Labor/Employment
Sep. 4, 2019
Past failures should inform labor reform
This month will see the governor, Legislature, gig employers and organized labor take a crack at this issue in an attempt to devise a new legal framework. The lessons of labor law in California demonstrate clearly that it will only reduce exploitation and inequality if it avoids failed past efforts like those aimed at the farmworkers.
William B. Gould IV
Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law, Emeritus
Stanford Law School
William is the former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board and chairman of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board.
Ever-widening inequality between worker and employer mirrors an imbalance of power between labor and management, the decline of labor unions so dramatic that in the private sector they represent only one out of 20 workers. Part of this shift is explained by the greater employer use of independent contractors, whose status deprives all those so classified of any aspect of labor law, i.e., minimum wage, sick pay, workers' and unemployment compensation, Social Aecurity, ...
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