L&EC EVENTS AT THE NLG NATIONAL CONVENTION

The NLG 75th Anniversary Law for the People Convention took place on October 10-14, 2012, in Pasadena, CA.

Angela Davis to keynote the NLG Convention:  It was a team of young, committed Guild members who secured Ms. Davis’s acquittal on high-profile charges in 1972 and in the time since, she has spearheaded the movement against U.S. mass incarceration. In addition to her long career as an educator in the University of California system (where former Governor Ronald Reagan once vowed she would never teach again, and where she is now tenured), she has written seminal critiques of the prison industrial complex, and co-founded prisoner advocacy organizations including Critical Resistance.  Her most recent work includes a comparative study of women’s imprisonment in the U.S., the Netherlands, and Cuba, and organizing with the Occupy movement.  Click here for more information about speakers and awards.

Click here for the full brochure.

Convention - Plenaries, Major Panels & Workshops

Click here for a PDF of the schedule of events.  Click here for information about Major Panels.  Click here for a list of the Workshops.  Click here for information about CLEs.  Listed below are additional details about events that may be of particular interest to members of the L&EC.

HOT TOPIC: Jim Crow Politics Revived – Election Suppression 2012

10am - 11:15 am, Friday, Oct. 12. Location TBA.

The 1965 Voter Rights Act was not the result of a beneficent Congress, but was passed as the result of years of struggle by African Americans and others to guarantee people of color the right to vote.  The Voting Rights Act and post-Civil War constitutional amendments prohibit discrimination on account of race, sex, language, ethnicity, religion and age. However, recent cases have allowed States to decide who is qualified to vote and when elections should be held.  Under the guise of preventing voter fraud, well-funded conservative voter suppression efforts seek to use state law to turn the clock back to the days when workers could not organize and the only people who could vote were white men who owned property. 

The 2012 election is taking place in the midst of an economic crisis that is having a devastating impact on working people around the world. Naturally, working families in the U.S. are absorbed in the day-to-day struggle to survive in difficult times. Join the Labor and Employment Committee, The United People of Color Caucus (TUPOCC) and NLG Anti-Racism Committee (ARC) for an educational and practical workshop session. Attendees will learn about the issues and be able to hook up with Unions and advocacy organizations coordinating litigation and other non-partisan voter protection efforts.

Fighting Guest Worker and Undocumented Worker Exploitation in Light of Anti-Immigrant Attacks

10:30am-12pm Sunday, Oct. 14, Location TBA

The panel will discuss congressional guest worker bills which seek to sharply limit immigrant rights, state anti-immigrant laws (such as Arizona’s SB1070 and Alabama’s HB56), attempts to ban day laborers from seeking work, harassment of undocumented communities, and resistance to these attacks. Panelists will share successful tactics—from federal litigation to advocacy to organizing campaigns—to advance the human rights of all immigrants.

Immigrant workers have the same right to workplace protections as all workers, regardless of status. However, undocumented workers face greater vulnerability in exercising their workplace rights due to their immigration status, particularly where employers retaliate by contacting immigration enforcement, conduct I-9 reverification schemes, or attempt to disclose immigration status in litigation. This workshop will highlight recent examples of immigrant worker organizing against employer retaliation; and present potential proactive strategies to protect immigrant workers, including protective orders, U and T visas, ICE Operating Instruction 273.3a, and the Obama administration’s recent prosecutorial discretion policy. The workshop will also discuss defensive strategies to protect immigrant worker rights, including removal defense strategies in cases of employer retaliation, and recent developments in efforts to curb the reach of Hoffman Plastics, which limited backpay remedies to undocumented workers in the context of NLRB litigation.

Workshop: Contingent Work: Working Inside, Outside and Against the Conventional Definition of “Employment”

4:45 pm, Saturday, Oct. 14, Location TBA

As workers worldwide have lost benefits, job security and power over the last three decades, we have seen more and more workers here in the U.S. become contingent workers. Some of these workers are not even classified as employees; others have little or no rights under conventional labor law. This is the fastest growing segment of the labor market.
 
This workshop addresses efforts to empower contingent workers, from taxicab drivers classified as independent contractors, to day laborers who have organized to change the way they work, to immigrant workers in almost every area of the economy. David Bacon, Betty Hung, Victor Narro and Sanjukta Paul will draw on their years of experience in organizing around these issues to analyze the different strategies for advancing contingent workers’ rights, from union organizing to community-based efforts to using legal strategies to change these workers' position under the law.

Wage Theft: Representing Low-Wage Workers

10am-11:15am, Friday, Oct. 13, Location TBA

Labor & Employment Committee MEMBERSHIP Meeting - TBA

This meeting is open to all MEMBERS and everyone interested in the activities of the L&EC.  Please join us.  The specific time and location of the meeting will be posted at our TABLE at the Convention.  And you can get details by contacting Daniel Hornal at nlg.laboremploy.comm@gmail.com .

Labor & Employment Committee Reception

Thursday, Oct 11, 5pm

At the offices of Rothner, Segall & Greenstone, 510 South Marengo Ave., Pasadena