Labor Law, Sociology Of

Class, rooted in social relations of production and markets, is a central concept in sociology. Correspondingly, and dating back to the classical theorists [Page 901]Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Max Weber (1864–1920), sociologists ask how labor law affects or reflects class inequalities, power, and conflict. Similarly, theory and empirical questions about state autonomy, including the autonomy of law, guide sociological inquiry into the evolution of labor law and its causes and consequences for economic and political-cultural ideas, actors, interests, and institutions. Following Michel Foucault (1926–1984) and neo-Marxist labor process scholarship, sociological research on labor law also addresses issues of worker control and discipline.

Labor law focuses on regulating the employeremployee relationship at the workplace. The core American law school courses on labor law cover rules of organization and collective bargaining between associations of workers, or unions, and employers, including employers' associations. Regulation of wages, hours, and work standards is part of labor law, and so are nontraditional work arrangements such as contingent employment and telecommuting and diverse decentralized work arrangements facilitated by the rise of the Internet. Laws prohibiting employment discrimination based on race, sex, religion, ethnicity, or other characteristics—ordinarily treated as a separate legal subject—have received more sociological attention than has labor law.

An important precursor to the modern law of employment contracts was the master-servant law of mid-Victorian England. By focusing on the rise of individual freedom and liberal political institutions, Karen Orren analyzed U.S. case law and found that “the law of master and servant was at the foundation of capitalist development and industrialism” (1991: 70). Similarly, Marc Steinberg's careful empirical studies showed that employer-mobilized, local court interpretations of master-servant law were a form of labor relations in eighteenthand early nineteenthcentury England. These interpretations were not derivative of control relations pre-established in the economy. Rather, master-servant law and associated workplace cognitive models and behavioral repertoires formed a wide sphere of legal norms that helped to constitute and legitimate the evolving workplace relations of industrial capitalism. Labor control problems lacking solutions were especially conducive to the “embedding” of labor control in law.