Reinventing Labor Law: A Rejoinder

In an Article published recently in this journal, Stanley Gacek, an attorney working with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union in the United States, takes issue with my analysis of the political consequences of corporatist and contractualist labor law models, especially as applied to the current situations in Brazil and the United States. Despite our many major disagreements, I welcome Gacek's response to my Article and his effort to expand public discussion of the alternative legal-institutional forms of democratic labor organization. Unfortunately, in the course of developing his own position Gacek seriously misrepresents my views. He also misunderstands the development of labor law in the United States and Brazil.

I want to correct these misrepresentations, both for the sake of my earlier Article, and for the sake of the broader debate over the future of labor law and the transformation of labor relations.