No Abstract

This essay describes the changes that have taken place in employment practices andregulation in advanced industrial countries. It first canvasses employment trends to show that job security and the other features of the standard contract of employment are fading. It then describes some measures undertaken in some countries and regions to try to protectworkers and to ameliorate the insecurity that present practices human resource practices generate. It concludes by considering what countries can learn from ameliorative policies and programs in other countries.

In this contribution to the Symposium honoring Stephen Yeazell, the author explores the interaction between group litigation and social context in the contemporary setting. She traces recent developments in the law of class action waivers coupled with mandatory individual arbitration clauses in consumer and employment contracts. She shows how the Supreme Court’s decisions in AT&T v. Concepcion and American Express v. Italian Colors enable large corporations that impose class action bans on consumers and employees to achieve de facto immunity from decades of hard-won protective legislation. She concludes that Yeazell’s insight—that the availability of group litigation is intricately linked with a society’s social arrangements—is as truetoday as it was when he first examined the issue in the 1970s.