Suchergebnisse

With the decline of collective regulation and the mushrooming of statutory rights in the developed world over the past half-century, individual workplace disputes are now often resolved by the civil courts, by labor courts, by administrative bodies or by arbitration. The nature and operation of these institutions, however, have been largely ignored in the employment literature and this book, by focusing on the institutional architecture itself, fills this gap. "Adjudicating Employment Rights" looks at the institutions in ten countries across its chapters: seven European countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Great Britain, as well as countries outside Europe, such as the USA, South Africa and New Zealand. In addition, this book compares these countries' employment adjudication regimes through descriptive comparisons, the analysis of different institutions using well-known theoretical frameworks, and the evaluation of these countries' institutions against a number of yardsticks

The institutions for adjudicating employment rights in Great Britain and Sweden are superficially similar – in both countries there are labour courts with lay judges and both countries are covered by European Union employment legislation. Beneath this surface, however, there are important differences. In Sweden there is collective regulation as the social partners (that is trade unions and employers organisations) continue to play a significant part in the labour court process. In contrast the social partners no longer play a role in the adjudication of employment rights in Great Britain, which provides an individualistic, self-service model. This article traces these changes in Great Britain, and the lack of them in Sweden, before offering theoretical explanations for the differences.

The United Kingdom's public services, which employ more women than men, led the way in equality initiatives from the late 1970s, at a time when personnel management was centralized and terms and conditions were determined prescriptively and in detail Accordingly, equality policies and practices were introduced into a centralized system From the late 1980s, changes have been aimed at giving local managers more discretion on personnel and pay issues and providing working patterns which depart from the full-time, life-time norm when budgetary constraints have tightened. This article looks at the impact of these changes, or so-called flexibilities, on equality and finds that pay flexibility and contractual flexibility have had a detrimental impact. The evidence with respect to structural flexibility and temporal flexibility, however, is less clear-cut. The article concludes that equal opportunities and flexibilities in many, but not necessarily all, respects are not compatible in the United Kingdom's public services.