Alumnus advises 1Ls

From a valued alumnus who's out there working to make the world a better place ...

Me thinking of @RJPeltzSteele during Torts on the first day of classes. pic.twitter.com/Vx5NPIKESw

— @voteunion©️2023 | #1u (@voteunion) August 31, 2023

Students join labor demands for living wage at RISD

(UPDATE, April 18: Labor and RISD reached a tentative agreement, Wazlavek tweeted last night.)

The Rhode Island School of Design—famous alumni include Seth MacFarlane, BFA '95 (Family Guy, The Orville)—has lately been embroiled in a labor dispute.

I saw, and heard, protestors yesterday morning when I drove to the nearby Providence Amtrak station. They made plenty of noise, yet in an artsy, celebratory way. You really don't want to mess with creative types. With faculty support, students are demonstrating alongside custodians.

An attorney-alum of my torts and comparative law classes is working on the matter from the Teamsters side. Aaron Wazlavek (SSRN) has been on site this week.  (Video NSFW: adult language. That's just how labor rolls.)

Settle the contract @risd. One day longer, one day stronger.

We @Teamsters won’t leave until we get a deal executed for our members.#1u #Organize #OneBigUnion pic.twitter.com/2H3DFT7fuF

— @voteunion©️2023 | #1u (@voteunion) April 12, 2023

According to arts independent Hyperallergic, "[c]urrently, the average wage of a RISD custodian, groundskeeper, or mover is $16.74 per hour. The lowest wage is $15.30. Teamsters Local 251 has fought for a $20 minimum wage ...."

The living wage for one adult with no children in Providence County, Rhode Island, is $17.42/hr., according to the MIT calculator.  The minimum wage in Rhode Island is $13/hr.

In March, New York University law students made headlines demanding a choice between credit hours and an hourly wage for work on law review. 

The New York students have a point. I've long been critical of unpaid internships. Nowadays, U.S. law schools require free labor in many guises. Call it "field placement," "externship," "pro bono"—even new lawyers are expected to "volunteer" before they can get paying jobs. It's all subversion of the simple principle that one should be paid for one's work. Corporations and employers delight in pushing American work-life balance in the wrong direction. The legal education system and accrediting American Bar Association are complicit.

The set rate for student labor—when we pay in real money; I just hired a research assistant for the fall—at UMass Law in south-coast Massachusetts is $15/hr. The living wage for one adult with no children in Bristol County, Massachusetts, is $17.88, according to the MIT calculator.

Latest reports suggest that RISD and labor will find a middle ground between $15 and $20. I hope it's at least halfway.

As America, France share Enlightenment roots, why have worker rights so diverged? Or have they?

Thomas D. Aaron Wazlavek, Esq. has published an article in comparative labor law: The Pond Separates Cultures but Not Values: A Comparative Look at the French Codification of Right to Withdrawal of Labor and the American Concept of At-Will Employment.  The article appears in the Florida Journal of International Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.  Here is the abstract:

The differences and similarities between the United States common law concept of “right to work” and the modern development in France of the right to withdraw labor following the “Yellow Vest” movement in 2018 demonstrate a parallel diminution of workers’ rights. These changes are motivated by the same values inherent within capitalism that are superimposed through the law. This Article analyzes the social and legal contexts in both countries that demonstrate that the superimposition of these values through law is a continuing modern western trend. The key difference is that while the French model is designed to decrease the pressure for strike actions by workers, it also serves as a protection to workers as compared with the American model which exists as a tool to remove workplace protections by substantially altering the terms and conditions of employment. Further, this Article demonstrates that these concepts are both divergent and convergent in terms of core shared values and the peripheral aspect of laws setting cultural norms. This Article then concludes through comparative analysis that while the French right to withdraw labor is a product of legislative supremacy, and the American view within the common law is that at-will employment is the standard, the French model is a product of generations of social negotiations. The American model is a product of the easily swayed influences within the common law that allow a new legal theory with little to no precedential value at the time of its proposal to be adopted in sweeping fashion with very little civil discourse.

An attorney living and working in Rhode Island, Wazlavek (blog, LinkedIn, Twitter) presently serves as a contract coordinator for Teamsters Local 251.  It's not uncommon to see him on a Rhode Island street corner alongside sign-wielding workers.  He had already a wealth of experience in the labor movement before he went to law school.  He taught me a great deal about organized labor—its value when it works the way it's supposed to—and I was able to contribute torts and comparatism to his impressive repertoire.

The Pond started as a paper in Comparative Law, co-taught by an embedded librarian, the esteemed Dean Peltz-Steele, and me and tracks one of many remarkable parallels in the cultural evolution of the United States and the French Republic.  Just yesterday I read Rachel Donadio's fascinating treatment of secularism, or laïcité, in The Atlantic.  Observing the shared roots of the French principle with American anti-establishment doctrine, Donadio observed:

The histories of few countries are as deeply intertwined as those of France and the United States. Both nations are products of the Enlightenment, and each sees itself as a beacon among nations. Both embody a clear separation of Church and state. In the United States, the separation is defined by the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from making any law "respecting an establishment of religion" or obstructing the free exercise of religion. The First Amendment was inspired by the earlier Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, adopted in 1786, the work of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was ambassador to France when the French Revolution began, and the Marquis de Lafayette consulted him when drafting the revolutionary Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, passed in 1789. Article 10 of that document states, "No one may be disquieted for his opinions, even religious ones, provided that their manifestation does not trouble the public order."

A shared legacy on labor regulation might not be traced so easily to the 18th century, but I would contend that American and French thinking about work and life is plenty in common.  Wazlavek maps that common cultural territory, and the article examines the social and economic forces that have prompted divergence, largely to the hazard of the American worker, and yet some recent convergence that prompted the Yellow Vest movement.

The article is Thomas D. Aaron Wazlavek, The Pond Separates Cultures But Not Values: A Comparative Look at the French Codification of Right to Withdrawal of Labor and the American Concept of At-Will Employment, 33 Fla. J. Int'l L. 75 (2021).

[UPDATE, Feb. 3, 2022:] Only two days after posting this item, I happened upon this compelling article as well: Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez, Religious Neutrality, Laïcité and Colorblindness: A Comparative Analysis, 42 Cardozo L. Rev. 539 (2021).