Excerpt from Ignored Consequences—The Conflicting Policies of Labor Law and Business Reorganization and Its Impact on Organized Labor
Labor law is founded on the principal of equalizing the bargaining power between employers and employees. The primary goals of labor law are to foster labor stability through protecting employees' rights to collectively bargain, to require an employer to bargain in good faith with organized labor before acting unilaterally to modify wages or other conditions of employment under a collective bargaining agreement, promoting industrial peace and avoiding industrial strife which interfere with the normal flow of commerce. Bankruptcy law is founded on the similarly laudable principal of enabling a debtor to obtain an economic "fresh start" while ensuring equitable treatment of creditors. Within the chapter 11 reorganization context of the Bankruptcy Code, one of the primary goals of bankruptcy law is to enable the rehabilitation of the debtor's operations. To do so, a debtor may need to eliminate certain burdensome obligations, including obligations under executory contracts.