LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS ASSOCIATION SERIES Reimagining the Governance of Work and Employment Edited By Dionne Pohler Reimagining the Governance of Work and Employment Copyright © 2020 by the Labor and Em- ployment Relations Association. Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of the book may be used without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. First Edition ISBN 978-0-913447-19-2 Price: $34.95 LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS ASSOCIATION SERIES LERA Proceedings of the Annual Meeting (published online annually, in the fall) LERA Annual Research Volume (published annually, in the summer/fall) LERA Online Membership Directory (updated daily, member/subscriber access only) LERA Labor and Employment Law News (published online each quarter) LERA Perspectives on Work (published annually, in the fall) Information regarding membership, subscriptions, meetings, publications, and general affairs of the LERA can be found at the Association website at www.leraweb.org. Members can make changes to their member records, including contact information, affiliations, and preferences, by accessing the online directory at the website or by contacting the LERA national office. LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS ASSOCIATION University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign School of Labor and Employment Relations 121 Labor and Employment Relations Building 504 East Armory Ave., MC-504 Champaign, IL 61820 Telephone: 217/333-0072 Fax: 217/265-5130 Website: www.leraweb.org E-mail: [email protected] Acknowledgments The idea for this project would have never materialized without encouragement from Ariel Avgar. And it would have never been completed without the guidance and support of Peggy Currid and Emily Smith. iii Contents PART I: INTRODUCTION ..............................................................1 Beyond 2020: Work and Employment in a Rapidly Changing World ....................................................................3 Dionne Pohler PART II: REIMAGINING CLASSIC GOVERNANCE APPROACHES ..................................................................................9 Chapter 1 If Nonstandard Work Is the New Normal, What Should We Do About It? ................................................................................11 Morley Gunderson Chapter 2 National Living-Wage Movements in a Regional World: The Fight for $15 in the United States .........................................................41 Jason Spicer, Robert Manduca, and Tamara Kay Chapter 3 Sectoral Bargaining: Opportunity and Dilemma for American Labor ............................................................................69 Nelson Lichtenstein Chapter 4 The Role of Collective Bargaining in the Digitized Workplace .................85 Rachel Aleks, Michael Maffie, and Tina Saksida Chapter 5 Social Partnership in Europe in the Aftermath of the Great Recession ...............................................................................113 Arianna Tassinari and Jimmy Donaghey v PART III: REIMAGINING NEW GOVERNANCE APPROACHES ..............................................................................143 Chapter 6 Immigration, Employment Relations, and the State: Tensions Between Internal and External Governance .......................145 Chris F. Wright and Stephen Clibborn Chapter 7 Multinational Corporations as Labor Regulators ..............................165 Greg Distelhorst Chapter 8 Emancipation in the Idea of Transnational Labor Law .....................183 Adelle Blackett Chapter 9 Basic Income Guarantees .................................................................... 193 Kourtney Koebel and Dionne Pohler Chapter 10 Guaranteed Jobs or Guaranteed Income? Lessons from a Canadian Jobs Program ...................................................................223 Marc-André Pigeon Chapter 11 Digital Kelsoism: Employee Stock Ownership as a Pattern for the Online Economy .......................................................................243 Nathan Schneider vi PART IV: DISCUSSANTS .............................................................267 Union-Side Professional What Is Old Is New Again: Unions and the Future of Work ...........269 Lisa Jordan Management-Side Professional Reimagining the Regulation and Governance of Work ....................283 Bill Dirksen Academic Sectoral Approaches to Workplace Regulation in the New Gilded Age ......................................................................................289 Sara Slinn About the Contributors .................................................................297 LERA Executive Board Members 2020–2021 ...............................302 vii PART I: INTRODUCTION 1 introduction Beyond 2020: Work and Employment in a Rapidly Changing World Dionne Pohler University of Toronto When I proposed this 2020 annual research volume to the Labor and Employment Relations Association almost two years ago, the title of the introduction chapter (which hasn’t changed) seemed completely banal to me. As I actually write the introduction to the volume in early April 2020, we are in the midst of a global pandemic. The world is changing more rapidly each day than I have ever expe- rienced in my lifetime. Because of this, it is becoming difficult to imagine what work and employment will be like beyond 2020. As of the time of writing, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases world- wide is approaching 2 million, and the number of deaths has surpassed 125,000. The pandemic is affecting at least 210 countries and territories. In an attempt to “flatten the curve” and avoid overwhelming healthcare systems, many countries have closed their borders and declared states of emergency. Many governments have ordered all nonessential businesses to cease in-person operations and have closed schools indefinitely. Labor-market statistics capturing the early effects of COVID-19 estimate that more than 20 million jobs may have been lost in the United States (more jobs lost than during the entire Great Recession) and that my own country (Canada) experienced the single biggest negative one-month shock to hours worked since 1976 (as far back as we have comparable data). I am sure the shock is similar for many other countries. It is unclear how long the physical distancing measures and de facto shutdown of the worldwide economy will last. And, even once governments slowly start to lift restrictions, it is unlikely we will see a return to normalcy in the near future. Which does bring forth the question: Is a return to normalcy what we really want anyway? It goes without saying, of course, that we would all like to see people stop dying from the virus and once again enjoy in-person celebrations with family and visits with friends. But do we wish to return to the way we have been organizing the economy over the past four decades or more? Do we want to simply fall back on pre-crisis approaches to governing work and employment? Are we comfortable with the reality that many of our essential workers are also among the lowest-paid in our societies? As the communitarian political philos- opher Michael Sandel recently opined in the New York Times, now is the time to “ask a basic question that we have evaded over these last decades: What do we owe one another as citizens?” 3 4 REIMAGINING THE GOVERNANCE OF WORK AND EMPLOYMENT Perhaps then, this volume is timely because it is about reimagining old ideas and proposing some new ones for the regulation of work and employment and the governance of our economies and labor markets. The first part of the volume revisits classic approaches to the governance and regulation of employment that solidified in the period following the world wars. Unions and collective bargain- ing, labor and employment laws, and social partnerships are, and will continue to be, important institutions in many countries. However, the volume also (re)imagines both old and new ideas for the governance of work and employment in a global, digital, post-industrial, and rapidly changing world. In the midst of a deadly pandemic, the world is slowly beginning to under- stand two things that will not surprise members of the industrial relations com- munity: (1) society’s most important existing resource to fight COVID-19 is our workers, and (2) the meaning and value of work to society is not necessarily synonymous with what the people who perform that work are paid, nor even with their level of education. Knowledge workers in the medical, epidemiological, and natural science com- munities are intently focused on modeling the evolving coronavirus and public health interventions, as well as on the rapid deployment of several countermea- sures, including testing and diagnostics; production of ventilators, masks, and other technologies for clinical management; and, ultimately, the development of an effective vaccine. Other similarly essential workers include not only healthcare professionals such as nurses and doctors but also agricultural workers, long-haul truckers and delivery drivers, personal support workers in long-term care facili- ties, public servants, utility maintenance and sanitation workers, daycare workers, and warehouse and grocery store clerks. These workers grow our food, care for the sick, transport food and medical supplies, ensure households receive clean water and income support, fix our utilities, pick up our garbage, feed the public, and care for our children and the most vulnerable. Several of these jobs are among the lowest