Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-14-2014
ISSN
2330-1295
Publisher
JOTWELL
Language
en-US
Abstract
David Weil’s new book on the fragmenting of internal labor markets in many American industries, The Fissured Workplace, should be read by all who wish to understand how the challenges to enforcing laws designed to protect American workers have become greater as the institutional structures and processes through which American businesses produce and deliver goods and services have continued to evolve. This book should be read not primarily because President Obama last year nominated Weil, a Boston University School of Management Professor, to head the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor or because the book includes several chapters stressing the importance of strategic public enforcement and the role of unions and other non-governmental worker advocacy groups in changing workplace culture. Rather, the primary value of the book is its rich description of the variant ways by which successful American businesses that sell branded goods and services have externalized the costs of employment law violations by delegating to other businesses the responsibility for providing and supervising the labor input for their branded products. This description supports the book’s most important recommendation, a recommendation that would require—beyond stronger enforcement of current laws—a re-internalization of the costs of employment law violations to those businesses that monitor and control the production of goods and services sold under their brands.
Recommended Citation
Michael C. Harper,
Internalizing The Costs Of Employment Law Violations
,
in
JOTWELL
(2014).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/3668
