The School of Labor and Employment Relations is honored to welcome Ellen Dannin as our featured speaker for the 2016 Milton Derber Lecture.
Dannin is the author of Working Free - The Origins and Impact of New Zealand's Employment Contracts Act (Auckland University Press) and Taking Back the Workers' Law - How to Fight the Assault on Labor Rights (Cornell University Press). In addition to writing on workplace issues, she writes on infrastructure privatization issues, such as the privatization of highways. A forthcoming chapter -- "Water – It’s What’s New in Privatization" will be part of an edited volume on the new politics of urban infrastructure.
Dannin's talk, "Alito-ism and Judicial Amendments," will address the two-track process for private sector labor rights and procedure and for public sector labor rights and procedure in the US. Put another way, these two systems – public and private – can be seen as part of a greater whole. In fact, those legal regimes have changed over time. For example, their evolution has included having no formal labor regimes beyond the common law – which classified unions as a criminal conspiracies, regimes that created public sector labor law “lite” , and now, in the Friedrichs case actually promotes undermining statutory and procedural rights that have long been established. In fact, none of these changes should be surprising. Even long before the enactment of the NLRA, Alito-ism was commonly practiced by ultra-conservative judges and justices who “judicially amended” labor law. As a result, it seems that it is now legally and practically appropriate to “ad hoc” Supreme Court procedure and law in order to undermine labor rights.
The Annual Milton Derber Lecture was instituted in 1990 to honor Professor Emeritus Milton Derber and serve as a focal point for the intellectual enrichment for the school, its faculty and its students, as well as for the university community. Nationally known experts in a variety of employment relations subject areas are featured in this event, which is open to the public.
The 2016 Derber Lecture will be held on Tuesday, April 5, 2016, at 7 pm in the Wagner Education Center at LER, 504 East Armory Avenue, Champaign.