The Future of American Labor and Employment Law: Hopes, Dreams, and Realities

摘要

In many respects the US is a deeply conservative country. Unique among the majorindustrial democracies of the world, it imposes the death penalty, provides no nationalhealth insurance, fixes a high legal drinking age, and subscribes to the doctrine ofemployment at will. Perhaps not surprisingly, its labor movement is also one of the mostconservative on earth, eschewing class warfare and aiming largely at the bread-and-buttergoal of improved wages, benefits, and working conditions. Yet American employers havegenerally never been as accepting of unionization as their counterparts in other countries(Bok 1971; Freeman and Medoff 1984). Over the last half century the density of unions inthe private sector has fallen from about 35% to 7.5% (Bureau of Labor Statistics 1980,2008). Employee apathy, vigorous employer opposition, and changing patterns of workhave all played a part in that decline but this paper will focus on the role of law.