This book investigates work relationships on the border between employment and self-employment. Bringing together economic, sociological and legal research approaches, it analyses why firms deploy dependent self-employed workers, why individuals supply this form of work and by which informal and formal mechanism dependency is created.

In the realm of European employment law, tension exists between the concepts of 'economic policy' and 'social policy.' During recent years, a growing tendency to emphasize the 'economic' at the expense of the 'social' can be discerned. What this trend gives us'in the views of the leading figures in the field of European labour law and social policy whose considered analyses are presented in this volume'is a regime of 'grand declarations' about workers' rights, but with extremely limited enforcement potential. ,i>The Changing Face of European Labour Law and Social Policy presents some of the papers given at a series of colloquia sponsored by the Employment Law Research Unit at the University of Warwick in early 2002. In its assessment of the forces at work in European employment law today, these commentaries examine significant initiatives and issues, including:problems arising in the context of the Nice Charter;delivering 'equality' at the workplace under the new EU legal framework;the crisis facing workers' participation in practice;the prospects for trans-national collective bargaining;employment-related aspects of human rights under the ECHR; and,attempts to establish effective protections in relation to the working environment. Invaluable appendices include a report, as presented by the late Marco Biagi, of a high level group on reform of the European labour market; the text of the Social Policy Agenda, as approved at the Nice Summit of 2000; and the Commission's 'scoreboard' on the implementation of the Social Agenda as of 2002.With its down-to-earth analysis of the current status of the 'floor of rights' in the European work environment, The Changing Face of European Labour Law and Social Policy will be of inestimable value to all practitioners and scholars seeking to improve the quality of life for Europe's working population and the quality of regulation at the disposal of those charged with confronting the new challenges to social policy resulting from the radical transformation of Europe's economy and society.

The concept of 'employee' is arguably the most important one in labour law, defining, as it does, the scope of the discipline as a whole. This important new publication aims to develop a restatement of the concept of the employee in European labour law. The study identifies both problems and solutions that have emerged, clearly setting out comparisons between the different member states' approaches. The country reports explore both statutes and case law, tracking their contribution to legal doctrine. The objective of the restatement is to increase knowledge and gain a better understanding of one of the most crucial aspects of European labour law. Assistant Editors: - Marta Otto - Effrosyni Bakirtzi

Since 1945, socially moderated market economies have formed the cornerstone of the European socioeconomic model. Now, however due to powerful global economic, political and demographic tendencies tensions between social and economic interests and values are increasing. These developments create an urgent need for answers, actions and measures on the European level. This wide-ranging but focused collection of essays approaches this important trend from multiple perspectives. Compiled in honour of the major European labour law scholar Teun Jaspers, it encompasses a broad spectrum of analyses and insights by forty-one distinguished contributors from seven countries. Four major tensions are identified: between the European and national level, between fundamental rights and economic freedoms, between workers and employers, and between soft and hard law instruments. Throughout, a comparative approach is emphasized, not only within the EU but also between the EU and China and South Africa. Among the many topics covered are the following: relocation of labour to low-wage countries both within and outside the EU; conditions for tempering the excesses of the free labour market; the legal weight of voluntary standards such as codes of conduct; extending the scope of application of corporate social responsibility norms to transnational enterprises; pressure on national social law due to flexibilization, deregulation and individualization; contract termination protection; employability and training of employees; fixed-term work in the wake of the Mangold ruling; adjustment of working conditions for ill and disabled workers; right to strike; and restructuring of enterprises. In light of the Lisbon strategy, the authors address how the various tensions should be reconciled, especially in the context of the flexicurity approach. The book will be of great interest to academics and practitioners for its clear categorization of the issues which must be overcome when regulating employment and social policy in the context of todayand’s EU multilevel legal order. It pays detailed attention to the legal questions raised by emerging European labour and employment policies in respect of their specific materialization, the opportunities they offer, their feasibility, and the threats they pose to traditional workerand’s protection and, more generally, to traditional concepts of labour law.

Contents: CD-ROM containing full text of the dictionary and bibliography and book containing an overview of the dictionary

Globalization has led to growing labour fragmentation and widening of gaps in social protection. Although the enterprise is increasingly expected to be socially responsible, in actuality extreme worker inequalities and social dumping have become ubiquitous worldwide. This volume – the first to focus attention on the ‘theory of the firm’ as it reveals itself in today’s world from a multidisciplinary perspective – underscores the necessity to rebuild a new scientifically controlled paradigm that acknowledges and regulates the dimension of power in the functioning of the organization. In their contributed essays, nineteen renowned scholars in labour law and industrial relations rethink the firm, its conception, its value, and its regulation, analysing such aspects as the following: – labour-management relations issues that arise when companies go global but workers remain local; – the firm as a social construction; – the continuing necessity for collective bargaining; – concealment of the employment relationship under the guise of self-employment; – concealment of the real employer behind figureheads and shell companies; – social welfare effects of outsourcing; – the company’s interaction with the network of suppliers and with local education processes; – determining who actually carries responsibility towards workers; – overcoming companies’ drive to enter the global market in response to national regulation; – realizing the notion of ‘duty of care’; – mechanisms of participation of workers in the management of the enterprise; and – the persistent limitations that women face in the workplace, even when worker participation is advocated. With attention to innovative developments in Germany, Italy, Japan, and other countries, analyses include case studies of specific companies as well as case law, in particular the European Court of Justice’s jurisprudence in matters of collective dismissals, seconded workers, and public contracts. In their head-on tackling of the fragmentation and blurring of social responsibility in enterprise organization, these important essays propose a view of the enterprise as a factor in a new ‘constitutionalisation’ of labour that shifts employment protection from single legal entities to the network’s economic activity, thus realigning the legal boundaries of the enterprise with its economic reality. As a compelling investigation of how a satisfactory implementation of labour standards in the fragmented enterprise can be guaranteed, this book will be studied by entrepreneurs, managers, consultants, corporate lawyers, judges, human rights experts, and trade unionists, and will be welcomed by academics and researchers in industrial relations and labour law.