Three conferences in three days bring leading scholars, lawyers, policymakers, and students to explore the rapidly changing field.
By Andrew Cohen
Berkeley Law recently turbo-charged its status as a haven for top work law scholarship and research with three consecutive days of robust conferences that welcomed some of the field’s preeminent voices.
Coordinated by Professors Catherine Fisk ’86 and Diana Reddy Ph.D. ’23, co-faculty directors of the school’s Center for Law and Work (CLAW), the gatherings Sept. 17-19 confronted unionization and collective bargaining, wage and hour compliance, employee misclassification, paid leave, discrimination, accommodation, and plenty more.
“Work law is once again recognized as central to questions of inequality, democracy, and freedom,” says Reddy, who represented labor unions and workers before entering academia. “Good jobs are a driver of just about every other social good you can imagine. Given the challenges of income and wealth inequality, political polarization, social isolation, pandemic-driven labor market changes, and now AI upending the social contract, it’s hard to ignore the importance of how we work.”
Fisk and Reddy developed the idea for hosting these three conferences to bring the widest group of scholars, lawyers, and policymakers together — “and to encourage sharing of ideas among people who aren’t regularly in conversation with one another,” says Fisk, a prolific and award-winning work law scholar.
The annual Work Law...
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