There are significant differences between labour law in Germany and France that affect both employees and employers. In Germany, labour law is strongly influenced by the principles of the welfare state. It places particular emphasis on the protection of employees, especially through comprehensive co-determination rights of works councils and strict regulation of dismissals. The Dismissal Protection Act ensures that employees can only be dismissed under certain conditions, which guarantees a high level of job security. In addition, collective labour agreements are widespread in Germany and offer additional protection mechanisms. In France, on the other hand, labour law is more centralised and state-controlled. The ‘Code du Travail’ regulates many aspects of working life and provides for strict regulations in some areas, such as working hours and the minimum wage. French labour law is characterised by a high degree of state intervention, which is reflected in the traditionally high importance of trade unions and industrial action. The regulations on the dismissal of employees are also strict, but more flexible compared to Germany, especially after the labour law reforms under President Macron. These differences in labour law reflect the different historical, social and political developments in the two countries. While the principle of social partnership and decentralisation is paramount in Germany, French labour law is characterised by strong state regulation and centralism. An understanding of these differences is essential for companies and professionals operating in both countries in order to correctly fulfil the respective labour law requirements and avoid conflicts.

With the onset of the recession in 1990, job security has moved to the forefront of labor market concerns in the United States. During economic downturns, American employers rely heavily on layoffs to cut their work force, much more than do their counterparts in other industrialized nations. The hardships imposed by these layoffs have led many to ask whether U.S. workers can be offered more secure employment without burdening the companies that employ them. In this book, Katharine Abraham and Susan Houseman address this question by comparing labor adjustment practices in the United States, where existing policies arguably encourage layoffs, with those in Germany, a country with much stronger job protection for workers. From their assessment of the German experience, the authors recommend new public policies that promote alternatives to layoffs and help reduce unemployment. Beginning with an overview of the labor markets in Germany and the United States, Abraham and Houseman emphasize the interaction of various government policies. Stronger job security in Germany has been accompanied by an unemployment insurance system that facilitates short-time work as a substitute for layoffs. In the United States, however, the unemployment insurance system has encouraged layoffs and discouraged the use of work-sharing schemes. The authors examine the effects of job security on the efficiency and equity of labor market adjustment and review trends in U.S. policy. Finally, the authors recommend reforms of the U.S. unemployment insurance system that include stronger experience rating and an expansion of short-time compensation program. They also point to the critical link between job security and the system of worker training in Germany and advocate policies that would encourage more training by U.S. companies.

Labour law has traditionally aimed to protect the employee under a hierarchy built on constitutional provisions, statutory law, collective agreements at various levels, and the employment contract, in that order. However, in employment regulation in recent years, ‘flexibility’ has come to dominate the world of work – a set of policies that reshuffle the relationship among the fundamental pillars of labour law and inevitably lead to degrading the protection of employees. This book, the first-ever to consider the sources of labour law from a comparative perspective, details the ways in which the traditional hierarchy of sources has been altered, presenting an international view on major cross-cutting issues followed by fifteen country reports. The authors’ analysis of the changing hierarchy of labour law sources in the light of recent trends includes such elements as the following: the constitutional dimension of labour rights; the normative intervention by the State; the regulatory function of collective bargaining and agreements; the hierarchical organization of labour law sources and the ‘principle of favour’; the role played by case law in both common law and civil law countries; the impact of the European Economic Governance; decentralization of collective bargaining; employment conditions as key components of global competitive strategies; statutory schemes that allow employees to sign away their rights. National reports – Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States – describe the structure of labour law regulations in each legal system with emphasis on the current state of affairs. The authors, all distinguished labour law scholars in their countries, thus collectively provide a thorough and comprehensive commentary on labour law regulation and recent tendencies in national labour laws in various corners of the globe. With its definitive analysis of such crucial matters as the decentralization of collective bargaining and how individual employment contracts can deviate from collective agreements and statutory law, and its comparison of representative national labour law systems, this highly informative book will prove of inestimable value to all professionals concerned with employment relations, labour disputes, or labour market policy, especially in the context of multinational workforces.

This book offers a comparative insight into the labour law systems of Germany and Canada, two countries with different legal traditions and approaches. It examines how in Germany a highly centralised system with clear legal requirements offers employees extensive rights and protections, while Canada has a decentralised, more flexible structure of labour law due to its federal structure. Particular emphasis is placed on the federal principle in Canada, where the provinces and territories set their own labour law standards. This decentralisation leads to considerable differences in regulations on minimum wages, working hours, protection against dismissal and holiday entitlements - depending on the region in question. The book shows the consequences of this diversity and highlights the advantages, such as adaptability to regional needs, but also the challenges associated with this legal fragmentation, such as the difficulty of enforcing the law and the mobility of workers. The detailed comparison shows how strongly employee rights in Germany are protected by statutory regulations and collective co-determination, while in Canada greater flexibility for employers and a stronger role for individual employment contracts dominate. This work is aimed at those affected and anyone wishing to gain a sound understanding of the differences and similarities between these two systems - and how these differences influence the dynamics of labour markets, the relationship between employers and employees and social security in both countries.

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.

Collective Bargaining for Self-Employed Workers in Europe Approaches to Reconcile Competition Law and Labour Rights Founding Editor: Roger Blanpain General Editor: Frank Hendrickx Edited by Bernd Waas & Christina Hießl The increase in the number of self-employed workers, partially in response to the advent of the platform economy, has raised the spectre of horizontal price-fixing by self-employed members of a profession. This perception, however, is at odds with international labour standards, under which self-employed persons should also be able to conclude collective agreements to some extent. It is now commonplace for companies to offer various forms of non-standard employment that shift risk from the labour engager to the labour provider – which may increase the likelihood of those workers to fall outside the legal concept of ‘employee’ and because of that affects their legal protection. Legal practitioners may then face a dilemma: what may be required under labour law may be prohibited under antitrust law. In the first comprehensive analysis of these intensely debated issues, the authors argue that there is an urgent need to address the current legal puzzle, including through regulatory measures. This must include, in particular, the existing regulation at the level of the European Union (EU), which dominates competition law in the Member States. The book combines an analysis of the supranational framework by experts in labour law as well as competition law with in-depth country reports from Member States of the EU in which regulations and/or practices of collective bargaining for the self-employed exist. Among the many issues discussed in this book are the following: collective bargaining and international labour rights; self-employed individuals and the concept of undertaking in EU competition law; the concept of ‘social dumping’; the importance of the case law of the European Court of Justice; the concept of ‘vulnerability’; competition authorities’ enforcement strategies and priorities; the concept of ‘false self-employed’; and the possible introduction of exemptions, presumptions, safe harbours, or smart regulation solutions in competition law. The book gives an insight into the legal situation in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden. These reports discuss the current practice of collective bargaining and how the current law is reflected in the academic discourse on the right of self-employed people to bargain collectively. This important book, in its presentation of legally sound and effective ways to shape the application of the right to bargain collectively that are attuned to the business and technological realities of the twenty-first century, promotes an understanding of the consequences for current law and practice and offers a basis for a discussion of regulatory measures addressing existing challenges. Practitioners of labour law and competition law, national competition authorities, and other interested parties will benefit from the detailed analysis and extensive findings.