Of Service Workers, Contracting Out, Joint Employment, Legal Consciousness, and the University of Miami

Abstract

This paper is about a historic strike of service workers at the University of Miami in 2006. Section I narrates the strike from the perspective of the workers, low wage immigrant workers in a market organized by a large labor contractor leased to a large corporate enduser. Section II analyzes whether joint employer status under National Labor Relations Act should be found in these market circumstances, and suggests changes in the statute and interpretive doctrines to make effective collective bargaining feasible in such labor markets. Section III shows how the university and the workers developed substantially different legal consciousness of the strike.