Law, Economics and Accommodations in the Internal Labor Market

Law, Economics and Accommodations in the Internal Labor Market
Author: Seth D. Harris
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2007
Genre:
ISBN:

This article joins the debate over whether the Americans with Disabilities Act's (ADA) accommodation mandate contributes to the decline in the employment rate among working-age people with disabilities. This debate pits a rational choice view of employers and accommodations against a discriminatory choice view. Rational choice scholars suggest that the ADA's mandate that employers provide reasonable accommodations to workers with disabilities makes these workers more expensive than workers without disabilities. Given the choice between equally productive workers, these scholars expect rational employers to hire the less costly worker -- that is, the worker without a disability. In sum, the ADA's accommodation mandate makes each unit of labor supplied by workers with disabilities more costly and, therefore, employers demand less of it. This article does not critique the rational choice position. Rather, it joins the debate in support of the discriminatory choice view of the relationship between accommodations costs and the employment rate of working-age people with disabilities. Several empirical studies have found that accommodations frequently impose no added cost and, when they have a cost, are inexpensive. Most important, they found that the benefits employers derive from accommodations frequently outweigh their costs - that is, accommodations benefit employers as well as their employees with disabilities. These studies' implicit message is that the low and declining employment rate among working-age people with disabilities cannot be blamed on the ADA's accommodation mandate or, more precisely, the costs of the accommodations it requires. The cause must lie elsewhere, perhaps with irrational, discriminatory choices made by employers who refuse to hire workers with disabilities. This article provides the theory and analysis which explain the results of these empirical studies. It discusses why accommodating employees with disabilities often imposes no costs on the employers providing accommodations and why accommodations may, in appropriate circumstances, yield net benefits for those employers. The analysis relies on internal labor market theory which is a labor economics theory premised on the understanding that barriers to competition can increase the efficiency of the relationships between employers and employees. This article argues that employers' accommodations and employees' impairments add competitive barriers which increase the efficiency of relationships between employers and their employees with disabilities. Accommodations and workers' impairments tighten the bonds between the employer and the employee and thereby make possible a range of cost cutting and productivity-enhancing behaviors that yield larger dividends for the employer. Thus, the cost of an accommodation is not the only factor that is relevant to determining whether an employer will benefit from providing an accommodation to an incumbent employee with an impairment. The willingness of the parties to seize the opportunity to make their relationship more productive and cost efficient - an opportunity created by the accommodation and impairment - is a critical factor in determining whether an employer benefits from accommodating an employee with an impairment.

Re-Thinking the Economics of Discrimination

Re-Thinking the Economics of Discrimination
Author: Seth D. Harris
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2004
Genre:
ISBN:

This article contributes to the current debate over the economic implications of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It argues that Justice Breyer's plurality opinion in US Airways v. Barnett interpreted the ADA using an economic theory of worker-management relations known as "internal labor market theory" and thereby invited a worthwhile break with a central orthodoxy in the debate over the economics of employment discrimination. The predominant view among law and economics scholars has been that mandates in discrimination laws requiring employers to alter their conduct are, at best, unnecessary to the efficient operation of labor markets or, at worst, inefficient government interventions that roil otherwise efficient markets. Rather than merely attacking this conclusion, Justice Breyer's Barnett opinion seems to reject the central economic assumption used to reach it. Law and economics analyses criticizing discrimination laws have typically assumed perfectly competitive labor markets. Internal labor market theory posits that some labor markets are competitive, but others are not. Specifically, internal labor markets create substantial barriers to competition. Thus, analyses of employment discrimination laws premised on the existence of perfectly competitive labor markets offer little insight into the effects of these laws in the internal labor market. Barnett held that a proposed accommodation of an employee with a disability would be "ordinarily" unreasonable and, therefore, not required by the ADA, if it violated the employer's seniority system. Although he did not expressly rely upon internal labor market theory, the article argues that the best explanation for Justice Breyer's Barnett opinion is that an employer's seniority system can play an important role in shaping and protecting an employer's efficient long-term relationships with its employees. As a result, an accommodation proposed by an employee with a disability that would violate the seniority system may threaten the efficiencies made possible by the internal labor market and, therefore, not be a "reasonable" accommodation. This article elaborates on Justice Breyer's opinion and its application of internal labor market theory. It concludes that internal labor market theory does not permit establishing a presumption, whether rebuttable or not, that accommodations which violate seniority systems necessarily result in losses to the disabled employee's co-workers. Using several leading theories of the internal labor market, this article shows that losses are not inevitable for the co-workers or the employer of an employee with a disability when an accommodation violates a seniority system. In addition, this article argues that, while seniority systems can promote and protect the efficiencies of the internal labor market, accommodations of employees with disabilities can also promote efficiency in the internal labor market. Thus, the balance between two important efficiency-enhancing tools - seniority systems and accommodations of employees with disabilities - must be struck carefully based on evidence rather than presumption. The article concludes that the employer/defendant and the employee/plaintiff with a disability should share a responsibility to offer the best available economic analysis of the employer's seniority system so that the reviewing court may assess the consequences of a proposed accommodation that might violate it.

Research Handbook on the Economics of Labor and Employment Law

Research Handbook on the Economics of Labor and Employment Law
Author: Michael L. Wachter
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 521
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1781006113

ÔWachter and Estlund have assembled a feast on the economic analysis of issues in labor and employment law for scholars and policy-makers. The volume begins with foundational discussions of the economic analysis of the individual employment relationship and collective bargaining. It then progresses to discussions of the theoretical and empirical work on a wide range of important labor and employment law topics including: union organizing and employee choice, the impact of unions on firm and economic performance, the impact of unions on the enforcement of legal rights, just cause for dismissal, covenants not to compete and employment discrimination. Anyone who wants to study what economists have to say on these topics would do well to begin with this collection.Õ Ð Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt, Indiana University Bloomington School of Law, US This Research Handbook assembles the original work of leading legal and economic scholars, working in a variety of traditions and methodologies, on the economic analysis of labor and employment law. In addition to surveying the current state of the art on the economics of labor markets and employment relations, the volumeÕs 16 chapters assess aspects of traditional labor law and union organizing, the law governing the employment contract and termination of employment, employment discrimination and other employer mandates, restrictions on employee mobility, and the forum and remedies for labor and employment claims. Comprising a variety of approaches, the Research Handbook on the Economics of Labor and Employment Law will appeal to legal scholars in labor and employment law, industrial relations scholars and labor economists.

Human Resource Economics and Public Policy

Human Resource Economics and Public Policy
Author: Charles J. Whalen
Publisher: W.E. Upjohn Institute
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2010
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

This book honors Vernon Briggs's professional contributions. This book contains important discussions on issues of human resource economics, which is now often described as workforce development. This book offers much research information and policy analysis that can be used to develop what is needed for an active set of national human resource policies.

The Workplace Reimagined

The Workplace Reimagined
Author: Nicole Buonocore Porter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2023-05-25
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1009347411

In the wake of the pandemic, many employers continue to allow their employees to work from home, but much of the workplace remains governed by strict structural norms such as shifts, schedules, attendance, and leave-of-absence policies that determine when and where work is performed. In The Workplace Reimagined, Nicole Buonocore Porter explores how these workplace norms marginalize people with disabilities and workers with caregiving responsibilities. Using COVID-19 as a lens to illustrate how entrenched workplace norms are often not inevitable or necessary, Porter theoretically and practically reconceptualizes the workplace to end the stigmatization of these employees and helps readers understand the value of accommodating all workers. The Workplace Reimagined is timely, eye-opening, and will help us realize a workplace in which we account for the reality, the precarity, and the diversity of all our lives and bodies.

Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis

Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis
Author: Peter B. Doeringer
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
Total Pages: 258
Release: 1985-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780765632128

This book discusses the institutional aspects of the American labor market. The introduction assesses the major changes since 1971.

Employment Security and Labor Market Flexibility

Employment Security and Labor Market Flexibility
Author: Kazuyoshi Kōshiro
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 180
Release: 1992
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780814320792

Since the oil crisis of the 1970s, increased labor market flexibility seems to have become an indispensable ingredient of economic success. This book examines the critical issues that affect labor market flexibility and job security in the main industrialized economies of the United States, Japan, West Germany, the United Kingdom, and Europe, in an attempt to more fully understand the complex forces at work within such labor markets. Employment Security and Labor Market Flexibility originated from The International Symposium on Labor Market Flexibility in Yokohama, Japan, in 1986, in which scholars in economics, industrial relations, and labor law scholars scrutinized the similarities and differences of the labor markets in these countries. They focused on three main topics: wage flexibility in response to changing economic conditions, the legal and institutional framework for employment security, and international comparison of employment adjustment. Comparison of wage flexibility as well as numerical and functional flexibility among these countries were examined by both qualitative and quantitative analyses. The labor market cannot be treated in the same way as other markets because it deals directly with human beings who are less likely to obey the immutable laws of the market mechanism. Nevertheless, Kazutoshi Koshiro asserts that it is still important to build a framework on which to understand and assess the role of labor flexibility in the competitive process, and it is with this framework in mind that these chapters have been assembled into one volume. Individual chapters compare the relative flexibility of compensation and employment over the business cycle in the United States with that of Japan; analyze the relative flexibility of Japanese wages; unravel some of the underlying forces that comprise the employment security situation in the United States; study the important relationship between economic conditions and the labor market and explain the difference between the employment protection legislation of the United States on the one hand, and Europe and Japan, on the other; and compare the nature of labor markets and employment adjustment techniques of the United States, Europe, and Japan.

Cases and Materials on Employment Discrimination

Cases and Materials on Employment Discrimination
Author: Charles A. Sullivan
Publisher: Aspen Publishing
Total Pages: 1116
Release: 2021-09-14
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1543826229

The purchase of this ebook edition does not entitle you to receive access to the Connected eBook on CasebookConnect. You will need to purchase a new print book to get access to the full experience including: lifetime access to the online ebook with highlight, annotation, and search capabilities, plus an outline tool and other helpful resources. The Tenth Edition of the best-selling Cases and Materials on Employment Discrimination welcomes a new co-author, Stephanie Bornstein, whose contributions are reflected throughout. Like earlier editions, the tenth edition blends cases, notes, and problems into an integrated pedagogy that balances scholarly and practice perspectives. The authors build a conceptual framework for understanding how discrimination is defined in theory and proven in litigation. The text allows professors to explore particular interests more deeply and permits them to contrast a litigation approach with compliance, investigation, and counseling perspectives characteristic of modern employment law practice. The broad coverage integrates scholarship with legal doctrine. The useful Statutory Supplement is available for separate purchase. New to the Tenth Edition: Bostock v. Clayton County (prohibiting sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination as discrimination “because of sex”) Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrisey-Berru (expanding Title VII’s “ministerial exception”) Comcast Corp. v. Nat’l Ass’n of African American Owned Media (holding no mixed motive proof allowed under Section 1981) Expanded discussion of causation in the wake of Bostock, including Comcast and Babb v. Wilkie (on federal sector ADEA claims) Expanded and updated materials on Critical Race Theory Expanded and updated materials on gender discrimination and sex stereotyping, including sexual orientation, gender identity, and caregiver discrimination Expanded coverage of pay discrimination and the Equal Pay Act Professors and student will benefit from: An integrated pedagogy that balances scholarly and practice perspectives A conceptual framework that shows how discrimination is defined and proven in litigation A design that allows teachers to shift between litigation approaches and compliance, investigation, and counseling perspectives Integration of scholarship with legal doctrine

Comparative Labor Law

Comparative Labor Law
Author: Matthew W. Finkin
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2015-07-31
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1781000131

Economic pressure, as well as transnational and domestic corporate policies, has placed labor law under severe stress. National responses are so deeply embedded in institutions reflecting local traditions that meaningful comparison is daunting. This bo