Related Research Articles
Labour laws, labour code or employment laws are those that mediate the relationship between workers, employing entities, trade unions, and the government. Collective labour law relates to the tripartite relationship between employee, employer, and union.
United Kingdom labour law regulates the relations between workers, employers and trade unions. People at work in the UK have a minimum set of employment rights, from Acts of Parliament, Regulations, common law and equity. This includes the right to a minimum wage of £11.44 for over-23-year-olds from April 2023 under the National Minimum Wage Act 1998. The Working Time Regulations 1998 give the right to 28 days paid holidays, breaks from work, and attempt to limit long working hours. The Employment Rights Act 1996 gives the right to leave for child care, and the right to request flexible working patterns. The Pensions Act 2008 gives the right to be automatically enrolled in a basic occupational pension, whose funds must be protected according to the Pensions Act 1995. Workers must be able to vote for trustees of their occupational pensions under the Pensions Act 2004. In some enterprises, such as universities or NHS foundation trusts, staff can vote for the directors of the organisation. In enterprises with over 50 staff, workers must be negotiated with, with a view to agreement on any contract or workplace organisation changes, major economic developments or difficulties. The UK Corporate Governance Code recommends worker involvement in voting for a listed company's board of directors but does not yet follow international standards in protecting the right to vote in law. Collective bargaining, between democratically organised trade unions and the enterprise's management, has been seen as a "single channel" for individual workers to counteract the employer's abuse of power when it dismisses staff or fix the terms of work. Collective agreements are ultimately backed up by a trade union's right to strike: a fundamental requirement of democratic society in international law. Under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 strike action is protected when it is "in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute".
The Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC), known from 1956 to 1973 as the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission and from 1973 to 1988 as the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, was a tribunal with powers under the Workplace Relations Act 1996 that existed from 1956 until 2010. It was the central institution of Australian labour law. The AIRC replaced a previous system of industrial courts, which broadly speaking, was engaged in the same functions, but with superior independence and powers.
Australian labour law sets the rights of working people, the role of trade unions, and democracy at work, and the duties of employers, across the Commonwealth and in states. Under the Fair Work Act 2009, the Fair Work Commission creates a national minimum wage and oversees National Employment Standards for fair hours, holidays, parental leave and job security. The FWC also creates modern awards that apply to most sectors of work, numbering 150 in 2024, with minimum pay scales, and better rights for overtime, holidays, paid leave, and superannuation for a pension in retirement. Beyond this floor of rights, trade unions and employers often create enterprise bargaining agreements for better wages and conditions in their workplaces. In 2024, collective agreements covered 15% of employees, while 22% of employees were classified as "casual", meaning that they lose many protections other workers have. Australia's laws on the right to take collective action are among the most restrictive in the developed world, and Australia does not have a general law protecting workers' rights to vote and elect worker directors on corporation boards as do most other wealthy OECD countries.
Enterprise bargaining is an Australian term for a form of collective bargaining, in which wages and working conditions are negotiated at the level of the individual organisations, as distinct from sectoral collective bargaining across whole industries. Once established, they are legally binding on employers and employees that are covered by the Enterprise bargaining agreement. An Enterprise Agreement (EA) consists of a collective industrial agreement between either an employer and a trade union acting on behalf of employees or an employer and employees acting for themselves.
The Canada Labour Code is an Act of the Parliament of Canada to consolidate certain statutes respecting labour. The objective of the Code is to facilitate production by controlling strikes & lockouts, occupational safety and health, and some employment standards.
WorkChoices was the name given to changes made to the federal industrial relations laws in Australia by the Howard government in 2005, being amendments to the Workplace Relations Act 1996 by the Workplace Relations Amendment Act 2005, sometimes referred to as the Workplace Relations Amendment Act 2005, that came into effect on 27 March 2006.
The Industrial Relations Act 1971 was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, since repealed. It was based on proposals outlined in the governing Conservative Party's manifesto for the 1970 general election. The goal was to stabilize industrial relations by forcing concentration of bargaining power and responsibility in the formal union leadership, using the courts. The act was intensely opposed by unions, and helped undermine the government of Edward Heath. It was repealed by the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1974 when the Labour Party returned to government.
The Employment Relations Act 1999 is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom. It made significant amendments in UK labour law to the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992.
The Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 is a UK Act of Parliament which regulates United Kingdom labour law. The act applies in full in England and Wales and in Scotland, and partially in Northern Ireland.
Sir Otto Kahn-Freund, QC was a scholar of labour law and comparative law. He was a professor at the London School of Economics and the University of Oxford.
Labor relations or labor studies is a field of study that can have different meanings depending on the context in which it is used. In an international context, it is a subfield of labor history that studies the human relations with regard to work in its broadest sense and how this connects to questions of social inequality. It explicitly encompasses unregulated, historical, and non-Western forms of labor. Here, labor relations define "for or with whom one works and under what rules. These rules determine the type of work, type and amount of remuneration, working hours, degrees of physical and psychological strain, as well as the degree of freedom and autonomy associated with the work." More specifically in a North American and strictly modern context, labor relations is the study and practice of managing unionized employment situations. In academia, labor relations is frequently a sub-area within industrial relations, though scholars from many disciplines including economics, sociology, history, law, and political science also study labor unions and labor movements. In practice, labor relations is frequently a subarea within human resource management. Courses in labor relations typically cover labor history, labor law, union organizing, bargaining, contract administration, and important contemporary topics.
Wilson v United Kingdom [2002] ECHR 552 is a United Kingdom labour law and European labour law case concerning discrimination by employers against their workers who join and take action through trade unions. After a long series of appeals through the UK court system, the European Court of Human Rights held that ECHR article 11 protects the fundamental right of people to join a trade union, engage in union related activities and take action as a last resort to protect their interests.
An unfair labor practice is discrimination by an employer in Japan against a worker who is associated with a union, or refusal by an employer to negotiate with a trade union, or interference in the activities of a union. Unfair labor practices are defined under Article 7 of the 1949 Trade Union Law. They are ruled on by Labour Relations Commissions.
In labour law, unfair dismissal is an act of employment termination made without good reason or contrary to the country's specific legislation.
South African labour law regulates the relationship between employers, employees and trade unions in the Republic of South Africa.
Hugh Armstrong Clegg was a British academic who was a founder of the "National Board for Prices and Incomes" (1965–71) and later presided over the "Standing Commission on Pay Comparability" set up by James Callaghan in 1979.
The Fair Work Act 2009(Cth) is an Act of the Parliament of Australia, passed by the Rudd government to reform the industrial relations system of Australia. Replacing the Howard government's WorkChoices legislation, the Act established Fair Work Australia, later renamed the Fair Work Commission.
Sectoral collective bargaining is an aim of trade unions or labor unions to reach a collective agreement that covers all workers in a sector of the economy, whether they wish to be a part of a union or not. It contrasts to enterprise bargaining where agreements cover individual firms. Generally countries with sectoral collective bargaining have higher rates of forced union organisation and better coverage of collective agreements than countries with enterprise bargaining. Research by the OECD, ILO and the European Commission has also linked sectoral bargaining to higher real wages, lower unemployment, fewer strikes and greater wage equality through an unexplained method. Greater wage equality may be tied to lower wages for those who are worth more, and a higher wage for those who would otherwise merit less.
Allan Flanders was a British academic, author, and founding member of the Oxford School of Industrial Relations, along with Hugh Clegg, Alan Fox, Lord William McCarthy, Sir George Bain and Otto Kahn-Freund. The school was a developer of the idea of collective bargaining and overall proponents of bargaining power, legal contracts, normative regulation and institutionalized conflict resolutions as issues of significance and focus in the field of industrial relations.