relations Board to formulate doctrine that would encourage “the practice and procedure” of effective and peaceful…
May 6, 2019
Elections, especially Presidential elections, have consequences. Few need reminding of this truism after 2016. But the distributional consequences of American Presidential elections have long antedated the emergence of Trumpism in the Republican Party. On no issue is this clearer than those involving the regulation and protection of benefits for American employees. This is illustrated by…
September 17, 2018
In last Term’s Janus v. AFSCME, the Supreme Court ruled that union agency fees—payments that all public employees were required to make to labor unions—violated the employees’ First Amendment rights. Since Janus, several commentators have pointed out that agency fees are not the only mandatory payments deducted from public employees’ paychecks. In most states, public…
July 2, 2018
A great deal of time will be spent scrutinizing the core holding in Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31, that the First Amendment forbids public employers to require workers to financially support a union’s costs of collective bargaining. Still more time will be spent debating state legislative approaches to soften Janus’s blow or neutralize it altogether….
