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Future Prospects for Labour Law — Lessons from the United Kingdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Keith D. Ewing
Keith D. Ewing*
Affiliation:
King's College, University of London
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Extract

Globalisation presents major challenges for governments, and some are now looking to the United Kingdom as an example of how to create global competitiveness, economic efficiency and labour market flexibility in a way that also responds to demands for fairness at work. But what the British approach conceals behind its alluring synthesis of regulation and deregulation is the changing nature of labour law, which is now principally a tool of economic policy, and as such less concerned with its historic mission of promoting social justice. Labour law is thus increasingly concerned principally with the re-commodification of labour, rather than the protection of workers; with promoting the flexibility of labour, rather than the security of citizens; and with controlling rather than encouraging labour organisation as an instrument of industrial democracy (a term about which little is now heard).

Type
Research Article
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 18 , Issue 2: Beyond Work Choices: Remaking Industrial Relations in Australia , May 2008 , pp. 103 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2008

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