Contract Labour Law And The Realities Of Working Life

"This book offers a critical and timely account of how labour law has become a means for protecting employers rather than workers. The past few decades have witnessed something of a 'silent revolution' in the traditional protective role that labour law has played in the lives of workers. While this transformation has been overt in the realm of the market and at the level of the legislature, the role of the judiciary in this process remains significantly under-studied. Focusing on Australia, but drawing also on material from New Zealand, the UK and Canada, this book investigates how the common law has intervened to shape labour law in the image of commercial contract, determining disputes and defining legal issues by ignoring the realities of working life. Under this new conception of labour law, industrial relations between workers and employers are rarely reciprocal or relational. Rather, they are determined by the legal meaning and purpose of the contract of employment, drafted by lawyers for the benefit of employers and their human resources departments. Having demonstrated how approaches to contractual formalist legal reasoning have redefined labour law, this book goes on to propose an array of innovative legal and policy strategies to restore the protective role of labour law to the employment relationship. Scholarly, but also accessible to students, this book will appeal to those with interests in labour law, contract law and sociolegal studies"--

This book offers a critical and timely account of how labour law has become a means for protecting employers rather than workers. The past few decades have witnessed something of a ‘silent revolution’ in the traditional protective role that labour law has played in the lives of workers. While this transformation has been overt in the realm of the market and at the level of the legislature, the role of the judiciary in this process remains significantly under-studied. Focussing on Australia, but drawing also on material from New Zealand, the UK and Canada, this book investigates how the common law has intervened to shape labour law in the image of commercial contract, determining disputes and defining legal issues by ignoring the realities of working life. Under this new conception of labour law, industrial relations between workers and employers are rarely reciprocal or relational. Rather, they are determined by the legal meaning and purpose of the contract of employment, drafted by lawyers for the benefit of employers and their human resources departments. Having demonstrated how approaches to contractual formalist legal reasoning have redefined labour law, this book goes on to propose an array of innovative legal and policy strategies to restore the protective role of labour law to the employment relationship. Scholarly, but also accessible to students, this book will appeal to those with interests in labour law, contract law and sociolegal studies.

There is growing interest in trying to understand and rethink the goals of labour law in light of changing realities in the labour market and regulation. Responding to such fundamental questions as: What is labour law for? How can it be justified? And on what should reforms be based? this book challenges the way we think about labour law.

The protection of jobs and labour law standards achieved by employees in the past has been under pressure from neoliberalization forces for many years. The focused perspectives evident in this original collection of essays go a long way toward clearly de? ning where labour law and social security law must set their sights in order to preserve fair and productive employer-employee relations in the new world of work. Distinguished researchers study the changing realities confronting the labour market, in public policy as well as in industrial relations. Issues and topics include the following: – integration of immigrants into industrial relations; – the social situation of migrant workers; – new phenomena brought by the digital age; – temporary agency work; – harmonizing family and working lives; – sport and labour law; – the role of European Works Councils; and – social and labour reforms. Throughout this book, the contributors emphasize the changing role of the state and reform agendas. Although the central focus is on Europe, there is an abundance of comparative detail, allowing for global application. As a matchless, up-to-date overview and analysis of how new and emerging forms of employment and industrial relations impact employee security, this book will be warmly welcomed by practitioners, academics, and policymakers concerned with ensuring the persistence of fair and viable standards in labour and social security law.

It cannot be denied that in recent decades, for many if not most people, work has become unstable and insecure, with serious risk and few benefits for workers. As this reality spills over into political and social life, it is crucial to interrogate the transformations affecting employment relations, shape research agendas, and influence the policies of national and international institutions. This single volume brings together thirty-nine scholars (both academics and experienced industrial relations actors) in the fields of employment relations and labour law in a forthright discussion of new approaches, theories, and methods aimed at ameliorating the world of work. Focusing on why and how work is changing, how collective actors deal with it, and the future of work from different disciplinary angles and at an international level, the contributors describe and analyse such issues and topics as the following: new forms of social protection and representation; differences in the power relations of workers and political dynamics; balancing protection of workers’ dignity and promotion of productivity; intersection of information technology and workplace regulation; how the gig economy undermines legal protections; role of professional and trade associations; workplace conflict management; lay judges in labour courts; undeclared work in the informal sector of the labour market; work incapacity and disability; (in)coherence of the work-related case law of the European Court of Justice; and business restructurings. Derived from a major conference held in Leuven in September 2018, the book offers an in-depth understanding of the changing world of work, its main transformations, and the challenges posed to classical employment relations theories and methods as well as to labour law. With its wide range of insights, analysis, and reflection, this unique contribution to the study of industrial relations offers an authoritative reference guide to scholars, policymakers, trade unions and business associations, human resources professionals, and practitioners who need to deal with the future of work challenges.

To what extent is labour law an autonomous field of study? This book is based upon the papers written by a group of leading international scholars on this theme, delivered at a conference to mark Professor Mark Freedland's retirement from his teaching fellowship in Oxford. The chapters explore the boundaries and connections between labour law and other legal disciplines such as company law, competition law, contract law and public law; labour law and legal methodologies such as reflexive governance and comparative law; and labour law and other disciplines such as ethics, economics and political philosophy. In so doing, it represents a cross-section of the most sophisticated current work at the cutting edge of labour law theory.

Puts forward proposals for the future development of UK labour law aimed at strengthening the legal rights of workers. Discusses the legacy of deregulatory policies and the need for re-regulation. Makes recommendations concerning reform of the employment relationship, rebuilding collective bargaining structures, establishing core statutory rights, elimination of discriminatory employment practices, trade union rights, and reform of the existing machinery for the enforcement of employment rights.

The term ‘work-life balance’ refers to the relationship between paid work in all of its various forms and personal life, which includes family but is not limited to it. In addition, gender permeates every aspect of this relationship. This volume brings together a wide range of perspectives from a number of different disciplines, presenting research ndings and their implications for policy at all levels (national, sectoral, enterprise, workplace). Collectively, the contributors seek to close the gap between research and policy with the intent of building a better work-life balance regime for workers across a variety of personal circumstances, needs, and preferences. Among the issues and topics covered are the following: – differences and similarities between men and women and particularly between mothers and fathers in their work choices; – ‘third shift’ work (work at home at night or during weekends); – effect of the extent to which employers perceive management of this process to be a ‘burden’; – employers’ exploitation of the psychological interconnection between masculinity and breadwinning; – organisational culture that is more available for supervisors than for rank and le workers; – weak enforcement mechanisms and token penalties for non-compliance by employers; – trade unions as the best hope for precarious workers to improve work-life balance; – crowd-work (on-demand performance of tasks by persons selected remotely through online platforms from a large pool of potential and generic workers); – an example of how to use work-life balance insights to evaluate the law; – collective self-scheduling; – employers’ duty to accommodate; and – nancial hardship as a serious threat to work-life balance. As it has been shown clearly that work-life con ict is associated with negative health outcomes, exacerbates gender inequalities, and many other concerns, this unusually rich collection of essays will resonate particularly with concerned lawyers and legal academics who ask what work-life balance literature has to offer and how law should respond.