I. WORKING AT WAL-MART: EMPLOYMENT IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMYCKS 247-259 Anderson v. Douglas & LomansonPM Tab 11 Sieberns v. Wal-MartDuke University School of Law Employment Law Fall 2005 SYLLABUS & ASSIGNMENT SHEET Professor Catherine Fisk Office: Room 4012 Phone: 613-7196 Email: [email protected] Office hours: Please feel free to visit during my posted office hours, or to make an appointment for a different time. You’re also welcome to drop in, call or email at any time. Course Description Employment law is a survey of federal and state law protections for individual workers. The theme that unites this survey course is “Work and Wal-Mart.” We will survey basic topics of the law of work, including common law and statutory regulation of employment termination, employee privacy, and the federal, state, and local regulation of wages, benefits, and working conditions, including living wage initiatives. The course will focus especially on the challenges of regulating work in the global economy. Among the practical and policy issues we will cover are: How can and should minimum labor standards be defined and enforced in a world in which many jobs can be moved to lower-wage markets? How has immigration affected the regulation of work in the U.S.? This course has a practical as well as a policy orientation. To develop the skills you may need as lawyers, we will discuss problems that might arise in practice. I will assign problems in advance, and will expect you to come to class prepared to argue on behalf of various parties to the dispute. Requirements Reasonably regular class attendance and participation are required. The substance of class discussion will be considered part of the course subject matter and, therefore, fair game for the final examination. At several points throughout the semester, we will do problems as a group exercise. These problems are useful as illustrations of the practical aspects of employment law practice and as reviews of material covered. They also give you an idea of what kinds of questions I am likely to ask on the final exam. I expect everyone to participate in the presentation and discussion of the problems. There will be a take-home final examination composed entirely of essay questions. Your grade will be based largely on the final exam, but I will add or subtract points to/from your final grade to acknowledge outstanding class participation (or lack thereof). Exams from years past are at the end of the photocopied materials, but you should bear in mind that the course coverage (thus the subjects tested on the exam) varies significantly from year to year.Employment Law Syllabus Fall 2005 Page 2 of 6 Course Materials The required texts are: 1. Crain, Kim & Selmi, Worklaw: Cases and Materials (2005) (“CKS”). 2. Photocopied materials (“PM”) (Pick up in room 3011.) Other required reading (but it’s up to you whether to buy the book):* 3. Liza Featherstone, Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Women’s Rights at Wal-Mart (Basic Books, 2004) 4. Sam Walton, Made in America: My Story (Bantam 1992) or Donald Soderquist, The Wal-Mart Way: the Inside Story of the Success of America’s Largest Company (Thomas Nelson 2005) Other books you may wish to consult for clarification of basic concepts are available on reserve in the Library. The best of these is the hornbook, Rothstein, Craver, Schroeder & Shoben, Employment Law (3d ed. West 2005). A smaller book is the Nutshell: Covington & Decker, Employment Law in a Nutshell (2d ed. West 2002). Neither of these is required or recommended for student purchase (the casebook and supplement are expensive enough as it is). Assignments The assignments are listed below in the order in which we will cover them. I will keep you posted as we proceed about how far ahead you should read. For your convenience, I have noted the principal cases and statutes in addition to the pages in the texts. I periodically add to or delete from the materials indicated on the syllabus in order to provide the most up-to-date coverage and to cover topics that may be of particular interest to the class. Be sure to come to class to receive these additional materials, which will be distributed as handouts in class. I. WORKING AT WAL-MART: EMPLOYMENT IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY 1. Perspectives on Working at Wal-Mart and on Wal-Mart in the Global Economy You should try to read some of the praise and criticism of Wal-Mart; choose among Featherstone, Selling Women Short (the Wal-Mart critic) Walton, Made in America (Sam Walton) Soderquist, The Wal-Mart Way (A latter day defense of Wal-Mart) The recent selections on Wal-Mart and the global economy at PM Tab 1 * I hate to ask you to buy books that we’ll read at the beginning of the semester and refer back to at various points but that won’t be the text we’ll consult on a weekly basis throughout. So I’ve put a couple of copies on reserve in the Library. If you want to buy them and money is not a constraint, great. If you’re pinching pennies, feel free to check them out of the library. The Library is also a good option if you’re philosophically opposed to spending your hard-earned (or hard-borrowed) money on books with which you might strenuously disagree.Employment Law Syllabus Fall 2005 Page 3 of 6 II. CONTRACT AND THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP 2. Old and New Views on the Nature and Terms of Employment Contracts Problem # 1: What are the terms of your employment agreement? Bring a written contract to class, if you have one, or think about the terms of any unwritten contract you may have now or have had in the past. Do the terms of your written contract accurately reflect what you think the “real” agreement between you and your employer? How does the at-will presumption affect your contract? a. The Old Employment At-Will CKS 1-15 Payne v. Western & Atl. RR. Co. b. At-Will Employment in the New Labor Market CKS 51-79 Hoffman Plastic v. NLRB CKS 85-97 Savage v. Spur Distrib. Co. PM Tab 2 Roberson v. Wal-Mart 3. Special Problems in Formation and Interpretation of Employment Contracts CKS 104-139 Guiliano v. Cleo Inc. CKS 146-154 Woolley v. Hoffman-La Roche CKS 247-259 Anderson v. Douglas & Lomanson Asmus v. Pacific Bell Pugh v. See’s Candies III. TORTS, STATUTES, PUBLIC POLICY, AND EMPLOYMENT 4. Tort and Public Policy Limits on Employment At Will CKS