Stein Scholar Denis Nolasco ’17 recently received a national award from the Major League Baseball Players Association for her workers’ rights advocacy in Central America and continued study of labor law at Fordham Law School.
Nolasco, who hails from the Dominican Republic, was among up to five students awarded the 2016 Michael Weiner Scholarship for Labor Studies. The $10,000 scholarship is named after the former MLBPA Executive Director who passed away in 2013 at age 51, according to MLBPA Players Trust’s web site.
Winning the scholarship, Nolasco said, provided validation that “other people see I could be an asset to the labor law profession” while also reaffirming she is on the right legal career path.
Nolasco credited Professor Jennifer Gordon for encouraging her to apply for the scholarship despite her initial reservations. She described Gordon as a mentor who has helped her better understand labor law challenges and aligned her with opportunities that fit her interests.
In her award nomination letter, Gordon praised Nolasco for her “poise, warmth, and capacity for genuine engagement with other human beings.”
“Her contributions to the class discussion are sophisticated, drawing on a deep base of knowledge; creative, often suggesting solutions to problems that are new to her peers; and original, bringing an international perspective to a conversation that otherwise can bog down in assumptions based on U.S. law,” Gordon wrote.
Nolasco’s interest in labor issues derives, in large part, from her mother’s experiences as a domestic worker subjected to inhumane working conditions in the Dominican Republic. Nolasco and her family immigrated to the U.S. after she finished high school.
Prior to attending Fordham Law, Nolasco graduated from Baruch College, City University of New York, with a political science degree then worked on the House Ways and Means Committee on issues of labor rights in relation to US trade policy. In 2011-12, she worked with the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center in Central America to promote the rights of women working in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica. She also worked with Colombian trade unionists.
In her last year in the Solidarity Center program, she led the implementation and planning of a $2 million U.S. State Department program to support workers’ rights in the informal economy in Guatemala, Gordon wrote, noting she had graduated college just three years earlier.
“My desire to work on behalf of other young women or girls is a driving force behind my passion and pursuit of labor law,” Nolasco said, explaining she did not want others to repeat her mother’s experience of 15-hour workdays while underage.
Nolasco’s experiences growing up in the Dominican Republic and working in Central America made her more skeptical of the law, she reflected, explaining minimum wage and occupational safety laws in Latin America are often disobeyed because they “don’t carry the force of law.”
Her Dominican upbringing also sparked within her an interest in baseball and an appreciation for the work the MLBPA does for her countrymen who play the sport at its highest level.
“Growing up in the Dominican Republic, I was familiar with the story of a lot of Dominican players who saw a labor contract with the MLBPA as their golden ticket out of poverty,” said Nolasco, who enjoys rooting for the New York Mets. “However, after these players are able to secure a contract with the MLBPA, they still need union advocates to ensure that their legal rights are protected and fair employment standards are upheld.”