INSTITUTE FOR LAW AND THE WORKPLACE
Lecturer:
Thomas C. Kohler
Concurrent Professor of Law and Philisophy, Boston
College Law School
Commentary:
Kim Bobo
Executive Director, Interfaith Worker Justice
Robert D. Campbell
Senior Vice President of Human Resources, NiSource
Inc.
Chicago-Kent College of Law
Illinois Institute of Technology
565 West Adams
Chicago, IL 60661-3691
(312) 906-5090 for more information
The public is cordially invited to attend the lecture.
No registration is required.
Click
here to view/print the detailed program brochure
Religion
and the Workplace
In this year’s Piper Lecture on religion and the
workplace, Professor Kohler will outline the strong
link between religion and current U.S. labor and employment
law. He will discuss how the National Labor Relations
Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act have deep roots
in Catholic social thought and the Protestant social
gospel movement, and that Title VII would have been
unthinkable without the involvement of African-American
Protestant churches. Professor Kohler will suggest that
any new employment regulatory regime will have to take
religious insights into account, since they provide
an alternative to the understanding of the human person
that informs dominant forms of ordering. He will discuss
why, without its religious roots, law designed to protect
workers has become increasingly irrelevant. The commentary
by Kim Bobo and Robert Campbell will include insights
on the practical implications of Professor Kohler’s
thesis.
Thomas
C. Kohler
Concurrent Professor of Law and Philisophy, Boston College
Law School
Thomas C. Kohler is Concurrent Professor of Law and
Philosophy at Boston College. He is an internationally
recognized authority in the areas of comparative and
domestic labor, employment and employment discrimination
law. Professor Kohler has published and lectured widely
on these themes in the United States, Europe and Asia.
His work has appeared in leading American, French, German
and Japanese scholarly journals. He has also written
extensively on issues of civil society and on Catholic
social thought. A member of the American Law Institute,
he is a member of the Consultative Group for the Institute’s
proposed “Restatement of Employment Law.”
He also serves as one of five international advisors
to the “Restatement of European Labour Law,”
a project recently undertaken by a group of leading
European Union legal scholars. Among other appointments,
he serves on the editorial board of the Comparative
Labor Law and Policy Journal and is a member of
the Executive Board of the International Society for
Labor and Social Security Law.
Professor Kohler has held visiting appointments at
the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University;
the Faculty of Law of the University of Frankfurt,
Germany; and the University of Texas School of Law.
Kim
Bobo
Executive Director, Interfaith Worker Justice
Kim Bobo is the founder and executive director for Interfaith
Worker Justice, the leading national organization that
mobilizes religious support for low-wage workers and
rebuilds partnerships with the labor movement. In 1991,
Ms. Bobo founded the Chicago Interfaith Committee on
Worker Issues out of which the vision for Interfaith
Worker Justice developed. Since its founding in 1996,
the organization has built a network of sixty religion-labor
groups around the country, originated the “Labor
in the Pulpits” program in which a hundred cities
participate, started the Seminary Summer Program - a
joint program with the labor movement - placing seminary
and rabbinical students with unions for summer internships,
and created dozens of congregational resources on economic
justice.
Ms. Bobo has over twenty-five years of organizing experience,
as a former trainer for the Midwest Academy and former
Director of Organizing for Bread for the World. She
is the author of LIVES MATTER:
A HANDBOOK FOR
CHRISTIAN ORGANIZING,
and co-author of the best-selling organizing manual,
ORGANIZING FOR
SOCIAL CHANGE.
Ms. Bobo earned her BA in Religion from Barnard College,
Columbia University and her MA in Economics from the
New School for Social Research.
Robert
D. Campbell
Senior Vice President of Human Resources, NiSource Inc.
Robert D. Campbell is senior vice president of Human
Resources for NiSource, Inc. He is responsible for leading
NiSource’s strategic human resources efforts and
managing the NiSource human resources organization.
NiSource, a Fortune 500 company, is based in Merrillville,
Indiana, and is engaged in natural gas transmission,
storage and distribution, as well as electric generation,
transmission and distribution. Mr. Campbell was named
to this position at NiSource in September 2005. Previously,
he was employed at NiSource as vice president of Labor
& Employee Relations and vice president of Human
Resources from June 2001 through January 2004. In January
2004, he returned to Schiff Hardin LLP as of counsel
to oversee Schiff’s professional development functions.
From 1986 through 2001, Mr. Campbell was with the law
firm of Schiff Hardin LLP, first as an associate and
then as a partner. His practice was in the area of labor
and employment law.
Mr. Campbell received his undergraduate degree from
Oral Roberts University and his Juris Doctor degree
from Loyola University of Chicago. He served as law
clerk to the Honorable Frank J. McGarr, United States
District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
The Kenneth M. Piper Endowment
This lecture is funded by the Kenneth M. Piper Endowment,
established by a gift from Mrs. Kenneth M. Piper in
memory of her husband.
Mr. Piper was a distinguished executive with Motorola,
Inc., and Bausch & Lomb, Inc., who made important
contributions in human resources and labor relations
for more than two decades.
The Kenneth M. Piper Endowment Advisory Board
Joseph A. Barker
National Labor Relations Board
Patricia
A. Collins
Asher, Gittler, Greenfield, & D’Alba, Ltd.
Elaine S. Fox
Seyfarth Shaw LLP
Marisel A. Hernandez
Jacobs, Burns, Orlove, Stanton & Hernandez
Harold A. Katz
Katz, Friedman, Eagle, Eisenstein, Johnson & Bareck,
P.C.
Douglas P. Kight
The Boeing Company
Michael McAuley
National Treasury Employees Union
Lisa B.
Moss
Carmell, Charone, Widmer, Moss & Barr, Ltd.
S. Richard Pincus
Holland & Knight, LLP
Patricia Costello
Slovak
Schiff Hardin LLP
K. Bruce Stickler
Gardner Carton & Douglas |
