Elizabeth Hoffmann
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About Elizabeth
Hoffmann’s research examines how people understand and relate to the laws and rules that affect their daily lives – what is often called "legal consciousness." Her research focuses on the intersection of the law-and-society and the work-and-occupations areas, often with a particular emphasis on gender. Overarching themes of Dr. Hoffmann's writing include: (1) workplace dispute resolution, (2) organizational responses to employment laws, (3) worker co-operatives, (4) workplace accommodations, (4) historic legal consciousness during and after WWI, and (5) lactating employees.
Contributions
Publications
Reviews how the Lactation at Work Law amended the Fair Labor Standards Act to mandate employer accomdation of employees' breast milk expression.
Discusses federal law mandates that employers accommodate lactating workers who wish to express breast milk at work. Reveals physical demands set lactating employees apart from their coworkers, as lactation requires regular breaks and private rooms to express milk.
Examines the federal law and its state-level equivalent in Indiana, drawing on two waves of interviews with human resource personnel, supervising managers, and lactating workers. Shows legal scholars how a successful civil rights law creates effective change; helps labor activists and management personnel understand how to approach new accommodations; and enables workers to understand the possibilities for amelioration of workplace problems through internal negotiations and legal reforms.
Demonstrates how legal compliance may be better achieved when organizations include individuals who will advocate for newly codified rights and related accommodations.Examines as its case study the Lactation at Work law, which amends the Fair Labor Standards Act to mandate basic provisions for employees to express breast milk at work.
Discusses how members of worker cooperatives—organizations collectively owned and democratically run by their workers—report substantial differences in how they can or must perform various emotions, compared with previous work at conventional, hierarchical organizations.
Focuses on dispute resolution strategies at matched pairs of worker co-operatives and conventional businesses in three very different industries: coal mining, taxicab driving, and wholefood distribution. Findings are that the worker co-operative members have access to more dispute resolution strategies than their conventionally employed counterparts. Leads to the conclusion that benefits might be achieved by conventional businesses that wish to embrace specific attributes usually associated with co-operatives, including management-employee cooperation, shared ownership, or greater workplace equality.