The Supreme Court On Unions

Labor unions and courts have rarely been allies. From their earliest efforts to organize, unions have been confronted with hostile judges and antiunion doctrines. In this book, Julius G. Getman argues that while the role of the Supreme Court has become more central in shaping labor law, its opinions betray a profound ignorance of labor relations along with a persisting bias against unions. In The Supreme Court on Unions, Getman critically examines the decisions of the nation’s highest court in those areas that are crucial to unions and the workers they represent: organizing, bargaining, strikes, and dispute resolution. As he discusses Supreme Court decisions dealing with unions and labor in a variety of different areas, Getman offers an interesting historical perspective to illuminate the ways in which the Court has been an influence in the failures of the labor movement. During more than sixty years that have seen the Supreme Court take a dominant role, both unions and the institution of collective bargaining have been substantially weakened. While it is difficult to measure the extent of the Court’s responsibility for the current weak state of organized labor and many other factors have, of course, contributed, it seems clear to Getman that the Supreme Court has played an important role in transforming the law and defeating policies that support the labor movement.

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, Canadian unions have scored a number of important Supreme Court victories, securing constitutional rights to picket, bargain collectively, and strike. Unions in Court documents the evolution of the Canadian labour movement’s engagement with the Charter, demonstrating how and why labour’s long-standing distrust of the legal system has given way to a controversial, Charter-based legal strategy. This book’s in-depth examination of constitutional labour rights will have critical implications for labour movements as well as activists in other fields.

New edition of the 1993 book that detailed the horrendous tactics employers and union busters will use to stop workers from forming unions. Paperback version.

"For employees, collective protection has never been more urgent. Everywhere, pressures resulting from worldwide competition and technical innovation are downgrading and relocating jobs, closing companies, and fuelling workers' fears of less-than-secure working conditions, de-qualification, and job loss. More and more, trade unions confront the challenge of asserting their rights across borders. However, in order to establish the necessary preconditions for any transnational solidarity, it is necessary to define and clarify both what is distinctive and what is fundamental in the different legal frameworks affecting trade union activity. That is what this book sets out to do. The essays presented here are an outcome of an international and comparative conference, organised and sponsored by the newly established Hugo Sinzheimer Institute of Labour Law (HSI), Frankfurt am Main, which took place in Frankfurt in January 2011 at the premises of IG Metall, the world's largest trade union. The book offers an overview of trade union rights in each of seven industrial countries: Belgium, Hungary, England, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the United States. A concluding chapter by Manfred Weiss notes the futility of a 'harmonization' approach, stressing rather a strategy of accepting variety which nevertheless embraces close cooperation. Issues covered include the following: direct and indirect recognition of the rights of the unions at the workplace; the right of access of trade union representatives not employed in the establishment; competition from non-unionized firms and low labour cost operations; new styles of management hostile to trade unions; employers' use of the courts to prevent industrial action illegalized by new legislation; relations among trade unions, works councils, workers' representatives, and employers' organizations; the role of the union at a time of change of company ownership; and effects of public resistance to cuts in public services and to job losses. At a time when the protection of the global 'voice' of workers is of the utmost importance, sensitivity to existing cultural differences is crucial to effective international engagement and cooperation among trade unions. As an important contribution in this respect, this book will be of great value to labour and employment lawyers and other professionals involved in law and policy affecting labour and industrial relations."--Publisher's website.

Starting in the early 1900s, many thousands of native Filipinos were conscripted as laborers in American West Coast agricultural fields and Alaska salmon canneries. There, they found themselves confined to exploitative low-wage jobs in racially segregated workplaces as well as subjected to vigilante violence and other forms of ethnic persecution. In time, though, Filipino workers formed political organizations and affiliated with labor unions to represent their interests and to advance their struggles for class, race, and gender-based social justice. Union by Law analyzes the broader social and legal history of Filipino American workers’ rights-based struggles, culminating in the devastating landmark Supreme Court ruling, Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio (1989). Organized chronologically, the book begins with the US invasion of the Philippines and the imposition of colonial rule at the dawn of the twentieth century. The narrative then follows the migration of Filipino workers to the United States, where they mobilized for many decades within and against the injustices of American racial capitalist empire that the Wards Cove majority willfully ignored in rejecting their longstanding claims. This racial innocence in turn rationalized judicial reconstruction of official civil rights law in ways that significantly increased the obstacles for all workers seeking remedies for institutionalized racism and sexism. A reclamation of a long legacy of racial capitalist domination over Filipinos and other low-wage or unpaid migrant workers, Union by Law also tells a story of noble aspirational struggles for human rights over several generations and of the many ways that law was mobilized both to enforce and to challenge race, class, and gender hierarchy at work.