The New Labor Law

Labor law is failing. Disfigured by courts, attacked by employers, and rendered inapt by a global and fissured economy, many of labor law’s most ardent proponents have abandoned it altogether. And for good reason: the law that governs collective organization and bargaining among workers has little to offer those it purports to protect. Several scholars have suggested ways to breathe new life into the old regime, yet their proposals do not solve the basic problem. Labor law developed for the New Deal does not provide solutions to today’s inequities. But all hope is not lost. From the remnants of the old regime, the potential for a new labor law is emerging. In this Article, I describe and defend the nascent regime, which embraces a form of social bargaining long thought unattainable in the United States. The new labor law rejects the old regime’s commitment to the employer-employee dyad and to a system of private ordering. Instead, it locates decisions about basic standards of employment at the sectoral level and positions unions as political actors empowered to advance the interests of workers generally. This new labor law, though nascent and uncertain, has the potential to salvage and secure one of labor law’s most fundamental commitments – to help achieve greater equality, both economic and political – in the context of the twenty-first century economy