Labour Law Or Social Competition Law

It may seem dangerous to express oneself on the future of labour law, since it is widely considered to be in crisis by scholars of the field. There is no doubt that anyone attempting to predict the probable developments by presenting hypotheses regarding these developments runs the risk of making errors. Especially the impossibility to guarantee the relevancy of the chosen parameters and a correct evaluation of the nature of their relations could lead to erroneous predictions. The same applies when one has the ambition to pronounce oneself on the future of institutions, structures or procedures laid down in and protected by law. The objective of this book is threefold. First of all, it draws attention to a number of phenomena and processes both within and outside the law that affect the protective mechanisms and essential functions of labour law. Secondly, the authors want to point out their main causes and principal consequences. Finally, the book reflects the remedies proposed by the authors to preserve the essential task of labour law. Those objectives are achieved by developing the following four themes: the existential relation between labour law, the labour market and social competition; the historical tie between labour law and human dignity; the relationship between labour law, market law and (social) competition law; and finally the risk of a renewed contestation of the dignity of working people. The aim of this book is to provide intellectually challenging ideas for those interested in understanding, explaining and interpreting labour laws - whether they are scholars, practitioners, judges, policy-makers, or workers and employers.--Back cover.

In this work, author Marc Rigaux uncovers the parameters that European labor legislators used in the development of labor protection. He formulates a number of theses that allow him to establish a theory of labor law. The themes dealt with fit into an overall vision on labor in its relation with capital as dealt with in law. In this concept, labor law is seen as a field of tension between an economically imposed, mainly free labor market on the one hand and citizenship ensuing from the political order as the ultimate justification of the correction of the market on the other. The steps taken by the labor and social legislator do indeed hover between those two poles. Even though the legislator does not want to (and is not able to?) question the principle of the free labor market, he does give shape to a person's fundamental right to have a decent life within the domain of labor relations and social relations. Through the study of labor law as a synthesis of citizenship and social competition, the fundamental relationship between the economic and political order is examined. The protection offered by labor law is pressed between citizenship and the social competition imposed by the economic order. The labor legislator invokes the political legitimacy (of the sovereign nation) to adjust the economic power and economic order.

Collective Bargaining for Self-Employed Workers in Europe Approaches to Reconcile Competition Law and Labour Rights Founding Editor: Roger Blanpain General Editor: Frank Hendrickx Edited by Bernd Waas & Christina Hießl The increase in the number of self-employed workers, partially in response to the advent of the platform economy, has raised the spectre of horizontal price-fixing by self-employed members of a profession. This perception, however, is at odds with international labour standards, under which self-employed persons should also be able to conclude collective agreements to some extent. It is now commonplace for companies to offer various forms of non-standard employment that shift risk from the labour engager to the labour provider – which may increase the likelihood of those workers to fall outside the legal concept of ‘employee’ and because of that affects their legal protection. Legal practitioners may then face a dilemma: what may be required under labour law may be prohibited under antitrust law. In the first comprehensive analysis of these intensely debated issues, the authors argue that there is an urgent need to address the current legal puzzle, including through regulatory measures. This must include, in particular, the existing regulation at the level of the European Union (EU), which dominates competition law in the Member States. The book combines an analysis of the supranational framework by experts in labour law as well as competition law with in-depth country reports from Member States of the EU in which regulations and/or practices of collective bargaining for the self-employed exist. Among the many issues discussed in this book are the following: collective bargaining and international labour rights; self-employed individuals and the concept of undertaking in EU competition law; the concept of ‘social dumping’; the importance of the case law of the European Court of Justice; the concept of ‘vulnerability’; competition authorities’ enforcement strategies and priorities; the concept of ‘false self-employed’; and the possible introduction of exemptions, presumptions, safe harbours, or smart regulation solutions in competition law. The book gives an insight into the legal situation in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden. These reports discuss the current practice of collective bargaining and how the current law is reflected in the academic discourse on the right of self-employed people to bargain collectively. This important book, in its presentation of legally sound and effective ways to shape the application of the right to bargain collectively that are attuned to the business and technological realities of the twenty-first century, promotes an understanding of the consequences for current law and practice and offers a basis for a discussion of regulatory measures addressing existing challenges. Practitioners of labour law and competition law, national competition authorities, and other interested parties will benefit from the detailed analysis and extensive findings.

Throughout the industrial world, the discipline of labor law has fallen into deep philosophical and policy crisis, at the same time as new theoretical approaches make it a field of considerable intellectual ferment. Modern labor law evolved in a symbiotic relationship with a postwar institutional and policy agenda, the social, economic and political underpinnings of which have gradually eroded in the context of accelerating international economic integration and wage-competition. These essays--which are the product of a transnational comparative dialog among academics and practitioners in labor law and related legal fields, including social security, immigration, trade, and development--identify, analyze, and respond to some of the conceptual and policy challenges posed by globalization.

This edited collection is the culmination of a comparative project on 'Voices at Work' funded by the Leverhulme Trust 2010 - 2013. The book aims to shed light on the problematic concept of worker 'voice' by tracking its evolution and its complex interactions with various forms of law. Contributors to the volume identify the scope for continuity of legal approaches to voice and the potential for change in a sample of industrialised English speaking common law countries, namely Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, and USA. These countries, facing broadly similar regulatory dilemmas, have often sought to borrow and adapt certain legal mechanisms from one another. The variance in the outcomes of any attempts at 'borrowing' seems to demonstrate that, despite apparent membership of a 'common law' family, there are significant differences between industrial systems and constitutional traditions, thereby casting doubt on the notion that there are definitive legal solutions which can be applied through transplantation. Instead, it seems worth studying the diverse possibilities for worker voice offered in divergent contexts, not only through traditional forms of labour law, but also such disciplines as competition law, human rights law, international law and public law. In this way, the comparative study highlights a rich multiplicity of institutions and locations of worker voice, configured in a variety of ways across the English-speaking common law world. This book comprises contributions from many leading scholars of labour law, politics and industrial relations drawn from across the jurisdictions, and is therefore an exceedingly comprehensive comparative study. It is addressed to academics, policymakers, legal practitioners, legislative drafters, trade unions and interest groups alike. Additionally, while offering a critique of existing laws, this book proposes alternative legal tools to promote engagement with a multitude of 'voices' at work and therefore foster the effective deployment of law in industrial relations.

As scholars and policymakers around the world seek a systematic approach to the question of 'gig work,' one of its regulatory dimensions – the intersection of labor and competition law – points toward a deeper reconceptualization of the conventional legal and economic categories typically brought to bear upon it. A comparative approach to the question of gig work further reveals the variety and contingency of background assumptions that are often overlooked in the context of domestic policy debates. By combining a detailed comparative doctrinal survey of the regulation of non-employee workers in domestic competition law systems with a set of essays reframing the underlying questions raised – in terms of international legal frameworks, freedom of association norms, alternative approaches to law and economics, and more – The Cambridge Handbook of Labor in Competition Law moves the debates over the fissured workplace and the labor – competition law intersection forward in novel ways.

Platform work arrangements are often defended as an expression of technological progress with the potential to enable people to work as self-employed individuals, often without any supervision or control. However, by now, it is well-documented that platform work not only shares important features of flexibility and precariousness with other casual work arrangements that are on the rise around the world, but it also entails the risk of excluding a significant portion of workers from the protection of fundamental collective labour rights, including their coverage from collective agreements. In this important and timely book, the author shows how a human rights-based approach (HRBA) towards collective labour rights can bridge this protection gap. Such an approach identifies workers, regardless of their employment status, as rights-holders that are entitled to rights, like the right to collective bargaining, derived from international human rights and labour rights instruments. Fully describing the phenomenon of platform work as well as presenting a detailed global overview of responses related to the challenges stemming from platform work arrangements, the research, inter alia, covers aspects, such as the following: problems, challenges, and questions related to platform work arrangements, and how those are linked to broader labour market trends; platform work’s deeper foundational implications for labour law; legal developments related to the regulation of platform work with an assessment of their limits when it comes to collective labour rights, also recognised as human rights; various ways in which platform workers and other atypical workers have managed to exercise their collective labour rights; and promising indications of closer cooperation between organised labour and workers in non-standard forms of employment. The analysis draws on international human rights and labour rights treaties and conventions, domestic legislation and regulations, rulings from international and national courts, and interpretative and authoritative sources including the relevant legal literature. The book manifests and responds to a genuine need for in-depth research with respect to the protection of the human rights of platform workers with an analytical framework that will ensure their adequate protection. Its crucial observations will be welcomed by practitioners in labour law, human rights law, and competition law, as well as by academics, human resources professionals, and labour and employment policymakers.