Documents Corby, Susan 13 results

"This article focuses on first instance discrete adjudicatory institutions for the determination of individual employment disputes, generically known as labour courts, in seven countries: France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand and Sweden. First, it traces their formation and subsequent development, applying Thelen's fourfold typology of displacement, conversion, layering and drift. Sometimes, this typology is appropriate: French and Swedish labour courts have drifted, and in Germany there was displacement after World War 1. Sometimes, however, the typology, is inappropriate. In Ireland, there has been amalgamation and in New Zealand there was displacement and then adaptation.

It next seeks to understand which of the seven institutions performs the most effectively, examining several criteria including the legitimacy of the labour court, speed, accessibility, cost, informality, and the propagation of legal norms. It finds that comparisons are limited because adjudicatory institutions need to be judged in their specific national context. Moreover, effectiveness depends on the criterion that is adopted: an institution that scores highly on one criterion does not necessarily do so on another. Despite these limitations, comparisons can be useful to practitioners and academics and Germany's labour court scores highly on many of the criteria used."

"Employment tribunals, originally called industrial tribunals, were established 50 years ago in Great Britain and this article traces their gradual change. Originally constituted as administrative tribunals in 1964, they morphed to party versus party forums from the 1970s, but this change did not stop there. Over the succeeding years, employment tribunals moved from a marginal role to a central role in British employment relations, as their caseload has risen, their remit has widened, and as legal regulation has replaced collective regulation. Moreover in so doing, employment tribunals have become less accessible to workers, less speedy and more expensive. They have also become more formal, with legal norms and practices and adjudication by lawyers alone replacing industrial relations norms and adjudication by a mix of lawyers and lay people. As a result, employment tribunals have become juridified. The article concludes by critiquing the basis of employment tribunals which is the self-help/complainant after the event approach, as opposed to state enforcement of statutory employment rights."

"This article traces the evolution of Employment Tribunals (ETs) in Great Britain over the last 50 years from distinctive and comparatively informal bodies to their proposed merger with the ‘ordinary' civil courts. This reflects the tendency of an organisation to become similar to another organisation where both are in the same organisational field: institutional isomorphism. Such isomorphism occurs because of coercive pressures by the body controlling the organisation's resources, in this case government. Such isomorphism occurs also because of mimetic pressures; in this case the relatively newly established ETs have adopted the paradigm of the long-established civil courts, and because of normative pressures due to the common values held by judges in ETs and judges in the civil courts arising from their common legal training, legal apprenticeship and role socialisation. The article then argues that this isomorphism has contributed to the juridification of employment relations. "

"The last three decades have witnessed the almost continual reform and re-organisation of the UK's public sector and public services, with yet more reforms underway. The impact of these reforms on the experiences of the public sector's six million workers and those employed in the private sector but providing public services are examined in this book.



To that end, some of the UK's leading scholars in public sector employment relations critically appraise aspects of public sector employment practices and examine the key dynamics, policy developments, institutions and actors from a range of perspectives in three thematic sections. In so doing, some contributors bring long-standing topics up-to-date, such as worker representation and reward, while others introduce new topics, such as management consultants and assistants to professionals, but all provide challenging insights into the services on which so many rely and the effects on those working for the state."

"Using a longitudinal research design, this article considers employers' human resource management practices in respect of disability equality: in 1995 under the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act and in 2003 under the Disability Discrimination Act. The article analyses whether there has been a change to employers' practices and whether or not this change is associated with increased employment of disabled persons. The findings show that proactive HR measures to encourage disabled employment, including positive discrimination, had a significant impact on disabled employment in 1995, whereas HR measures centring on managerial responsibilities and making adaptations had a similar result in 2003. We argue that, for optimum effectiveness, HR departments should employ the full range of HR measures that are available, including positive discrimination, and that this approach should be underpinned by a range of enforcement measures."

"This article examines disabled people's employment in Great Britain and France. In both countries, they are far less likely to be employed than non-disabled people, but the gap is wider in Britain than in France. Possible explanations for the wider gap in Britain include weak enforcement mechanisms, judicial resistance and the lack of an institutional role for trade unions, resulting in an implementation gap; while the narrower gap in France may reflect the more proactive legislation, including its quota-levy scheme. We conclude that these explanations are not mutually exclusive, and we suggest that Britain might consider adopting some French provisions, thus tempering its voluntarist approach."