Invisible Hands, Invisible Objectives: Bringing Workplace Law and Public Policy Into Focus

The global financial crisis and recession have placed great strains on the free market ideology that has emphasized economic objectives and unregulated markets. The balance of economic and noneconomic goals is under the microscope in every sector of the economy. It is time to re-think the objectives of the employment relationship and the underlying assumptions of how that relationship operates. Invisible Hands, Invisible Objectives develops a fresh, holistic framework to fundamentally reexamine U.S. workplace regulation. A new scorecard for workplace law and public policy that embraces equity and voice for employees and economic efficiency will reveals significant deficiencies in our current practices. To create one, the authors―a legal scholar and an economics and industrial relations scholar―blend their expertise to propose a comprehensive set of reforms, tackling such issues as regulatory enforcement, portable employee benefits, training programs, living wages, workplace safety and health, work-family balance, security and social safety nets, nondiscrimination, good-cause dismissal, balanced income distributions, free speech protections for employees, individual and collective workplace decision-making, and labor unions.Invisible Hands, Invisible Objectives is not just another book that sketches a reform agenda. The book provides the much-needed rubric for how we think about employment policy specifically, but also economic policy more generally. It is a must-read in these most critical times.

Budd, John W.

Befort, Stephen F.

Administrative Law

Stanford Economics and Finance

This book is based on the comprehensive analysis of a uniquely large data set of published and unpublished labor arbitration decisions in discharge and discipline cases. In great detail, its authors coded more than two thousand decisions issued over a twenty-four year period. They provide a rich array of data describing multiple aspects of each decision's arbitrator, grievant, and other case characteristics. The book's overarching focus is the arbitrator's decision- who wins, who loses and why-including unique comparisons of outcomes in discharge, as compared to discipline cases, and in private, as compared to public, sector cases. The book also reports on the relationship between the type of employee offense and outcomes, and the effect of attorney representation on case outcomes. Other relationships to arbitration decision making examined by the authors include the independent effects of last-chance agreements, quantum of proof standards, job tenure, and the much-debated "Seven Tests of Just Cause." The authors are all members of the National Academy of Arbitrators and each has decades of experience as a labor arbitrator. They are the authors of many books and articles on union-management relations and the law and practice of workplace dispute resolution. Laura J. Cooper is the J. Stewart and Mario Thomas McClendon Professor in Law and Alternative Dispute Resolution at the University of Minnesota Law School. Mario F. Bognanno is Professor Emeritus of the Center for Human Resources and Labor Studies at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management. Stephen F. Befort is the Gray, Plant, Mooty, Mooty, and Bennett Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School.

More Than We Have Ever Known About Discipline and Discharge in Labor Arbitration: An Empirical Study

Cooper, Laura J.

Bognanno, Mario F.

Rules & Procedures

Vandeplas Pub.

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Books by Befort, Stephen F.