HISTORY OF AMERICAN LABOR LAW



HISTORY OF AMERICAN LABOR LAW



Abstract

Labor law focuses on regulating the employeremployee relationship at the workplace. The core American law school courses on labor law cover rules of organization and collective bargaining between associations of workers, or unions, and employers, including employers' associations. Regulation of wages, hours, and work standards is part of labor law, and so are nontraditional work arrangements such as contingent employment and telecommuting and diverse decentralized work arrangements facilitated by the rise of the Internet. Laws prohibiting employment discrimination based on race, sex, religion, ethnicity, or other characteristics—ordinarily treated as a separate legal subject—have received more sociological attention than has labor law.

Introduction

An important precursor to the modern law of employment contracts was the master-servant law of mid-Victorian England. By focusing on the rise of individual freedom and liberal political institutions, Forbath analyzed U.S. case law and found that “the law of master and servant was at the foundation of capitalist development and industrialism” (Forbath, 1991,33). Similarly, Marc Steinberg's careful empirical studies showed that employer-mobilized, local court interpretations of master-servant law were a form of labor relations in eighteenthand early nineteenthcentury England. These interpretations were not derivative of control relations pre-established in the economy.(Hattam, 1993) Rather, master-servant law and associated workplace cognitive models and behavioral repertoires formed a wide sphere of legal norms that helped to constitute and legitimate the evolving workplace relations of industrial capitalism. Labor control problems lacking solutions were especially conducive to the “embedding” of labor control in law. (McCammon,1990)

American Labor's Second Century

In this past century, American labor has played a central role in the elevation of the American standard of living. The benefits which unions have negotiated for their members are, in most cases, widespread in the economy and enjoyed by millions of our fellow citizens outside the labor movement. It is often hard to remember that what we take for granted-vacations with pay, pensions, health and welfare protection, grievance and arbitration procedures, holidays never existed on any meaningful scale until unions fought and won them for working people.(Traxler,2001)

The labor movement has seen old industries die (horse-shoeing was once a major occupation) and new industries mature. The American workforce, once predominantly "blue collar," now Jinds "white collar" employees and the "grey collar" people of the service industries in a substantial majority. The workforce in big mass production industries has contracted, and the new industries have required employees with different skills in different locations. Work once performed in the United States has been moved to other countries, often at wage levels far below the American standards. Multinational, conglomerate corporations have moved operations around the globe as if it were a mammoth chessboard. The once thriving U.S. merchant marine has shriveled.(Griffin,1986)

United States Exceptionalism

In the United States, much sociology of labor law is organized around the exceptionalism of the U.S. labor movement. In contrast, the sociology of antidiscrimination law has emphasized a theme surprisingly underresearched with respect to the role of labor law—that of legalizing the ...