The rhetoric of 'flexibility' and its potential to empower workers forms a key part of employment policy at the EU level. This book examines the regulation of 'flexible' or 'non-standard' forms of ...work, which include part-time, temporary, and temporary agency work. It unites analysis of changing patterns of work with exploration of the policy debate about how such work should be regulated. McCann explores how workers in non-standard jobs have traditionally been excluded from the protection of labour law or treated less favourably than the full-time permanent workforce because labour laws have been designed around the 'standard' full-time permanent employee. Analysing in detail recent United Kingdom legislative reforms and the wider context of the EU and International Labour Organization, this book shows how, although flexible working arrangements are now more strongly protected, they are not fully integrated into UK labour law. McCann ascribes the continuing disadvantage of flexible workers to the quest to maintain a 'flexible' labour market. She contends that the current balance between ensuring flexibility for employers, and ensuring minimum standards for workers is undermining protection for non-standard workers by allowing their employment rights to be derogated in the interest of labour market flexibility. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/law/9780199218790/toc.html
Precarious work is a crucial impediment to substantive equality. This paper examines the regulation of precariousness in the light of two recent trends: the casualisation of employment in the wake of ...the crisis, and global efforts to regulate domestic work (e.g. ILO Domestic Workers Convention (No 189)). It takes these developments as an opportunity to explore the effective regulation of contemporary labour markets, and in particular the role of the Standard Employment Relationship (SER). The paper returns to two prominent accounts of the SER: Vosko's critique of SER-centrism in non-standard work regulation and Bosch's notion of the flexible-SER. It argues that the domestic work debates confirm the value of a modernised SER in its temporal dimensions. Yet the literature on precarious work tends to focus on regulatory settings in which the standard model remains dominant. The key contemporary challenge is to identify strategies that will embed this model in settings in which it is in decline or was never deep-rooted. Drawing on the notion of ‘reconstructive labour law’, the paper argues for innovative legal mechanisms that prompt the construction of flexibilised SER-type relationships. It concludes, however, that for these strategies to be effective, casualisation must be identified not only in contractual arrangements but also in working-time practices.
Abstract In an era of sequential crises and spiralling youth unemployment, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has adopted a historic instrument: the Quality Apprenticeships Recommendation, ...2023 (No 208). This article explores the recommendation as both a landmark in the regulation of training and a site of regulatory innovation and contestation at the heart of contemporary labour law. It first traces the history of apprenticeship standards and the discursive processes that generated the new Recommendation. The article then adopts a dual analytical framework to explore key aspects of the Recommendation as driving and illuminating both the regulation of apprenticeships and the broader evolution of labour law. We highlight the Recommendation’s articulation and ascription of ‘quality’, including as crucial to the debates on the personal scope of labour law; the evolving presence of precarious work in the international normative arena; equality, diversity and inclusion as a heightening aspiration of both apprenticeship regimes and international labour norms; the Recommendation’s exclusion of non-apprenticeship training, and traineeships as an urgent site of future international standard-setting; and the significance of the instrument’s notion of informality for the regulation of informal apprenticeships, not least in the Global South, and for the global debates on the concept, transition, and regulation of informal work.
Creative Labour Regulation McCann, Deirdre; Lee, Sangheon; Belser, Patrick ...
2014, 2014-02-12, Volume:
7
eBook
The book identifies three central challenges to contemporary labour regulation: intensifying labour market fragmentation; complex interactions between labour market institutions; and obstacles to ...effective enforcement. International in scope, the volume includes chapters on both advanced economies (Europe and the United States) and the developing world (Argentina, Cambodia, South Africa and Viet Nam).
Unacceptable forms of work (UFW) have been identified as an “area of critical importance” for the ILO as it approaches its centenary. Yet there is currently no comprehensive elaboration of the ...dimensions, causes or manifestations of UFW. This article reports on a research project that has proposed such a framework. The article first investigates and reconceptualizes key discourses on contemporary work to identify their contribution to an analytically rigorous conception of UFW. It then outlines a novel Multidimensional Model that has been designed for use by local policy actors in identifying and targeting UFW in countries across a range of income levels.
Upgrading low‐waged and insecure work is central to contemporary labour and development initiatives, from the UN Sustainable Development Goals to the United Kingdom ‘Taylor Review’. The International ...Labour Organization's notion of unacceptable forms of work (UFW) is a crucial contribution. Yet the regulatory frameworks that can effectively address UFW are unclear. This article builds on a novel framework ‐ the Multidimensional Model of UFW. Drawing on theoretical literatures at the frontline of regulation scholarship, it proposes a strategic approach to UFW regulation that supports development, acknowledges the constrained resources of low‐income countries, and targets expansive and sustainable effects. Two key concepts are identified: points of leverage and institutional dynamism. Globally‐prominent regulatory frameworks are assessed as a starting point for mapping the strategic approach: the Mathadi Act of Maharashtra, India; Uruguayan domestic work legislation; minimum wages in the global North and South; and United Kingdom regulation of ‘zero‐hours contracts’.
Labour datafication – the accelerating quantification of working life, encompassing data use that extracts additional value from workers – is increasingly recognized as a dimension of the future of ...work. This article proposes a notion of ‘labour/data justice’ to capture both the deterioration of working life at the labour/data nexus and datafied strategies for effective regulation. We examine ‘labour/regulatory datafication’, focusing on conduits to unacceptable work, and argue that data justice scholarship provides interlinked contributions that are vital to a labour/data justice framework. We identify key components of this framework: a global perspective, the centring of human agency, an interest in the datafied pursuit of labour rights, and methodologies that value the agency of research participants and support collaboration and the co‐production of knowledge.
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