Social Thought & Polic. Econ 492H - STPEC Focus Seminar II
Spring
2018
01
4.00
Harris Freeman
TU 4:00PM 6:30PM
UMass Amherst
51379
A four credit honors seminar for junior and senior STPEC students who have completed STPEC 391H. Focus seminar topic changes each semester. Fulfills the STPEC Focus Seminar requirement for STPEC students.
Open to Senior and Junior STPEC majors only. STPEC 391H Topic Title: Workplace Law in Capitalist America
The seminar examines how economic crises, political upheavals and social movements have influenced the development of workplace rights, and explores how the law has impacted the trajectory of the labor movement over the course of the development of American capitalism. The seminar opens with the historical and socio-political context in which workplace rights developed during the rise of industrial capitalism. Next, we explore how modern workplace law arose through the rise of industrial unionism in the New Deal era and during the decades following World War II. Topics to be studied include laws governing union organizing, workers' control, collective bargaining, as well as the laws governing struggles to overcome workplace race and sex discrimination. We conclude with legal challenges faced by marginalized and disempowered workers in the 21st century: immigrant workers' rights; efforts to stop factory closings and job loss; free speech rights in the workplace; discrimination against LGBT workers; and the failure of workplace law to keep pace with major shifts that have restructured work and labor markets over the course of the last twenty-five years.
The seminar examines how economic crises, political upheavals and social movements have influenced the development of workplace rights, and explores how the law has impacted the trajectory of the labor movement over the course of the development of American capitalism. The seminar opens with the historical and socio-political context in which workplace rights developed during the rise of industrial capitalism. Next, we explore how modern workplace law arose through the rise of industrial unionism in the New Deal era and during the decades following World War II. Topics to be studied include laws governing union organizing, workers' control, collective bargaining, as well as the laws governing struggles to overcome workplace race and sex discrimination. We conclude with legal challenges faced by marginalized and disempowered workers in the 21st century: immigrant workers' rights; efforts to stop factory closings and job loss; free speech rights in the workplace; discrimination against LGBT workers; and the failure of workplace law to keep pace with major shifts that have restructured work and labor markets over the course of the last twenty-five years.