Program in Comparative Labor and Employment Law Policy

Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal

Advisory Board

Twenty-first century enterprise is generating ever changing methods of producing goods and services and is deploying them throughout the developed and developing world. These internationally portable systems can create social and economic problems, just as the innovative factory system did in the nineteenth century. In the past, the nations of Europe, North America, and the Pacific rim looked to one another's experiences for guidance in fashioning a legal response. An intense transcontinental policy and legal dialogue developed focusing on: child labor; excessive work hours; low wages and instability of income; accident, illness, and old age; unemployment; the demand for workplace voice and the need to resolve industrial disputes. The United States was an active participant.

The student of non-domestic approaches to common problems opens our eyes to the fact that a legal, social or economic condition that we view as altogether conventional, so ordinary as almost to be unnoticed, might be actually unusual, even aberrational; that other systems see or conceive of things differently; that there may be alternative legal solutions to workplace problems that are more effective, more efficient, or possibly even more congenial to the values we profess to embrace, and with lower transaction costs.

As in the past, it continues to make sense today to see what various legal approaches have been taken to deal with this new generation of workplace issues: e.g., the loss of privacy enabled by information technology; the shifting of greater risk on to the employee, i.e., the precariousness of work and the reduction of employment benefits- potentially, of the collapse of the distinction between employees and contractors; the loss of voice resulting from the decline in traditional union representatiion; and many others. Domestic consideration of the different ways of conceptualizing and acting on today's novel labor and employment issues confronts the strong headwind of contemporary American legal insularity. Whence the creation by the College of Law of a Program in Comparative Labor and Employment Law & Policy: to open the critical mind to tangible alternatives, to shed light on shared workforce and workplace problems from an international prespective; to explore the potential for legal borrowing and adaptation.

The University

As the 11th institution in the world to win two Nobel Prizes in the same year in different fields (2003), the University of Illinois at Ubrana-Champaign is known for its distinguished faculty. It houses an Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, a European Union Center, a Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies, a center for African Studies, and numerous scholars doing comparative work in a wide variety of disciplines. The Program expects to draw on these institutional resources. Further, the College of Law itself has long been a home to internationally recognized faculty in vritually all aspects of comparative and international law; and, for decades, it has maintained a small but highly selective program for foreign graduates leading to the degree of Master of Laws (LL.M.).

The Program

The Program has four basic components: instruction, research, the stimulation and sharing of thought, and the dissemination of the fruits of outstanding scholarship.

Instruction:

Visiting Faculty:

The College of Law has often invited visiting faculty to teach comparative labor law courses on an abbreviated basis: Professor Roger Blanpain of Tilberg (The Netherlands), former President of both the International Industrial Relations Research Association and the International Society for Labor Law and Social Security, and Professor Rolf Birk, Directory of the Institute for Labor Law and Labor Relations in the European Community at Trier, Germany, have taught at the College of Law. The Program intends to regularize and broade the availability of such offerings, and to exploit the use of teleconferencing instruction (and team-teaching) with partner universities and research institutes abraod.

Visiting Speakers:

The College has also hosted speakers to address comparative labor and employment law developments. In recent years, these have included Professor Kazuo Sugeno, then of the University of Tokyo and recently elected to the presidency of the International Society for Labor Law and Social Security, and Manfred Weiss of the University of Frankfurt, former president of the International Industrial Relations Research Association. As with visiting faculty, the Program intends to regularize and expand visits by foreign lectures - to give works-in-progress or to speak to important developments abroad.

The Master of Laws:

The College of Law has long maintained a small but highly select body of foreign students engaged in study for the Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree, with a balance of candidates from the developed and the developing world. A fervent ambition of the Program is specifically to attract foreign candidates with an interest in labor and employment. Over time, the Program hopes to grow a worldwide network of LL.M. graudates-practitioners, academics, corporate and government officials, and officers of non-governmental organizations - who will contribute to the understanding and use of comparative study.

Research

Joint Faculty Research:

The Program hopes to bring together researchers with common interests from different and perspectives, some already on campus, some frmo other institutions, and some in partnership with the institutions represented on the Program's Advisory Board.

Student Research:

The Program strongly encourages student research. College of Law credit will be given for approved independent study no a topic in comparative labor and employment law. By agreement with the Institute for Labor Law and Labor Relations in the European Community of Trier, Germany, such independent study can be done during a summer's residence in the Institute, which has a superb up-to-date library collection in the labor laws of the E.C.'s member states. However, the research can also be undertaken at other locations; indeed, the Program will attempt to assist in placing student researchers at suitable venues. Work of exceptional quality may be published in the Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal.

Dissemination

International Conferences

The Program intends to sponsor conferences on an international basis bringing researchers and interested students of the subject together for the presentation of the fruits of their work, for discussion and debate. It hopes to partner with other campus units, research institutes worldwide, some already represented on the Program's Advisory Board, and others, such as the International Labour Organization's Internatinoal Institute for Labor Studies, as a source of ideas, resources, and potential participants.

The Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal

The College of Law is home to the Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal. The Journal was founded in 1976 and, before coming to Illinois, was edited by Benjamin Aaron at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and, later, by Clyde Summers and Janice Bellace at the University of Pennsylvania. It is edited today by Professor Matthew Finkin of the College of Law and Professor Sanford Jacoby of the Anderson Graduate School of Management of the University of California at Los Angeles. It is a peer reviewed scholarly journal - the leading one in the field worldwide. The Journal will be pleased to publish proceedings of conferences, lectures given by invited visitors, and the products of the individual research sponsored by the Program. The Journal's activites can best be captured by visiting its web site: http://www.law.uiuc.edu/publications/cll&pj.

Support

The College has taken an important first step by the creation of the Program and providing it "seed money." But the Program's ambitious plans - for instruction, research, discussion, and publication - cannot be realized without external financial support. The Program is keen to involve foundations, international organizations, and other interested agencies and donors in carrying its mission forward:

• -to support foreign graduate fellowships for the Master of Laws degree emphasizing comparative labor and employment law
• -to sponsor collaborative research
• -to enable courses in foreign labor and employment law to be taught by visiting faculty from abroad
• -to enable foreign researchers a period of residence at the College of Law
• -to support student research abroad
• -to help defray the costs of international conferences

Inquiry should be directed to the Program's Directory.