Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law 

About: Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Labour law & Labor relations. It has an ISSN identifier of 1067-7666. Over the lifetime, 331 publications have been published receiving 2171 citations.

Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy

Abstract: In 2008, Cathy O’Neil, a data scientist at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw, watched as the entire financial sector around her imploded.1 The financial crisis gave O’Neil, a self-proclaimed math nerd with a Ph.D., a front row seat to the weaponization of mathematics. During the financial crisis, complex mathematical models designed and marketed to be superior to human ability and beyond the confines of human subjectivity turned out to be farces—layers of false assumptions coated in difficult-to-understand layers of mathematics. In order to dupe both the public and themselves, financial analysts at banks used models and algorithms as a justification for their subjective and flawed inputs. Ten years after the financial crisis, O’Neil sees these nefarious models infiltrating every aspect of modern life. These “Weapons of Math Destruction”—as O’Neil calls them—are (1) “opaque,” (2) “beyond dispute or appeal,” and (3) disproportionally impact the underprivileged.2 These Weapons of Math Destruction, or WMDs, replace the role of traditional subjective decision makers and cause those affected by their decisionmaking to adjust their ways of life to the models. In Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, O’Neil highlights different WMDs that have infiltrated various areas of American life.

Working the Crowd: Employment and Labor Law in the Crowdsourcing Industry

Abstract: This Article confronts the thorny questions that arise in attempting to apply traditional employment and labor law to “crowdsourcing,” an emerging online labor model unlike any that has existed to this point. Crowdsourcing refers to the process of taking tasks that would normally be delegated to an employee and distributing them to a large pool of online workers, the “crowd,” in the form of an open call. The Article describes how crowdsourcing works, its advantages and risks, and why workers in particular subsections of the paid crowdsourcing industry may be denied the protection of employment laws without much recourse to vindicate their rights. Taking Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform as a case study, the Article explores the nature of this employment relationship in order to determine the legal status of the “crowd.” The Article also details the complications that might arise in applying existing work laws to crowd labor. Finally, the Article presents a series of brief recommendations. It encourages legislatures to clarify and expand legal protections for crowdsourced employees, and suggests ways for courts and administrative agencies to pursue the same objective within our existing legal framework. It also offers voluntary “best practices” for firms and venues involved in crowdsourcing, along with examples of how crowd workers might begin to effectively organize and advocate on their own behalf.

Models of Disability and the Americans with Disabilities Act

Abstract: For nearly a decade, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)' has been the main protection for people with disabilities against discrimination in employment, public accommodations, public transportation, and telecommunications. The Act, approved by bipartisan majorities of 377-28 and 91-6 in the House of Representatives and the Senate (respectively) in 1990, 3 is a comprehensive statement of public policy that people with disabilities should not be unfairly excluded from employment, public accommodations, and other aspects of public life, and that the federal government should act to protect them.4 One might expect that if the ADA represented a consensus in 1990, it would still enjoy widespread support today, and in fact, there have been no serious attempts in Congress to repeal or legislatively limit the Act. However, while popular criticism of the ADA persists,' the legal system has become the primary arena for challenges to the ADA's broad focus and underlying assumptions. Complaints filed under the ADA have been making their way through the administrative agencies responsible for implementation and the courts for several years now. In early 1999, the Supreme Court heard five ADA cases, and a major issue in several of these cases was the Act's definition of disability. 6 In this article, I suggest that much of the larger disagreement over the Americans with Disabilities Act can be characterized as a clash of perspectives about the meaning of disability. I do not address the specifics of statutory interpretation dealt with elsewhere in this special issue; rather, I suggest how underlying assumptions about disability frame the current debate over the ADA.

Labor Law as Ideology: Toward a New Historiography of Collective Bargaining Law

Abstract: * © Copyright 1981 by Karl E. Klare. t Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law. This article is a revised text of a paper presented to the Tenth Annual Meetings of the American Society for Legal History (ASLH), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 25, 1980. 1. See generally Atleson, Work Group Behavior and Wildcat Strikes: The Causes and Func tions of Industrial Civil Disobedience, 34 Ohio St. L.J. 750 (1973); Cloke, Political Loyalty, Labor Democracy and the Constitution, 5 San Fern. Valley L. Rev. 159 (1976); Klare, Judicial Deradi calization of the Wagner Act and the Origins of Modern Legal Consciousness, 1937-1941, 62 Minn. L. Rev. 265 (1978) [hereinafter cited as Judicial Deradicalization]; Lynd, Government Without Rights: The Labor Law Vision of Archibald Cox, 4 Indus. Rel. L.J. 483 ( 1981); Lynd, Investment Decisions and the Quid Pro Quo Myth, 29 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 396 (1979) [hereinafter cited as Investment Decisions]; Lynd, Reindustrialization: Brownfield or Greenfield?, Democracy, July 1981, at 22; Lynd, Employee Free Speech in the Private and Public Workplace: Two Doctrines or One?, 1 Indus. Rel. L.J. 711 (1977) [hereinafter Employee Free Speech]-, Lynd, Workers' Control in a Time of Diminished Workers' Rights, Radical America, Sept.-Oct. 1976, at 5; Lynd, The Right to Engage in Concerted Activity After Union Recognition: A Study of Legislative History, 50 Ind. L.J. 720 (1975); Stone, The Post-War Paradigm in American Labor Law, 90 Yale L.J. 1515 (1981) [hereinafter cited as Stone]; Atleson, Values and Assumptions in Labor Law (forthcoming) [hereinafter cited as Values and Assumptions]; Klare, The Quest for Industrial Democracy and the Struggle Against Racism: Perspectives on Labor Law and Civil Rights Law (forthcoming in Ore. L. Rev. 1981); Klare, The Bitter and the Sweet: Reflections On the Supreme Court's Yeshiva Decision (forthcoming in Socialist Rev. 1981). See also Feinman, The Development of the Employment at Will Rule, 20 Am. J. Legal Hist. 118 (1976); Freeman, Legitimizing Racial Discrimination Through Antidiscrimination Law: A Critical Review of Supreme Court Doctrine, 62 Minn. L. Rev. 1049 (1978). In addition to the works cited, I have learned much from discussions with, and the unpub lished work of, James Atleson, Alan Hyde, Howard Lesnick, Staughton Lynd, Theodore Lieverman, Ira Sills and Katherine Stone. In its original conception, this paper was intended to be a "report" to ASLH on the critical labor jurisprudence, and I wish to acknowledge that some of the ideas and approaches to collective bargaining law presented here derive from the work of the people listed. However, the scholars I have associated with the critical labor law hold a widely divergent spectrum of views on legal and political questions. Readers are therefore advised that I assume sole responsibility for the formulations contained herein, and that the presentation of critical labor law in this paper is heavily oriented toward my own approaches and research priorities.