The International Society for Labour and Social Security Law is an international association whose purpose is to study labour and social security law at the national and international level, to promote the exchange of ideas and information from a comparative perspective, and to encourage the closest possible collaboration among academics, lawyers, and other experts within the fields of labour and social security law.
For many of those active in issues in the workplace, the internationalization of labor law and relations is becoming a reality. To highlight just a few areas in this field of growing attention to the global legal landscape, those in academia work on issues of comparative labor and employment law, union lawyers consider international aspects of comprehensive corporate campaigns in support of the objectives of their clients, and management attorneys are increasingly called upon to give advice on the international ramifications of the employment policies of their employer clients.
In support of this work, a number of legal organizations have an international focus. The ISLSSL is one of them. Founded in 1958, the ISLSSL is composed of national affiliates whose members are scholars, union and management lawyers, judges, government officials, arbitrators, industrial relations and human resources specialists, and others interested in promoting international exchange of ideas and information and in developing collaboration among experts in the fields of labor, employment and employee benefits law.
The ISLSSL conducts a World Congress every three years and Regional Congresses (open to registrants from all regions) during the interim years. These meetings allow members both to combine travel with expanded understanding of how labor and employment law operate elsewhere and explain their system to others. ISLSSL conferences also facilitate development of new personal contacts and promote important scholarship, education and training in the fields of comparative and international labor law, employment law, and related fields.
In recent years, ISLSSL World Congresses were convened in Jerusalem in 2000, in Montevideo in 2003, in Paris in 2006, and in Sydney, Australia in 2009. A World Congress will be hosted in Santiago, Chile in 2012 The ISLSSL maintains several regional branches. Recent Western Hemisphere Regional Congresses have been held in Lima, Peru; Querétaro, Mexico; and in the Dominican Republic. Recent Asian Regional Congresses were hosted in Manilla and Taipai, and recent European Regional Congresses were held in Stockholm and Bologna. In addition, the U.S. Branch sponsored a one day conferences in Chicago in May 2005 and in Philadelphia in 2012.
The U.S. Branch of the ISLSSL and the University of Illinois College of Law publish The Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal, a quarterly law journal which publishes articles in the field of comparative and transnational labor and employment law. The journal publishes comparative analysis articles on labor law, employment policy, labor economics, worker migration, and social security issues. Many articles focus on legal systems in developing countries or post-colonial nations with emerging or new legal systems. The target audience for the journal is academics, practicing attorneys, policy makers, students, workers and labor movement officials and activists. The journal's stated policy is to make the publication readable and of practical value to officials in developing countries.
The U.S. branch maintains a website here. The current members of the Executive Committee are Steven L. Willborn (Chair),George Nicolau, Vice-Chair, and Alvin L. Goldman, Secretary-Treasurer. The ISLSSL can be contacted here.
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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Despite this possible horror: that they might prefer the
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To the continuation of their creed
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“I was like a social worker for lepers. My clients had a chunk of their body they wanted to give away; for a price I was there to receive it. Crimes, sins, nightmares, hunks of hair: it was surprising how many of them has something to dispose of. The more I charged, the easier it was for them to breathe freely once more.”
—Tama Janowitz (b. 1957)
“... most Southerners of my parents’ era were raised to feel that it wasn’t respectable to be rich. We felt that all patriotic Southerners had lost everything in defense of the South, and sufficient time hadn’t elapsed for respectable rebuilding of financial security in a war- impoverished region.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)