Category Archives: Employment and Labour Law
Jeremias Adams-Prassl, ‘What if Your Boss Was an Algorithm? The Rise of Artificial Intelligence at Work’
ABSTRACT Rapid advancements in automation will have a profound impact on labour markets. This paper focuses on a comparatively overlooked aspect of debates surrounding automation and the future of work: the rise of algorithmic management, enabled by hitherto infeasible forms of data collection and processing. As AI-driven decision-making is quickly becoming an important element of […]
‘The Impact of Ban-the-Box Measures’
Dallan Flake, Do Ban-the-Box-Laws Really Work?, 104 Iowa Law Review 1079 (2019). I haven’t taught the basic Employment Law survey course in a few years, so I was updating my class notes relating to the kinds of pre-employment screening measures that many employers use. The casebook had a note about so-called ban-the-box measures – state […]
Michiel Poesen, ‘Concurrent liabilities and jurisdiction over individual contracts of employment under the Brussels Ia Regulation’
ABSTRACT This article sets out to map the different tests, and their corresponding theoretical foundations, used for determining whether the employment section of the Brussels Ia Regulation applies to concurrent liabilities. Thereby it will explicate the often unspoken theories that inform seemingly straightforward approaches to characterisation on which the applicability of the employment section to […]
Choi and Spier, ‘The Economics of Class Action Waivers’
ABSTRACT Many firms require consumers, employees, and suppliers to sign class action waivers as a condition of doing business with the firm, and three recent US Supreme Court cases, Concepcion, Italian Colors, and Epic Systems, have endorsed companies’ ability to block class actions through mandatory individual arbitration clauses. Are class action waivers serving the interests […]
Matthew Bodie, ‘Taking Employment Contracts Seriously’
ABSTRACT The essay, written for the Symposium in Honor of the Work of Charles A Sullivan, examines the honoree’s work on the employment contract. Rather than quickly moving past the common law of contract onto the many statutory regimes governing the workplace, Sullivan has repeatedly explored the nature of the employment agreement and the role […]
‘Barclays Bank plc v Various Claimants: further blurring boundaries in employment status?’
“In a judgment handed down on 1 April 2020, the Supreme Court reversed the decisions of Nicola Davies J (as she then was) and a unanimous Court of Appeal, allowing the appeal on the ground that no vicarious liability can lie for the acts of an independent contractor: Barclays Bank plc v Various Claimants (‘Barclays’). […]
Ewan McGaughey, ‘A Human is not a Resource’
INTRODUCTION … But a human is not a resource, and this is why many people working in HR are deeply ambivalent about their profession’s core assumptions. This makes it even more important to isolate the assumptions, and assess the effects. The effects are seen in (1) the regulation of part-time, fixed-term, agency and other casual […]
Nikolas De Stefano, ‘A Comparative Look at Vicarious Liability for Intentional Wrongs and Abuses of Power in Canadian Law’
ABSTRACT This paper examines the theoretical underpinnings of vicarious liability in the Canadian common law as well as in Quebec’s civil law tradition. It then goes on to trace how each legal tradition has responded to employees’ intentional wrongdoing. More specifically, the paper analyses the scope of employment in cases of fraud, theft and sexual […]
Simon Deakin, ‘Decoding Employment Status’
ABSTRACT There is much at stake in the classification of work relations: on the one hand, the stability of the tax base and the capacity of the state to deliver public goods; on the other, the structure of enterprise and the rights of workers in the ‘gig’ economy and beyond. Classification decisions, however, are made […]
Felipe Jiménez, ‘Arbitration: A Creature of Contract?’
ABSTRACT The Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized arbitration as a ‘creature of contract’, and as the upshot of the parties’ pure, unfettered choice – which the Court must honor. Based on this metaphor, the Court has expanded the scope of arbitration even in employment and consumer contracts, giving broad authority to arbitrators and limiting parties’ […]