Documents Davies, Anne 8 results

"Policy discussions play an important role in labour law, and labour lawyers draw on a wide range of disciplines and approaches in order to construct their arguments. This 2009 overview of the basic principles of labour law and the related policy arguments introduces two of the main perspectives used in the analysis of labour law today – human rights and economics. It offers a brief history of the influence of human rights and economics on labour law since the 1950s, explains neoclassical and new institutional economics and summarises the historical development of international human rights law. The insights of rights theorists and economists are then applied to a selection of topics in labour law, including anti-discrimination law, dismissal, working time, pay, consultation and collective bargaining, trade union membership and industrial action, in order to demonstrate the interplay between the two perspectives."

"The book explores the subject's major policy themes, examines the various procedures by which EU labor law is made, and analyzes key topics such as worker migration, equality, working time and procedures for workers' participation in employers' decision-making. It sets the legal materials in their policy context and identifies the important issues which have shaped the development of EU labor law and are likely to determine its future, including the economic crisis and the debate about fundamental rights in the EU.

This accessible yet rigorous book will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate law students, academics and practitioners working on domestic and EU labor and employment law, as well as those with an interest in this increasingly important subject from the perspective of business and management, economics, sociology or politics."

'This article analyses the judgements of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Case C-438/05 International Transport Workers' Federation and Finnish Seamen's Union v Viking Line (Judgement 11 December 2007) and Case C-341/05 Laval v Svenska Byggnadsarbetareförbundet (Judgement 18 December 2007). In these cases, the ECJ held that where industrial action infringes an employer's free movement rights under Article 43 EC (freedom of establishment) and Article 49 EC (freedom to provide services), respectively, these Treaty provisions can have horizontal direct effect against the unions organizing the action. Unions may defend themselves against these claims by asserting a right to strike (which the Court recognized as a fundamental right within Community law) but only where they are acting proportionately in the exercise of that right. The article explores the key elements of the ECJ's decisions on direct effect, fundamental rights and proportionality, and draws out some of the implications of these cases for English law.'

"There are many different situations in which the law requires a determination of whether an individual can be said to be ‘working': to determine his or her status as an ‘employee' or ‘worker', to decide his or her entitlement to contractual pay, to assess his or her entitlement to the National Minimum Wage and to distinguish working time from ‘rest periods' for the purposes of working time legislation. Where the individual is engaged in core work tasks at the workplace, it is straightforward to say that he or she is ‘working'. However, it will be argued in this article that there is a significant problem of ‘availability': where workers are not actively engaged in core work tasks at the workplace, but are not fully at liberty either. This might be because they are waiting to be offered work or ‘on call' in case of emergencies, for example. This ‘available' time is often not recognised by the law as ‘work', with the result that the workers in question may miss out on pay, employment rights and proper rest breaks. The article maps the problem of ‘availability', arguing that it strikes at the heart of how labour lawyers think about employment relationships, and suggests an alternative analysis. "