Retaliation and Whistleblowers: Proceedings of the New York University 60th Annual Conference on Labor

Each year, the New York University Annual Conference on Labor calls on outstanding scholars and practitioners in the field to come together to survey and analyze new developments and trends in U.S. labor law and practice. This volume reproduces the texts (updated and reworked by the authors) presented at the 2007 Conference, the 60th in this venerable and highly influential series, at which the theme was “Retaliation and Whistleblowers” .

There could not be a more timely exploration of this complex workplace issue. The United States Supreme Court, in several pending cases and in the recent landmark cases of Burlington Northern v. White and Garcetti v. Ceballos, has turned its full attention to workplace retaliation claims. States and municipalities also continue to struggle in laying out the scope of permissible claims under state constitutional and statutory whistleblower provisions and under the common law of wrongful discharge.

Among the new and significant issues considered in this volume are the following:

• new limits on the scope of the cause of action in the wake of Burlington Northern;
• implied protection of employee activity under ADEA and the FLSA;
• the scope of “protected activity” under § 806 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act;
• issues of privilege when investigation counsel are used to inform corporate decision-making;
• state whistleblower laws and the expansion or preemption of common law protections under the common law tort of wrongful discharge;
• NLRA protection of collective protests by non-union workers; and
• potential expansion of the formal definition of “jobs” under Garcetti v. Ceballos to foreclose the first amendment avenue.

Besides papers by panelists at the Conference, ten other leading practitioners and academics also provide commentary in this volume.

As always, this important annual publication offers definitive current scholarship in its theme area of labor and employment law. As such, it will be of inestimable value to practitioners, government officials, academics and others interested in developments in U.S. employment and labor relations law and practice.