Redefining Labour Law

Comprises 12 papers covering the parameters of labour law, research into labour law, and the teaching of labour law. Includes an essay on the internationalization of labour law.

During the middle third of the 20th century, workers in most industrialized countries secured a substantial measure of job security, whether through legislation, contract or social practice. This “standard employment contract,” as it was known, became the foundation of an impressive array of rights and entitlements, including social insurance and pensions, protection against unsociable working conditions, and the right to bargain collectively. Recent changes in technology and the global economy, however, have dramatically eroded this traditional form of employment. Employers now value flexibility over stability, and increasingly hire employees for short-term or temporary work. Many countries have also repealed labor laws, relaxed employee protections, and reduced state-provided benefits. As the old system of worker protection declines, how can labor regulation be improved to protect workers? In Rethinking Workplace Regulation, nineteen leading scholars from ten countries and half a dozen disciplines present a sweeping tour of the latest policy experiments across the world that attempt to balance worker security and the new flexible employment paradigm. Edited by noted socio-legal scholars Katherine V.W. Stone and Harry Arthurs, Rethinking Workplace Regulation presents case studies on new forms of dispute resolution, job training programs, social insurance and collective representation that could serve as policy models in the contemporary industrialized world. The volume leads with an intriguing set of essays on legal attempts to update the employment contract. For example, Bruno Caruso reports on efforts in the European Union to “constitutionalize” employment and other contracts to better preserve protective principles for workers and to extend their legal impact. The volume then turns to the field of labor relations, where promising regulatory strategies have emerged. Sociologist Jelle Visser offers a fresh assessment of the Dutch version of the ‘flexicurity’ model, which attempts to balance the rise in nonstandard employment with improved social protection by indexing the minimum wage and strengthening rights of access to health insurance, pensions, and training. Sociologist Ida Regalia provides an engaging account of experimental local and regional “pacts” in Italy and France that allow several employers to share temporary workers, thereby providing workers job security within the group rather than with an individual firm. The volume also illustrates the power of governments to influence labor market institutions. Legal scholars John Howe and Michael Rawling discuss Australia's innovative legislation on supply chains that holds companies at the top of the supply chain responsible for employment law violations of their subcontractors. Contributors also analyze ways in which more general social policy is being renegotiated in light of the changing nature of work. Kendra Strauss, a geographer, offers a wide-ranging comparative analysis of pension systems and calls for a new model that offers “flexible pensions for flexible workers.” With its ambitious scope and broad inquiry, Rethinking Workplace Regulation illustrates the diverse innovations countries have developed to confront the policy challenges created by the changing nature of work. The experiments evaluated in this volume will provide inspiration and instruction for policymakers and advocates seeking to improve worker’s lives in this latest era of global capitalism.

This 2006 book is structured around the themes of time, space and discourse as they are applied to our working lives.

This volume looks into current thinking and policy options on workIt consists of a selection of articles from the ILO's flagship journal, the International Labour Review. To most people, work is the mainstay of livelihood, social integration, and identity. But the twentieth-century meaning of "work" can no longer be taken for granted. As patterns of work continue to shift in response to the demands of production and trade in the global economy, major challenges have arisen not only in the lives of individual workers, but also for employers exposed to global competition and for the makers of national and international policy and law. At the heart of the debate lies the challenge of reframing the concepts and rules whereby people's socioeconomic security and the human dimensions of work can be reconciled with the global market's growing need for competitive labor flexibility.

"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"--

First published in 1991, Rethinking Labour-Management Relations explores how the contemporary system of industrial relations developed and outlines proposals for a better alternative. The book examines the positives and negatives of three systems of industrial relations: a freely operating market for labour where workers bargain individually with employers; a strike-based system of collective bargaining; and, a compulsory arbitration system. It discusses how the strike replaced individual bargaining, highlighting the deficiencies in these respective systems and presenting arbitration as the more efficient and effective way of settling disputes. In doing so, the book emphasises the role of the parties involved in finding solutions and considers how government intervention could be kept to a minimum. Exploring a wealth of literature relating to compulsory arbitration systems around the world and formulating a set of criteria for establishing the best possible form of arbitration, Rethinking Labour-Management Relations will appeal to those with an interest in the history of trade union theory, public policy, and labour law.

The traditional boundaries of labour law are becoming outmoded in a modern world in which active labour market participants vastly outnumber "employees", and the world of work extends way beyond the workplace gate. There is convergence with labour market regulation. The contract of employment remains central but is no longer the sole object of study Labour Law and Labour Market Regulation is a state of the art presentation of the latest Australian scholarship and research surrounding this seismic change. Its 38 chapters reflect the dramatically different industrial, social, political and legislative contexts in which the law now operates and the intellectual revolution this is generating. The latest theoretical thinking and empirical findings are gathered together in four parts: the varying purposes of regulation; the different institutions and technologies of regulation; the active role regulation plays in constituting labour markets; and, the regulation of the processes by which employment rights and obligations are determined. Individual chapters contain studies of regulation within prescriptive government schemes, contract networks, specialist labour markets, the intersection between work and family, enterprise policies and practices, and the courts and tribunals. For academics, the book provides much material to enliven and diversify their courses. It advocates fresh intellectual approaches which take account of international scholarship and, while mindful of the latest legislative changes, it adopts a long-range, multi-locational and pluralist view of Australian labour law. For practitioners, the book provides insights into areas that are,as arbitration declines, becoming increasingly important to their clients' interests. The most recent legislation and jurisprudence is discussed in many chapters including discrimination, dismissals, health and safety, immigration, social security, franchise, volunteer and contract law.