Documents Kountouris, Nicola 8 results

"Our aim in this article is to analyse the provisions of the Trade Union Act 2016 that deal with pre-strike ballots and picketing. We also consider Government proposals to legislate in respect of protests associated with industrial action (‘leverage action'), which were abandoned in favour of plans to amend the Code of Practice on Picketing. We note the suggestion made by several commentators and Opposition politicians that the Government might have intended with these changes to make it significantly more difficult for trade unions and workers to exercise their rights to take industrial action, and to engage in forms of protest associated with industrial action. Examining the stated policy aims of Government, and available evidence which speaks to those policy aims and to the likely impact of the new rules, we argue that the freedom of workers and trade unions to participate in and organise industrial action has indeed been narrowed very considerably by this Act; further, that the case for amending the existing legal framework was not at all well made."

"This book explores the conceptual framework of European employment law, focusing on understanding the law's construction of employment relationships. The book draws on extensive comparative research of the legal architecture of employment relations in national legal systems and EU law to analyse the traditional model of the contract of employment and the difficulties of using the traditional model to frame modern working relationships.

The authors then present a new model of the foundations of employment relationships, based on the concept of a personal work nexus, and explore the potential of their model to shape the future development of employment law.

Throughout the book, the authors analyse the interaction of domestic and EU employment law, and discuss the possibility of future legal harmonisation in the area. They conclude by exploring the potential for a common framework for European employment law, in the context of broader debates surrounding the harmonisation of European private law."

'This article seeks to build upon the earlier article ‘From the Contract of Employment to the Personal Work Nexus' (2006) 35 ILJ 1, and further to substantiate the theoretical basis for our work on the European comparative law of personal work contracts. Two associated but distinct hypotheses are presented; the first one concerns ‘institutions' and explores the ways in which the contract of employment has become and been a central institution of European labour or employment law systems, but an institution differently constructed and displaying normative diversity as between those different systems. The second hypothesis postulates a contrast in juridical methodology as between English common-law-based systems and continental European civil-law-based systems, the former being characterised by a ‘regulated self-designed contracts' approach, and the latter by a ‘standardised contract typology' approach. In conclusion, these two hypotheses are integrated into a composite tentative comparative theory, which, we argue, can usefully be related to the theoretical discourse about the ‘varieties of capitalism' in Europe.'

"This book illuminates the process and substance of transnational regulation of labour in a global economy. Transnational labour regulation, a central feature of the European social model, engages the 27 Member States of the European Union, and is of potential importance to the rest of the world. The book analyses the attempts at transnational regulation of temporary agency work through the social dialogue between trade unions and employers' organisations at European level and the subsequent - and so far fruitless - EU legislative process. These two processes of transnational labour regulation, and their interaction, until now have been largely invisible. The book also highlights distinctive features of Member States' national regulation as they interacted with the debates on EU transnational labour regulation. It further explores the overlap between regulation of temporary agency work and the EU's regulation of transnational trade in services, the subject of the Directive on services in the internal market. Finally, it draws lessons from the experience of regulation of temporary agency work at national and European levels for transnational labour regulation in general."

"The present book examines the developing legal regimes and regulation of public services in the UK and other European countries. Public services are examined though a case-study of the complex area of public employment services. These are job-placement and vocational training services which aim to maximize employment and minimize unemployment within EU member States' Active Labour Market policies. Employment services are seen as being at the centre of a complex web of rules in both hard and soft forms of law deriving from the EU, national public law and from private, and at times contractual, agreements. The analysis also suggests that they also lie at the crossroads of a series of trends in regulation, and priorities have been inspired by an array of conflicting policy rationales. These policy rationales include the establishment of an open and competitive European internal market, the establishment of an efficient welfare state, the scaling down of state administrative machinery, the fulfillment of core public service responsibilities, and the creation of public private entities for the discharge of essential social services. The investigation also proved that public employment services provide a highly informative and novel case study of the interaction and conflict between the economic and social aims of the EU and between regulation at national and supranational levels, and the changing forms which this regulation has taken."

" The purpose of this article is to focus on a very topical aspect of labour/employment law, namely that of its personal or relational scope, which is usually regarded as an individual one, but which we argue has a significant and largely neglected collective dimension. A first introductory section proposes a normative framework for this inquiry, arguing for a more inclusive approach to relational scope where collective labour rights are engaged and finding a basis for this approach in ILO Recommendation No 198. A second section demonstrates the way in which the relevant jurisprudence of UK labour/employment law has seemed to be out of accord with that normative approach. A third section demonstrates how the case law of the ECJ and CJEU has also in its own way been unsympathetic to claims that self-employed workers should be brought within the fold of collective labour law, particularly with regard to collective bargaining. A fourth section further develops a supranational perspective upon these arguments, concentrating on arguments and pronouncements emanating from the European Committee for Social Rights. A fifth section considers ways in which novel scenarios of differentiation between ‘labour' and ‘capital' are presenting themselves in the context of the so-called ‘gig economy', focusing on the very recent UK Employment Tribunal decision in the Uber case. A sixth concluding section expresses the hope that the article has opened up a largely untrodden path towards an authentically collective view of the debate about the personal scope of labour/employment law."

"This article offers a critical analysis of the concept of ‘worker' in European Labour Law as predominantly shaped by the CJEU on the basis of its jurisprudence in the area of free movement of workers. It suggests that, while nominally broad, this concept suffers from many of the strictures arising from the traditional binary divide between employment and self-employment on which it is essentially premised. Having analysed the residual fragmentation and legitimacy problems arising from a rather incomplete development of this area of EU law, the article advocates a broader concept of ‘worker' shaped by reference to the fundamental rights language embraced by various regional and international labour and human rights mechanisms, including the Social Charter, the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Labour Organisation. The article concludes by identifying a number of possible reform options that may serve the purpose of establishing a suitably broad and autonomous concept of ‘worker' for the purposes of EU labour law, and by offering a cursory analysis of some recent EU Pillar of Social Rights initiatives. "