Events

March 31 & April 1, 2022 

Employment and health inequities are inextricably linked, which has been illustrated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Essential workers, who are predominately racial and ethnic minorities, have disproportionately been infected, hospitalized, and died from Covid-19. Low-wage women workers have lost jobs and health insurance coverage at higher rates than men during the pandemic, while elderly, disabled, and pregnant workers have often been denied accommodations that would protect them from the workplace exposure of Covid-19. Although federal, state, and local government and public health officials have acknowledged that social conditions, such as housing and education, limit an individual’s ability to be healthy, they have failed to make the connection between employment and health inequities. This two day symposium entitled, Health Inequities and Employment: The Continued Struggle for Justice, convened workers, scholars, lawyers, and community advocates to not only highlight the connection between employment and health inequities, but also to create a plan for utilizing public health, civil rights, and employment laws to address health inequities. This event was co-sponsored by the Saint Louis University Law Journal, the Wefel Center for Employment Law, and the Institute for Healing Justice and Equity. The proceedings were published in the Saint Louis University Law Journal.

Thursday, March 31, 2022
Zoom link to view recording
Passcode: %5!J@YSg

Schedule

Introduction and Welcome
- Ruqaiijah Yearby, Executive Director of the Institute for Healing Justice & Equity and Professor, Saint Louis University School of Law
- William Johnson, Dean and Professor, Saint Louis University School of Law

Panel 1: Intersectionality: Employment Practices and Health Inequities.
The panel will open the symposium and discuss the myriad of ways that employment practices prevent marginalized social groups (racial and ethnic minorities, the disabled, LGBTQIA, women and those with multiple social identities) from equal access to health care and resources to be healthy.
- Rebecca Cokley, Program Officer of Disability Rights, Center for American Progress
- Yvette Cozier, Associate Dean for Diversity, Boston University School of Public Health 
- Jennifer Cohen, Assistant Professor of Global and Intercultural Studies, Miami University 
Ruqaiijah Yearby, Executive Director of the Institute for Healing Justice & Equity and Professor, Saint Louis University School of Law

Panel 2: Work Culture & Autonomy
It will explore the effects of discrimination on women’s health and well-being, both in terms of conduct that happens in the workplace, but also in terms of how workplace rules, both formal and informal, have spillover effects on mental and physical health.
- Tristin Green, Professor and Dean’s Circle Scholar at University of San Francisco School of Law 
- Michelle Ceynar, Dean of Social Sciences and Professor of Psychology and Chair of Faculty, Pacific Lutheran University
- Veena Dubal, Professor of Law, UC Hastings Law

Panel 3: Discrimination, Economics, and Health Outcomes
 It will examine the ways that discrimination and stress impact health outcomes.
- David H. Chae, Human Sciences Associate Professor & Director of the Society, Health and Racial Equity Lab, Auburn University 
- Catherine Harnois, Professor of Sociology, Wake Forest workplace mistreatment and health inequalities
- Jessica Owens-Young, Assistant Professor of Health Studies, American University
- Caryn Bell, Assistant Professor, Tulane University School of Public Health

Panel 4: Community Advocacy: Beginning to Address Health and Employment Inequities
It will allow you to discuss your community advocacy and how it has addressed employment practices and discrimination that is associated with health inequities.
- Sari Bilick, Organizing Project Director at Human Impact Partners (HIP)
- Ciearra Walker, Project Coordinator at STL Community Health Worker Coalition 
- Faybra Hemphill, Forward Through Ferguson
- Maya Hazarika Watts, ChangeLab Solutions

Friday, April 1, 2022
Zoom link to view recording
Passcode: =*bZ&8qH 

Introduction and Welcome
- Ruqaiijah Yearby, Executive Director of the Institute for Healing Justice & Equity and Professor, Saint Louis University School of Law
- William Johnson, Dean and Professor, Saint Louis University School of Law

Panel 1: Connecting Employment Practices and Health Inequities 
It will open the second day of the symposium and explore employment inequities and health inequities.
- William M. Rodgers, III Federal Reserve Bank, St. Louis
- Andrea G. Baran, Regional Attorney, EEOC, St. Louis
- Jamillah Williams, Associate Professor of Law, Georgetown Law
- Heather Walter-McCabe, Assistant Professor of Law and Social Work, Wayne State University, Law School

Panel 2: Workers, Employment Practices, and Health Inequities
It will allow workers and organizations to discuss the employment practices that harm them as well as the negative health outcomes.
- Laura Barett, Campaign Coordinator IL/MO/KS SEIU 
- SEIU health care worker
- Kenzia Scales, Director of Policy Research at PHI
- PHI Home health care worker

Panel 3: Workers, Power, and Health 
It explores the employment practices that harm workers, workers lack of power to address the problems, and worker health inequities
- Athena Ramos, Assistant Professor, University of Nebraska 
- Tyra Robinson, Attorney, Public Justice Center
- Peggie Smith, Professor, Washington University in St. Louis School of Law 
- Cesar Rosado Marzan, Professor at University of Iowa 

Panel 4: Theories & Practices: Beginning to Address Employment and Health Inequities
It explores how the health justice framework and the theory of bounded justice can be used to address employment and health inequities. The panel will also discuss the work advocates are doing and how it has addressed employment practices and discrimination that is associated with health inequities
Theory & Practice: 
- Ruqaiijah Yearby, Executive Director of the Institute for Healing Justice & Equity and Professor, Saint Louis University School of Law
- Melissa Creary, Assistant Professor of Health Management and Policy, University of Michigan School of Public Health
- Cassandra Gomez, Attorney, A Better Balance
 - Pilar Whitaker, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights

Friday, Sept. 18, 2020

Zoom link to view recording
Passcode: We@K5#0+

Saint Louis University School of Law William C. Wefel Center for Employment Law and Saint Louis University Law Journal virtually hosted 'New Waves of Worker Empowerment: Labor and Technology in the 21st Century.'

Traditional labor power is still an important force within our economy, as the strikes by public school teachers’ unions and GM workers demonstrate. Within an increasingly fractured workplace, however, workers are taking new approaches to collective action. Such efforts include sectoral coordination to improve wages and benefits, such as the Fight for $15, or spontaneous worker movements within companies like the Google Walkout that promote antidiscrimination protections and fairer dispute resolution.

With new challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic, workers are expressing their joint interests and pushing for protections for their lives and livelihoods. Changing technologies provide new opportunities for connection between workers and outreach to the public, but also give employers new tools for surveillance, scheduling, and organizational fissuring. This Symposium will discuss these new examples of engagement and examine the role of the law in facilitating, dampening, or restricting the new expressions of worker engagement.

Schedule
Introduction
William P. Johnson, dean, Saint Louis University School of Law

Session 1
Moderated by Matt Bodie

• "Coming Storms of Disruptive Change: Trade, Labor, Technology, and Collective Worker Representation"
  Marley Weiss, professor of law, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law
• "Co-Worker Evidence in Court"
  Sandra Sperino, Judge Joseph P. Kinneary Professor of Law, University of Cincinnati College of Law
• "Data Labor on the Margins: Prisons as the New Frontier of Outsourcing in India"
  Winifred Poster, professor of international affairs, Washington University in St. Louis

Session 2
Moderated by Matt Bodie

• "Exploring Sectoral Solutions for Digital Workers: the Status of the Artist Act Approach"
  Sara Slinn, associate professor and associate dean (Research & Institutional Relations), Osgoode Hall Law School, York University
• "Emerging Issues in the Law of Work Stoppages"
  Michael Duff, professor of law, University of Wyoming College of Law
• "Short Strikes"
  Michael Oswalt, associate professor of law, Northern Illinois University College of Law
• "State and Local Government Protection of Workers' Rights: New Players, New Laws, New Methods of Enforcement"
  Terri Gerstein, director of the State and Local Enforcement Project at the Harvard Law School Labor and Worklife Program

Session 3
Moderated by Kerry Ryan

• "Collective Action Among Platform Workers during the Time of the Coronavirus Pandemic"
  Miriam A. Cherry, professor and co-director, William C. Wefel Center for Employment Law; associate dean for research and engagement, Saint Louis University School of Law
• "Collective Action in the Digital Reality: The Case of Platform-Based Workers in the U.K."
  Tammy Katsabian, postdoctoral fellow, Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard Law School
• "Dream Jobs or Nightmares: Organizing Workers in the Digital Game Industry"
  Courtlyn Roser-Jones, assistant professor of law, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law

Session 4
Moderated by Miriam Cherry

• "Trends in Tech Activism: Organizing Around Moral Injury at Work"
  Marion Crain, Wiley B. Rutledge Professor of Law, interim provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs for Washington University in St. Louis
• "Building Worker Collective Action Through Technology"
  Ruben J. Garcia, professor of law; co-director, UNLV Workplace Law Program, Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
• "Compensating and Retraining Workers Displaced by Automation"
  Jonathan F. Harris, acting assistant professor of lawyering, NYU School of Law

Friday, April 6, 2018, John K. Pruellage Courtroom

Saint Louis University School of Law William C. Wefel Center for Employment Law and Saint Louis University Journal hosted 'Law, Technology, and the Organization of Work.'

As technology creates change in our lives, it is now ever-more important to think about the ways in which we work, how we think about work, and how work will be regulated. Including crowdwork, on-demand platforms, people analytics, big data, 3-D printing, and other technologies, these new modalities of digitalization challenge both our ethics and our currently existing regulatory structures for labor. These issues are increasingly global, as many of these technologies are not restricted by national boundaries. This symposium endeavored to think forward on the changes these technologies will engender and the ways in which firms and workers are structuring their new working relationships.

Schedule
Introduction
Marcia McCormick, associate dean for academic affairs and professor of law, Saint Louis University School of Law

Session 1

• "How Technology Will Advance or Inhibit Labor Organizing"
  Charlotte Garden, co-associate dean for research and faculty development and associate professor, Seattle University School of Law
• "Data Deficits in Municipal Rideshare Programs"
  Deepa Das Acevedo, Sharswood Fellow, University of Pennsylvania Law School
• "The Law and Political Economy of Workplace Information"
  Brishen Rogers, associate professor of law, Temple University Beasley School of Law
• "A New Research Agenda for Employment Law Scholarship - Technology in the Workplace"
  Ifeoma Ajunwa, assistant professor, Industrial and Labor Relations School of Cornell University; faculty associate member, Cornell Law School

Session 2

• "Platform and Digitalised Work: Debunking Myths and Protecting Workers"
  Valerio De Stefano, BOF-ZAP Research Professor of Labour Law, KU Leuven, Belgium
• "What Should We Do After Work? Automation, Job Loss, and the Law of Work"
  Cynthia Estlund, Catherine A. Rein Professor, New York University School of Law
• "Who's Tracking Whom? Multi-Surveillance of Labor in the Online Sex Trafficking Industry"
  Winifred Poster, International Affairs, Washington University in St. Louis

Session 3

• "Crowdwashing: Corporate Social Responsibility, Technology, and Labor Practices"
  Miriam Cherry, co-director of the William C. Wefel Center for Employment Law and professor of law, Saint Louis University School of Law
• "Discrimination in Online Recruiting Strategies"
  Pauline Kim, Daniel Noyes Kirby Professor of Law, Washington University School of Law
• "The Independent Contract and Autonomy in the Gig Economy"
  Leticia Saucedo, professor of law, University of California, Davis School of Law

Closing Remarks
Miriam Cherry, co-director of the William C. Wefel Center for Employment Law and professor of law, Saint Louis University School of Law

Friday, February 19, 2016, John K. Pruellage Courtroom

The Wefel Center for Employment Law, the Saint Louis University Law Journal and the John Cook School of Business co-sponsored this symposium, 'The Law and Business of People Analytics.'

Participants explored the kinds of work being done in the field of People Analytics, the use of data analytics in human resources. Focus was on the employment law and business ethics implications of these new technologies and practices, with an eye toward developing guidelines for good practices in the workplace.

Schedule
Introduction: What is People Analytics?

Session 1: The Business and Business Ethics of People Analytics
Presenters:

• Palash Bera, assistant professor, Saint Louis University John Cook School of Business
• Jintong Tang, associate professor, Saint Louis University John Cook School of Business

Session 2: Legal Issues: Discrimination
Presenters:

• Pauline Kim, professor, Washington University School of Law; Charles Nagel Chair of Constitutional Law and Political Science
• Roger Reinsch, professor, University of Minnesota Duluth, Labovitz School of Business and Economics
• Andrew Selbst, senior associate, Hogan Lovells

Session 3: New Directions in Data
Presenters:

• Eric Armbrecht, associate professor, Saint Louis University Center for Health Outcomes Research, Department of Internal Medicine (School of Medicine), Department of Health Management and Policy (College for Public Health & Social Justice); Senior Analytics Advisor, Midwest Health Initiative
• Miriam Cherry, professor, Saint Louis University School of Law
• Jake Temme, architect of football information technology, Los Angeles Rams

Session 4: Legal Issues: Privacy
Presenters:

• Neil Richards, professor of law, Washington University School of Law
• Matt Bodie, Callis Family Professor of Law, Saint Louis University School of Law

Closing Thoughts

Videos

Introduction and Session 1: What is People Analytics?; The Business and Business Ethics of People Analytics

Session 2: Legal Issues: Discrimination

Session 3: New Directions in Data

Session 4: Legal Issues: Privacy

Friday, March 27, 2015, John K. Pruellage Courtroom

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law on July 26, 1990, and prohibits discrimination based on disabilities. In honor of the 25th anniversary of the ADA, the William C. Wefel Center for Employment Law and the Center for Health Law Studies at SLU LAW co-hosted this symposium featuring the ADA at the intersection of health law and employment law.

Schedule

Session One

• Kimberly Lackey, public policy team manager, Paraquad
• Kelly Moffatt, psychosocial counselor at The Rehabilitation Institute of St. Louis

Session Two: The Difference of Disability for Healthcare Workers
Moderated by Marcia L. McCormick, director, William C. Wefel Center for Employment Law and professor of law, Saint Louis University School of Law

• Wellness Programs, the ADA, and GINA
  Pierce Blue, special assistant and attorney advisor, Office of Commissioner Chai Feldblum, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
• ADA Issues in the Healthcare Workforce
  Nicole Porter, professor of law, University of Toledo College of Law
• Numerical Goals and Disability Employment Policy
  Mark Weber, Vincent DePaul Professor of Law, DePaul University College of Law

Session Three: Creating a Healthcare Workforce Ready to Provide Services to People with Disabilities
Moderated by Elizabeth Pendo, vice dean and professor of law, Saint Louis University School of Law
Commentator: Aimee Wehmeier, executive director and CEO, Paraquad

• Disability Cultural Competence and the Health Professions
  Mary Crossley, professor of law, University of Pittsburgh School of Law
• Accommodations and Modifications: What’s Reasonable in the Healthcare Setting?
  Leslie Francis, distinguished professor of philosophy and law and director, Center for Law & Biomedical Sciences, College of Law, University of Utah
• Fitting Together Disability, Personal Assistance, and Workplace Personal Assistance
  Silvia Yee, senior staff attorney, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF)

Closing Session: Incorporating Good Practices in the Workplace
All speakers participating.

Thursday, March 1, 2018

The William C. Wefel Center for Employment Law honored Gary L. Rutledge ('83) with the John E. Dunsford Achievement Award, recognizing his exceptional achievement and service in the field of employment and labor law.

Gary Rutledge is a professor of practice at SLU LAW and former vice president and general counsel for Anheuser-Busch InBev, North American Zone. He was selected by the past two graduating classes as Adjunct Professor of the Year.

Following the presentation of the award was a panel discussion on the globalization of labor relations. Panelists were Valerio De Stefano, professor at KU Leuven, and Johnny Wang, partner at Stinson Leonard Street.

Friday, January 29, 2016
Co‐sponsored by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and SLU LAW.

Welcome
United States District Judge Ronnie L. White, Eastern District of Missouri

Overview of ADR in the Eastern District
Gregory J. Linhares, Clerk of Court

Friendly Persuasion in Mediation
Prof. James A. Wall, Jr., University of Missouri-Columbia

Ethics Priorities and Conundrums for Mediators
Judge Karen Klein, former U.S. Magistrate Judge, District of North Dakota

Ethical Issues in Mediation
Panel of Mediators

Ask the Judges
Panel of U.S. District and Magistrate Judges

Videos

Keynote

Panel Discussions and Q&A

January 24, 2014
Co‐sponsored by The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and SLU LAW.

"Behind the Curtain of the Wizard: Hidden Issues in Settling Insurance Cases"
John C. Trimble, Lewis Wagner LLP, Indianapolis, Indiana

"Revisions to the Court's ADR Rules"
James G. Woodward, Clerk of Court

"Ethical Issues in Mediation"
Karen Tokarz, professor, Washington University School of Law
Michael Geigerman, managing director, USA&M Midwest

"The Bench and Bar Colloquium - A Q&A Session"
U.S. District Judges Audrey G. Fleissig, Catherine D. Perry and E. Richard Webber
U.S. Magistrate Judges David D. Noce and Thomas C. Mummert