Putting Law to Work: The Resurrection of Workplace Self-Governance?

February 28, 2007
Speaker: Cynthia A. Estlund, Catherine A. Rein Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
Presented by: CISCDR (Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Conflict and Dispute Resolution)

Summary: The Rush McKnight Labor Law Lecture
Is workplace self-governance a New Deal idea whose time has passed? Or is it a solution to pressing contemporary problems?

As union representation and collective bargaining have declined, employment regulations, rights, and litigation have proliferated. In response, firms have put in place internal compliance and dispute resolution systems that aim to, and sometimes do, deflect regulation and litigation. If employees continue to be shut out of these self-regulatory systems, the result may be a disguised form of deregulation. But if employees can gain an effective voice in these systems, the result could be improved regulation and a revival of workplace self-governance.

Professor Estlund is a leading scholar of labor and employment law, and has written extensively on the relationship between the workplace and democracy. In much of her recent work ("The Ossification of American Labor Law," Columbia Law Review 2002; "Rebuilding the Law of the Workplace in an Era of Self-Regulation," Columbia Law Review 2005, and a current book project), she chronicles the current crisis of workplace governance brought about by the decline of collective bargaining and the shortcomings of both regulation and litigation, and charts a potential path out of that crisis. In her book Working Together: How Workplace Bonds Strengthen a Diverse Democracy (Oxford University Press 2003), she argued that the workplace is a site of both comparatively successful integration and intense cooperation and sociability, and explored the implications for democratic theory and for labor and employment law. Other writings focus on freedom of speech and procedural fairness at work; diversity, integration, and affirmative action; the significance of property rights in labor law. In addition to courses in labor and employment law, Estlund teaches the basic property course.

Category:

Education

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