Labor and Employment Relations Fundamentals

Catalog description

The course surveys the main elements of modern labor and employment relations systems in the U.S. and beyond. The course encourages students to use a framework for evaluating workplace outcomes according to three yardsticks: efficiency; equity; and voice. Focusing primarily on employee voice, the course introduces students to a variety of mechanisms that bring democracy, worker engagement, and worker influence to the workplace. Among these mechanisms are U.S.-styled collective bargaining, non-union systems of worker involvement, European works councils, and a new variety of "alt-labor" initiatives from around the world. In its single largest unit, the course focuses on U.S. workplaces, beginning with the historical and legal foundations of the modern U.S. labor relation system. This includes units examining union organizing campaigns, collective bargaining, and dispute resolution systems. Concluding weeks of the course look at issues surrounding the push for workplace flexibility, a comparative labor relations look at other country practices (include European works councils), emerging issues in global supply chains, "alt-labor" institutions and practices, the role of gender, race, and diversity initiatives at work, and the impact of automation and artificial intelligence on the future of work.