Category Archives: Employment and Labour Law
Ewan McGaughey, ‘Economic Growth and Labour Rights: The Case of the Employment Rights Act 2025’
ABSTRACT How do labour rights affect economic growth, and what may we predict from the Employment Rights Act 2025? The UK government says its first mission is ‘growth’, and improving workers’ rights is part of this. However, the government chose to define its ‘growth’ mission solely in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP often […]
Margaret Zhang, ‘The Haircut Cases Were Wrong’
ABSTRACT Why an Exception for Sex-Segregated Grooming Standards Undercuts Title VII. Employers in the United States have courts’ approval when they require women to wear makeup at work or to dress in a different (sometimes more revealing) uniform than men. Despite the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s nationwide ban on workplace sex discrimination in the […]
Yang Chen, ‘The Law of Employee Distillation and Cloning’
ABSTRACT The next generation of workplace AI may not merely replace employees; it may be trained to become them. Employers can now feed an employee’s emails, chats, documents, meeting transcripts, code reviews, and behavioral traces into AI systems that reproduce not simply discrete outputs, but working style, tacit judgment, institutional memory, and professional persona. This […]
Nicola Countouris, ‘The Reform That Wasn’t There – On the Perduring Necessity of a “Single Worker Status” in UK Employment Law’
ABSTRACT This article explores the proposal contained in Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay to move towards a single status of worker in UK employment law. It argues that a reform of the personal scope of application of UK employment legislation is both long overdue and has only become more urgent and necessary, also in […]
Ewan McGaughey, ‘Executive control of labour rights: the dangerous path of the Employment Rights Act 2025’
INTRODUCTION ‘Democracy is protected’, wrote Nye Bevan, ‘by extending its boundaries’. In this time, in 1952, Britain had around 70% collective bargaining cover. This paved the path to fair pay, better conditions, and equality, and the UK government was committed to full employment. But Bevan knew that democracy’s boundaries were too restricted, because in the […]
Christine Carter, ‘Statistical Methodologies and the Treatment of Risk in Industrial Disease Disputes’
ABSTRACT Workers are often exposed to hazardous industrial contaminants in the course of their employment and go on to develop serious diseases. Yet, when bringing claims in negligence, they face significant challenges in proving a causal relationship between the harm suffered and the employer’s breach of duty. These challenges arise from the methodological gaps between […]
Philippa Collins, ‘The Law of Unfair Dismissal and the Employment Rights Act 2025: An Opportunity Missed?’
ABSTRACT The right not to be unfairly dismissed has been a remarkably constant force in employment law since its introduction over 50 years ago. Unfair dismissal law was therefore overdue for some attention when the incoming Government was planning a major overhaul of employment rights, described as the ‘biggest single upgrade of employment rights in […]
ACL Davies, ‘Zero-hours work in the Employment Rights Act 2025’
INTRODUCTION The term ‘zero hours’ is generally used to describe a form of work in which the employer does not guarantee the worker any particular amount of work, or any work at all. This enables the employer to tailor the supply of labour very precisely to its needs. For example, if the workplace is getting […]
Bogg and Green, ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Fire and Rehire in the Employment Rights Act 2025’
ABSTRACT This article considers the controversial topic of ‘fire and rehire’ and the regulatory choices in the Employment Rights Act 2025 (ERA). We argue that ‘fire and rehire’ is a practice that responds to the challenges posed by relational contracts: how should legislators balance flexibility and stability of contractual obligations when changing economic circumstances render […]
Uglješa Grušić, ‘Jurisdiction in Employment Matters Post-Brexit’
ABSTRACT This article deals with the jurisdiction of the civil courts and employment tribunals in employment matters post-Brexit. It focuses on the somewhat defective transposition of the rules of jurisdiction in employment matters of the Brussels Ia Regulation in sections 15A and 15C-15E of the Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments Act 1982 and the unclear relationship […]