Volume 3 / Number 1 / Introduction

Labor market globalization threatens upheaval on the historical relief map of the political economy. During the past two decades, transnational businesses increasingly have made market-based decisions about the places in which labor could be most efficiently utilized. The next millennium promises an acceleration and broadening of this shift to global labor markets. It now takes little imagination to envision labor markets in which production, clerical, analytical, and even management workers perform their services in many different countries for use in product and service markets elsewhere. This shift to globalization opens the door to new emerging businesses and also sets the stage for small businesses to participate in the global economy as never before.

What implication does this globalization of labor markets carry for the legal regimes that now govern the workplace in America? How will the American system of collective bargaining and individual rights affect labor and employment abroad? What will be the impact of world labor markets on the American employment and labor law? How will small businesses be affected? These were some of the questions addressed at the 1998 Lewis & Clark Law Forum, entitled “World-Wide Labor Markets and Employment Law in the Twenty-First Century.” The Forum took place on October 2, 1998 at the Northwestern School of Law of Lewis & Clark College. While the papers presented at the Forum did not address every implication for employment law arising from labor market globalization, they substantially advanced our understanding of the range of possibilities and effects. The distinguished scholars who offered their contributions explored issues that not only are complex, but will affect the structure of labor and employment law worldwide well into the next millennium.