New Frontiers in Empirical Labour Law Research

Abstract

Students of labour law, both in the UK and elsewhere, hardly need to be reminded that labour law has long been in retreat. As has been comprehensively documented, the scope of employment law protection has been pared back in innumerable ways as the view that it is obstructive of economic efficiency and advancement has become entrenched and policy choices have continued to whittle back legislation conferring employment rights. Reforms over recent years in the UK imposing the payment of fees in respect of employment tribunal proceedings are but the latest manifestation of that long-term trend. Against this background, a number of books published over recent years have considered the proper scope as a discipline of, the potential development of, and the future prospects for labour law as an academic discipline. Not only do these works consider the current areas of debate for labour lawyers but also, to a greater or lesser extent, they betray a more or less explicit existential concern about the subject, its scope and its future viability. Contributions to collections of essays such as Davidov and Langille (eds), Boundaries and Frontiers of Labour Law (Oxford: Hart, 2006), Barnard, Deakin and Morris (eds), The Future of Labour Law (Oxford: Hart, 2004) and Davidov and Langille (eds), The Idea of Labour Law (Oxford: OUP, 2011) have to some extent reflected this concern both in their titles and their substantive content. One of the starkest assessments of what it portrays as labour law’s ongoing and ultimately doomed search for continued viability and relevance is Alan Hyde’s contribution to The Idea of Labour Law (at Ch 6). Entitled ‘The Idea of the Idea of Labour Law: A Parable’, his analysis, from the US perspective, is that labour law cannot ‘like a Platonic form...survive the disappearance of every one of its earthly manifestations’ in terms of ‘jobs, strikes, cooperative employers, legislation and... specialised government officials’ and that inspiration needs to be found elsewhere than labour law ‘traditionally conceptualized’ (see pp 96–7). More prosaically, the incessant reform of labour law domestically risks labour law as a discipline being seen as unrealistically wishing to turn back the clock in economic and political terms.