Labor Law and Business Change

This study is a useful survey of a range of crucial problems in the current industrial relations system. Whether the US's present collective bargaining system can accommodate the massive dislocations of global competitive capitalism is a debatable, and vital, question. This collection offers important insights into the matter. Choice A collection of specially written essays by distinguished legal scholars and practicing lawyers, this book explores the ways in which collective bargaining practices have been forced to adapt and change in response to a radical restructuring in the labor and personnel relations of American businesses. As the contributors demonstrate, current trends--such as a shift from manufacturing to service employment, deregulation, a hostile political environment, and a host of mergers and acquisitions--have made an understanding of traditional labor law doctrine increasingly less central to actual practice. Practitioners today need a thorough grasp of complex new workplace regulations and a mastery of the interplay between legal rules and practical constraints on transactions like plant closings, assets or stock sales, bankruptcy reorganization, and union representation on corporate boards of directors. Labor Law and Business Change places these changes within a comprehensive legal and practical framework and provides expert advice to those who must deal with these developments in the course of structuring particular business transactions.

SAMUEL ESTREICHER is Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. DANIEL G. COLLINS is also Professor of Law at New York University School of Law.