A Labor Law for the Digital Era

Abstract

There is a serious problem with the labor and employment law system in the United States today.Unions have declined to the point where they represent less than 8% of the private sector workforce, employee wages have stagnated for more than three decades, employers are cutting back on workers' health insurance and pensions, and there is a dramatic growth in the numbers of the working poor.At the same time, there has been a rising chorus of complaints from labor scholars that the labor law has become "ossified" (Estlund 2002), that the law is failing to offer meaningful worker protection (Summers 1988; Gottesman 1993), that the courts and Labor Board have abandoned the "core values of labor law" (Dannin and Bonior 2006), and that Congress has defunded the labor protective agencies such as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Hour and Wage Division that administers the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) (Dannin 2004; Brudney et al. 1999; McGarity and Shapiro 1996).Indeed, some have contended that during the past two decades, there has been a passive repeal of the employment statutes (Hiatt and Becker 2005; Brudney 1996; Dannin and Bonior 2006; Stone 1992).There is a reason that the field of labor and employment law has declined.Work itself has not declined in importance-it remains a central part of individual identity and a prominent aspect of social life, but the labor and employment laws do not address the concerns or vulnerabilities of the majority of the workforce today.Instead, the regulatory framework governing the workplace is becoming irrelevant.

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