MEMBER ONLY COLLECTIVE AGREEMENTS: WHY NOT?

For those active in industrial relations there is quite a well-known book titled From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend: A Short, Illustrated History of Labor in the United States. The books' thesis or focus was firstly to remind readers of the many struggles in the USA by trade unions to obtain and protect basic working conditions American workers, now take for granted, and secondly to reinforce the important and enduring relationship between unions and their members.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Worker Representation and Health and Safety in the United Kingdom

There is now quite strong evidence for a set of preconditions that help determine the effectiveness of worker representation and consultation in improving health and safety outcomes. One of these preconditions is a regulatory framework that defines workers' rights to representation and employers' obligations to respond. Using the United Kingdom as its focus, this article explores developments at the national policy level. It shows how long-awaited legislative reforms to improve provisions for worker representation in health and safety have so far failed to materialize and, instead, government strategy has concentrated on promoting voluntary approaches. The author reviews the evidence of what makes worker representation in health and safety effective and suggests that, far from abandoning approaches to legislative reform, the U.K. agencies should be seeking to make improvements to the British provisions if they are to provide the necessary stimulus and support for worker representation in health and safety at work. Such improvements need to address long-standing weaknesses in existing provisions and their relevance to the changing world of work. The arguments presented here apply to the essential role of regulatory support for worker participation in all advanced market economies if it is to improve health and safety outcomes.

The Role of Labor Unions in Creating Working Conditions That Promote Public Health

We sought to portray how collective bargaining contracts promote public health, beyond their known effect on individual, family, and community well-being. In November 2014, we created an abstraction tool to identify health-related elements in 16 union contracts from industries in the Pacific Northwest. After enumerating the contract-protected benefits and working conditions, we interviewed union organizers and members to learn how these promoted health. Labor union contracts create higher wage and benefit standards, working hours limits, workplace hazards protections, and other factors. Unions also promote well-being by encouraging democratic participation and a sense of community among workers. Labor union contracts are largely underutilized, but a potentially fertile ground for public health innovation. Public health practitioners and labor unions would benefit by partnering to create sophisticated contracts to address social determinants of health.

"Educate the Individual... to a Sane Appreciation of the Risk" A History of Industry's Responsibility to Warn of Job Dangers Before the Occupational Safety and Health Administration

The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 and the Workers Right to Know laws later in that decade were signature moments in the history of occupational safety and health. We have examined how and why industry leaders came to accept that it was the obligation of business to provide information about the dangers to health of the materials that workers encountered. Informing workers about the hazards of the job had plagued labor-management relations and fed labor disputes, strikes, and even pitched battles during the turn of the century decades. Industry's rhetorical embrace of the responsibility to inform was part of its argument that government regulation of the workplace was not necessary because private corporations were doing it.

Human research subjects as human research workers

Biomedical research involving human subjects has traditionally been treated as a unique endeavor, presenting special risks and demanding special protections. But in several ways, the regulatory scheme governing human subjects research is counter-intuitively less protective than the labor and employment laws applicable to many workers. This Article relies on analogical and legal reasoning to demonstrate that this should not be the case; in a number of ways, human research subjects ought to be fundamentally recast as human research workers. Like other workers protected under worklaw, biomedical research subjects often have interests that diverge from those in positions of control but little bargaining power for change. Bearing these important similarities in mind, the question becomes whether there is any good reason to treat subjects and protected workers differently as a matter of law. With regard to unrestricted payment, eligibility for a minimum wage, compensation for injury, and rights to engage in concerted activity, the answer is no and human subjects regulations ought to be revised accordingly.

ERISA failures and the erosion of workers' rights: the urgent need to protect private & public workers' pension and benefits

On March 11, 2011, Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin signed into law a bill that eliminated most collective bargaining rights for the state's public-sector workers. Many other cash-strapped states followed Wisconsin's lead and introduced or enacted similar restraints on the rights of their workers. Thousands of public workers, whose only means of protecting their rights rested in their ability to collectively bargain, suddenly found their retirement benefits in jeopardy. This truth highlighted the lack of protections for public worker benefits similar to those of the private sector. However, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, enacted for that purpose, has failed to secure these benefits. This article seeks to provide a broad overview of the crisis facing the pension and benefits system in the United States and offers some possible solutions. More importantly, the goal is to spur discourse on the urgent need to protect the benefits of all workers, public and private.

Retiree health benefits--no emotional distress damages. Yolton v. El Paso Tennessee Pipeline Co., 2008 WL 275685 (E.D.Mich. 1/31/08)

Plaintiffs are not entitled to emotional distress damages under the Labor-Management Relations Act (LMRA) when an employer breaches a collective bargaining agreement by failing to provide retiree health benefits. Plaintiffs may recover damages for the cost of replacement insurance incurred as a result of such a breach.

Medical practitioners and competition law in Australia and New Zealand

There is a lack of awareness among Australian and New Zealand medical practitioners about how competition law applies to them. In this article, basic legal issues relating to interaction between medical practitioners (which all medical practitioners should be aware of) are discussed. The New Zealand Ophthalmologists Case and some relevant Australian and United States cases are analysed. Three key areas of competition law (of relevance to medical practitioners) are identified as being important and relevant. In conclusion, medical practitioners must be able to distinguish between legal and illegal activities; and guidelines outlined in this paper provide some clarification.

And it all came tumbling down...new industrial relations legislation to hurt nurses

When the Howard Government gains total control of Parliament in July this year, it has announced it will introduce legislation which will dismantle Australia's industrial relations system. The Australian Nursing Federation (ANF) and the Queensland Nurses' Union (QNU) expect the new legislation will reduce the role of unions, put downward pressure on wages and conditions and dilute the power of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) to hear and resolve disputes. The changes will not only affect nurses' wages and conditions, but threaten to undermine the profession itself.