Alan Bogg

Freedom of association for workers and trade unions lies at the centre of labour law. Traditionally, trade union rights were structured through detailed labour codes governing organisation, collective bargaining, and the right to strike, with limited involvement from ordinary courts. This insulated labour law from common law principles and supported a mid-20th-century model built on assumptions of industrial equilibrium and political consensus. However, over the past five decades, deregulation and the erosion of collective bargaining have pushed workers and unions toward constitutional claims based on freedom of association to challenge restrictive labour laws. This monograph explores the evolving encounter between labour law and human rights law in this domain. Focusing on the UK, the European Convention on Human Rights, and Canada, it analyses conflicts among employers, governments, and trade unions as courts increasingly adjudicate freedom-of-association claims. The book identifies a consistent judicial pattern distinguishing between the "individual" and "collective" dimensions of the right. In individual cases^—^such as victimisation by employers or unions-courts intervene to protect workers' equal moral standing, reflecting principles of equality before the law and non-discrimination. In collective cases^—^such as determining bargaining agents or the procedural rules governing strikes-courts generally defer to legislatures to preserve democratic autonomy in industrial relations. Drawing on legal history and controversies surrounding trade union membership, collective bargaining, strikes, and the closed shop, the book defends a model of freedom of association that upholds both the dignity of workers and the structural autonomy of labour law.

Should workers ever lose their job because of their political views or affiliations? Should female employees be entitled to wear a headscarf in the workplace for religious reasons? Can it ever be right for an employer to dismiss someone for personal activities undertaken in their leisure time? What restrictions, if any, should be placed on the right to strike ?Engagingly written, this innovative new textbook provides an entry point for exploring these and other topical issues, enabling students to analyse the applicability of human rights to disputes between employers and workers in the UK. It offers an original perspective on the traditional topics of employment law as well as looking in greater depth at new issues, such as employees’ use of social media or the enforcement of human rights in the gig economy.Uniquely, the book considers the most important international Conventions that are relevant for the law in the UK, especially the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Social Charter, Conventions of the International Labour Organisation, and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.A central question that each of the chapters addresses is whether UK employment law is compatible with human rights law. Each chapter discusses all the key cases drawn from various jurisdictions, including the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights.Written by a stellar team of authors, this textbook is an invaluable teaching aid for both postgraduate and undergraduate students studying employment law, human rights, human resource management, and industrial relations.

Should workers ever lose their job because of their political views or affiliations? Should female employees be entitled to wear a headscarf in the workplace for religious reasons? Can it ever be right for an employer to dismiss someone for personal activities undertaken in their leisure time? What restrictions, if any, should be placed on the right to strike ?Engagingly written, this innovative new textbook provides an entry point for exploring these and other topical issues, enabling students to analyse the applicability of human rights to disputes between employers and workers in the UK. It offers an original perspective on the traditional topics of employment law as well as looking in greater depth at new issues, such as employees’ use of social media or the enforcement of human rights in the gig economy.Uniquely, the book considers the most important international Conventions that are relevant for the law in the UK, especially the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Social Charter, Conventions of the International Labour Organisation, and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.A central question that each of the chapters addresses is whether UK employment law is compatible with human rights law. Each chapter discusses all the key cases drawn from various jurisdictions, including the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights.Written by a stellar team of authors, this textbook is an invaluable teaching aid for both postgraduate and undergraduate students studying employment law, human rights, human resource management, and industrial relations.

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.

Winner of the SLS Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship 2010. The long ascendancy of pluralism and 'collective laissez-faire' as a guiding ideology of British labour law was emphatically shattered by the New Right ideology of Thatcher and Major. When New Labour was finally returned to power in 1997, it did not, however, attempt to resurrect the pre-Thatcher preference for pluralist non-intervention in collective industrial relations. Instead, it purported to follow a 'Third Way'. A centrepiece of this new approach was the statutory recognition provision, introduced in Schedule A1 TULRCA 1992. By breaking with the tradition of voluntarism in respect of recognition of trade unions, New Labour sought to provide a model of collective labour law which combined legal support with control through juridification. A closer study of both the history of approaches to recognition and the current provisions opens up fundamental questions as to the nature of this new model and the ones it aimed to replace. This book uses political philosophy to elucidate the character of those historical approaches and the nature of the 'Third Way' itself in relation to statutory union recognition. In particular, it traces the progressive eclipse of civic republican values in labour law, in preference for a liberal political philosophy. The book articulates and defends a civic republican philosophy in terms of freedom as non-domination, the intrinsic value of democratic participation through deliberative democracy, and community. This can be contrasted with the rights-based individualism and State neutrality characteristic of the liberal approach. Despite the promise of civic community in the 'Third Way' rhetoric, this book demonstrates that the reality of New Labour's experiment in union recognition was an emphatic reassertion of liberalism in the sphere of workers' collective rights. This is the first monograph to offer a sustained critical analysis of legal approaches to trade union recognition. It will be of particular interest to labour lawyers, but also a wider audience of scholars in political philosophy and industrial relations.