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Instruction Mode: Hybrid - Online & In Person

This course examines the experiences of workers attempting to navigate the labor standards enforcement bureaucracy. We begin by reviewing the conditions of post-industrial labor in an era of declining unionization and weak federal and state protections. Next we review theories of legal consciousness and legal mobilization, which help explain the conditions under which low-wage workers learn about their rights and come forward to demand justice. We walk through claimsmaking in an array of federal and state administrative bureaucracies, including wage and hour, health and safety, and discrimination. We also look at how the immigration enforcement regime intersects with the tenets of at-will employment to grant employers wide latitude in retaliating against undocumented workers and stifling attempts at legal mobilization. We next assess how these formal protections are filtered through various institutional gatekeepers (including legal advocates and medical experts) and how organizational compliance structures (such as human resources and mediation programs) have limited workers’ ability to make claims on their rights. We consider how intersecting bases of inequality (such as gender, race, and national origin) are processed by administrative bureaucracies, and how lay versus legal conceptions of workplace justice often diverge. We end by considering the fallout of workplace abuse on individuals and their families.Fulfills the ILR Advanced Writing Requirement. Enrollment is restricted to sophomores or others with permission who have not satisfied their ILR Advanced Writing Requirement.

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Instruction Mode: Hybrid - Online & In Person

This sophomore writing seminar considers questions of ethics and justice in thinking through contemporary issues in law and everyday practice concerning people with disabilities and the disability experience, including discrimination in the workplace, education, and public sphere. Beginning with an interrogation of the relationship between the law and ethics, we will then explore the history of disability policy and law, and in doing so, closely examine the implications of a number of Supreme Court decisions. We will conclude by evaluating global perspectives on the contemporary state as well as future of disability rights, particularly as they intersect with bioethical debates. As a writing-intensive seminar, this course will allow for the development of critical thought and reasoning in both oral and written communication. Fulfills the ILR Advanced Writing Requirement. Enrollment is restricted to sophomores or others with permission who have not satisfied their ILR Advanced Writing Requirement.

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Instruction Mode: Hybrid - Online & In Person

Recent technological advancements have ushered in new technological tools for business and the workplace. As there are unintended consequences of the use of new technologies, the adoption of new technology in the workplace can carry both risk and reward. This course delves into the responsibilities of business leaders and managers in regards to the use of technology. The focus is on issues of privacy, discrimination, and inequality, as well as, how data in a business setting might be used towards the social good. This course introduces students to ethical, legal, and policy issues associated with big data, machine learning algorithms, predictive business analytics, and other new technologies. The course will revolve around real-life business cases that the students will be called upon to tackle using ethical and legal frameworks. Fulfills the ILR Advanced Writing Requirement. Enrollment is restricted to sophomores or others with permission who have not satisfied their ILR Advanced Writing Requirement.

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Instruction Mode: Hybrid - Online & In Person

This course explores the varied experiences of ethnic Mexican workers in the United States from the early Industrial Period to contemporary debates concerning the transnational effects of migrant labor. We will examine both the formal and informal ways ethnic Mexican men and women have organized at a regional, national, and international level, and in both rural and urban settings, for fair employment and civil rights. Close attention will be given to several historical factors that have helped shape Mexican American working-class identity, including the role of: community-based unionism; intra-ethnic tensions related to generational differences and citizenship status; U.S. and Mexican state intervention in repressing and/or aiding workers’ movements; and cross-border organizing, beginning with its early radical traditions. Ultimately, the course will determine how ethnic Mexican workers have contested their purported role as “cheap” and “tractable” labor to demand better wages, working conditions, and an end to the socioeconomic discrimination they encountered. As this course is a writing seminar, we will spend a lot of in-class time discussing the material we read from both an analytical and writing-structure standpoint—i.e., interrogating the organization and clarity of the author’s argument(s) and evidence in addition to the subject matter. Students will also be required to critique and revise their own writing.

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Instruction Mode: Hybrid - Online & In Person

Recent community-labor collaborations to create new forms of collective representation have received considerable attention – and rightly so, since they have succeeded in reforming neoliberal modes of governing labor markets and workplaces. This course contextualizes these bottom-up innovations, by surveying the historical development of the intersection between community organizing and labor organizing. To understand the changing nature of the community-labor connection, we will examine successive case studies – from New England’s mill towns to Seattle’s ‘Fight for Fifteen’. We will use these cases not just to clarify the range of factors shaping the community-labor relationship across varying locales, but also to identify historical patterns in the resources that organizers drew upon and the constraints they faced in building solidarity within communities and among workers. Ultimately, our survey will highlight the recurrence of the community-labor connection throughout U.S. labor history, and the connection’s vital role in successive movements to democratize U.S. political economy.

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Instruction Mode: Hybrid - Online & In Person

This course will study the changes in U.S. colleges and universities since the 1980s. We will examine the public mission of higher education and the way this has been altered by privatization, corporatization, and commodification trends that encourage colleges and universities to function as private market actors. Topics include reductions of public funding, growing student debt, the use of a corporate labor model resulting in the expansion of the administration, the reduction of tenure-track/tenured faculty lines, and the growth of contingent faculty and graduate student employment in teaching and research. The course will examine the negative impact of such trends and changes on faculty and student rights, including academic freedom, freedom of speech, due process, shared governance, rights to unionize and collectively bargain, and students’ career choices.

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Instruction Mode: In Person

This new course will document how political forces expressed mostly as court decisions have re-shaped the unionized public sector workplace in the last decade. Attacks on teacher seniority, challenges to the viability of decent wages for our health care workers, and manifold restrictions on the financial well-being of all public sector unions comprise this set of strategies. We will use high level state and federal court decisions, public policy papers, and a varied set of guests to explain this phenomena and ask, What will happen now?

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Instruction Mode: In Person

This class examines the role of lawyers in achieving systemic change in a local community, using case studies from Buffalo and Ithaca. How are public policy changes won, and how are neighborhoods or regions transformed for the better? How do lawyers make a systemic impact while working in a wide variety of settings, including private firms, non-profit law centers, government positions, and non-legal careers? What aspects of legal training and experience help or hinder lawyers as they aim to make a difference? What are successful tools for public policy advocacy?

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Instruction Mode: Hybrid - Online & In Person

Analysis of the law governing employee rights and labor relations in the workplace.  Topics include the contested meanings of who is an “employee” and who is an “employer,” the growing connectivity between immigration regulation and labor and employment law as well as the reach of U.S. law into international and local arenas.  Also examines the impact of these legal developments and develops legal research and writing skills.

Instructor Consent Required (Add)

Additional Information

Instruction Mode: Hybrid - Online & In Person

This course will study the changes in U.S. colleges and universities since the 1980s. We will examine the public mission of higher education and the way this has been altered by privatization, corporatization, and commodification trends that encourage colleges and universities to function as private market actors. Topics include reductions of public funding, growing student debt, the use of a corporate labor model resulting in the expansion of the administration, the reduction of tenure-track/tenured faculty lines, and the growth of contingent faculty and graduate student employment in teaching and research. The course will examine the negative impact of such trends and changes on faculty and student rights, including academic freedom, freedom of speech, due process, shared governance, rights to unionize and collectively bargain, and students’ career choices.

Additional Information

Instruction Mode: In Person

This new course will document how political forces expressed mostly as court decisions have re-shaped the unionized public sector workplace in the last decade. Attacks on teacher seniority, challenges to the viability of decent wages for our health care workers, and manifold restrictions on the financial well-being of all public sector unions comprise this set of strategies. We will use high level state and federal court decisions, public policy papers, and a varied set of guests to explain this phenomena and ask, What will happen now?

Additional Information

Instruction Mode: In Person

This class examines the role of lawyers in achieving systemic change in a local community, using case studies from Buffalo and Ithaca. How are public policy changes won, and how are neighborhoods or regions transformed for the better? How do lawyers make a systemic impact while working in a wide variety of settings, including private firms, non-profit law centers, government positions, and non-legal careers? What aspects of legal training and experience help or hinder lawyers as they aim to make a difference? What are successful tools for public policy advocacy?

Additional Information

Instruction Mode: Hybrid - Online & In Person

Analysis of the law governing employee rights and labor relations in the workplace.  Topics include the contested meanings of who is an “employee” and who is an “employer,” the growing connectivity between immigration regulation and labor and employment law as well as the reach of U.S. law into international and local arenas.  Also examines the impact of these legal developments and develops legal research and writing skills.

Instructor Consent Required (Add)