Six Reactions to Viking River v. Moriana
Six friends of the blog offer their initial impressions of the Supreme Court’s recent decision about California’s Private Attorney General Act (PAGA)
Law and Countervailing Tenant Power in the Real Estate State
In the housing context, a law to facilitate countervailing power must be geared toward encouraging tenant participation at the grassroots, building-by-building level, and it must be sufficiently robust so as to check the enormous power of corporate, financialized real estate.
Full Employment without Inflation: Lessons from the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942
Between 1942 and January 1946, national output more than doubled, unemployment dipped below 2 percent, and real civilian consumption increased by 50 percent. Yet thanks to an across-the-board price freeze, prices rose merely 3.3 percent per year. What lessons can we draw from the initial failures and ultimate success of this stabilization program?
Fight Like Hell: An Interview with Kim Kelly
The LPE Blog chats with labor journalist Kim Kelly about her recently published book, Fight Like Hell.
The Public Benefit of Liberalizing Coordination between Small Economic Players: The Australian Experience
To conclude our symposium on Root & Branch Reconstruction in Antitrust, this post offers a glimpse into an alternative universe where horizontal coordination among small players is embraced as a social good.
Can Contract Workers Organize as Joint Venture Associations?
While a properly designed association of contract workers could pass muster under current Sherman Act antitrust jurisprudence, any such association will face serious practical impediments.
The Antitrust Case Against Gig Economy Labor Platforms
In the fight to regulate the gig economy, unions, workers, and their allies have only fought half the battle: they have tried to defend the definition of employment against technology-enabled erosion. Antitrust prohibitions against vertical restraints, which prevent firms from exercising control in the absence of an employment relationship, offer a complementary strategy to address the threat posed to workers by the gig economy.
Root and Branch Reconstruction in Antitrust: A Symposium
Given the shortcomings of the prevailing antitrust framework, a growing chorus of voices is calling for a ground-up reconstruction of competition law and policy. But what would that look like? This symposium offers an affirmative vision of the new antitrust.
From Steel to Health Care to Broke
In Braddock, Pennsylvania – home to America’s first mill for the mass production of steel – more than a third of residents now live beneath the poverty line. How did Braddock go from a steel town to a hospital town to broke?
The Making of a Caregiving Crisis
A system of employer-based health benefits created not only a fragmented health care financing structure but also an extremely powerful and consolidated industry that now resists changes to that structure.
Labor Law and Employer Domination: From Steel to Care
Postwar steelworkers and contemporary healthcare workers inhabited strikingly different economic circumstances. Yet in both eras, courts allocated to companies various powers they could use to impose market discipline on workers, thereby facilitating the degradation of work.
The Making of a New Working Class
What happens when the factory is gone and the working class has been rendered dispersed and invisible? In this post, Gabriel Winant kicks off a symposium on his recent book, The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America.
Seven Reactions to NFIB v. Department of Labor
Luke Herrine, Noah Zatz, Veena Dubal, Blake Emerson, Diana Reddy, Nate Holdren, and Caroline Grueskin offer their initial reactions to the Court’s decision blocking OSHA’s vaccine-or-test mandate.
Lessons for Legal Mobilization
What role do lawyers play in advancing progressive social change? Examining the recent history of labor activism in Los Angeles, Scott Cummings distills some lessons for legal mobilization in contemporary social movements.
Codetermination: The Missing Alternative in Corporate Governance
If we are to correct the deep-rooted power imbalances within our economic institutions, we need to go to the source — the governance of corporations — and adopt more equitable arrangements. Luckily, there is a solution hiding in plain sight.