Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-2019
ISSN
0042-2533
Publisher
Vanderbilt University
Language
en-US
Abstract
Two forms of labor’s capital—union funds and public pension funds—have profoundly reshaped the corporate world. They have successfully advocated for shareholder empowerment initiatives like proxy access, declassified boards, majority voting, say on pay, private fund registration, and the CEO-to-worker pay ratio. They have also served as lead plaintiffs in forty percent of federal securities fraud and Delaware deal class actions. Today, much-discussed reforms like revised shareholder proposal rules and mandatory arbitration threaten two of the main channels by which these shareholders have exercised power. But labor’s capital faces its greatest, even existential, threats from outside corporate law. This Essay addresses one of those threats: the direct and indirect challenges posed to labor’s capital by the Supreme Court’s holding in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31. These threats may have spillover effects in the corporate arena. This Essay discusses these developments in light of Randall Thomas’s early and prescient work on labor as a shareholder.
Recommended Citation
David H. Webber,
The Other Janus and the Future of Labor’s Capital
,
in
72
Vanderbilt Law Review
2087
(2019).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/1360
Included in
Business Organizations Law Commons, Labor and Employment Law Commons, Law and Economics Commons, Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons, State and Local Government Law Commons, Supreme Court of the United States Commons, Workers' Compensation Law Commons
