{"title":"From the Recognition of ‘Psychiatric Disorder Caused by Asbestos Exposure’ to the Mobilisation of Dignity in Labour Law: A Comparison of France and Sweden","authors":"Peter Andersson, Loïc Lerouge","doi":"10.1093/indlaw/dwae013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/indlaw/dwae013","url":null,"abstract":"In two rulings on 8 February 2023, the French Court of Cassation invoked the notion of ‘dignity’ in labour law to support claims for ‘damage due to anxiety’ (‘préjudice d’anxiété’). The concept of ‘damage due to anxiety’, which might in English be translated more functionally as ‘psychiatric disorder caused by asbestos exposure’, is based on loss arising from the fear of developing a future disease due to occupational exposure to a toxic and hazardous substance, such as asbestos. Based on a reading of these two cases, the aim of this article is to analyse the approach developed in the French legal system, and to discuss it from the standpoint of Swedish law. The concept of ‘psychiatric disorder caused by asbestos exposure’ is not currently recognised in Swedish law. However, the idea that physical work environment factors can cause psychological injury is not entirely unfamiliar. It touches upon the ideas of a holistic approach to the work environment and a broad and inclusive concept of health and illness, which are important foundations for Swedish work environment law. By studying this specific occupational health and safety issue it is possible to illuminate not only how this topical and important issue is regulated in France and Sweden, but also on a broader level how these two legal systems—the French one based on the individual responsibility of the employer and the Swedish one on collective bargaining—are functioning when it comes to systems of prevention of and compensation for ill health.","PeriodicalId":45482,"journal":{"name":"Industrial Law Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140942557","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Working Time Remedies Beyond Brexit: Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland and Another v Agnew and Others","authors":"Lisa Rodgers, Oxana Golynker","doi":"10.1093/indlaw/dwae007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/indlaw/dwae007","url":null,"abstract":"On 4 October 2023, the ‘long-anticipated’ judgment in PCC v Agnew was handed down by the Supreme Court. This case concerned claims for holiday pay made by police officers and other civilian staff employed by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). The Supreme Court had to decide two main issues. The first was whether police officers could take advantage of the more generous remedy provisions in respect of holiday pay claims in the Employment Rights Order 1996 (ERO) (which largely corresponds to the UK Employment Rights Act 1996) as opposed to the Working Time Regulations. The second issue was the correct interpretation of the ERO provisions. As well as the important practical implications of the case, there are also interesting jurisprudential issues that arise. The case deals with the interpretation of European Union (EU) derived rights in the labour context. This is a sensitive area, given that access to EU interpretive mechanisms usually equates to a more progressive reading of rights, and this fans the flame of UK government scepticism to both the EU and working time rights. This article discusses the particular approach to statutory interpretation taken by the Supreme Court and the implications of this approach for the progressive interpretation of EU-derived employment rights going forward.","PeriodicalId":45482,"journal":{"name":"Industrial Law Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140935915","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"OP v Commune d’Ans: Another Step in the Wrong Direction for Headscarf-Wearing Women","authors":"Erica Howard","doi":"10.1093/indlaw/dwae008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/indlaw/dwae008","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses and criticises the latest Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) case concerning the wearing of Muslim headscarves at work. OP was refused permission to wear a Muslim headscarf at work because her employer, a public authority, had a policy of exclusive neutrality, prohibiting employees from wearing any form of religious clothing or symbols. The CJEU judgment limits the employment opportunities of Muslim women who want to wear headscarves for religious reasons and allows member states and infra-state bodies a margin of discretion to decide whether to ban religious clothing and symbols for all employees, only for employees who come into contact with service users or not to ban such items at all; and, it ignores any possibility of the presence of gender, race or multiple discrimination. Prohibitions on religious clothing and symbols affect especially Muslim women, who are often from a non-European background and thus could amount to gender discrimination, race discrimination and to discrimination on a combination of religion or belief, gender and racial or ethnic origin.","PeriodicalId":45482,"journal":{"name":"Industrial Law Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140935905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Global Gig Economy: How Transport Platform Companies Adapt to Regulatory Challenges—A Comparative Analysis of Six Countries","authors":"James Muldoon, Ping Sun","doi":"10.1093/indlaw/dwae010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/indlaw/dwae010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Non-standard employment practises in the gig economy have recently drawn critical attention from regulators and the courts in a number of jurisdictions across the globe. Transport platform companies have responded to these challenges in several distinct ways in an emerging global battle to preserve their business model. This article provides a typology of the different strategies employed by these companies in six countries, highlighting five key strategies of regulatory activism, strategic litigation in defence of a business model, tactical subcontracting, negotiations with labour unions and threatening to withdraw services. It then shows how the structural features of the gig economy may be diverging into four distinct models in the European Union, China, the United States and the rest of the world. The study contributes to our understanding of the global nature of the struggle for fair working conditions and how platform companies operate in different institutional and regulatory contexts.","PeriodicalId":45482,"journal":{"name":"Industrial Law Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140672789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Is it Discriminatory to Mistreat a Migrant Domestic Worker? The Cases of Taiwo and Onu","authors":"Michael Connolly","doi":"10.1093/indlaw/dwae006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/indlaw/dwae006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 When presented with images of the American plantations, seamstress sweatshops, Morecambe Bay’s Chinese cockle pickers or Qatar’s World Cup stadium builders, a sense of inequality will accompany any normal reaction of shock and revulsion. The exploitation of a group of migrant workers readily is characterised as racist, sexist or both. Yet, when reduced to the sole migrant worker, the legal recognition of discrimination is denied. In such cases, the UK Supreme Court posits a clear distinction between vulnerability and nationality. Not only does this seem somewhat doctrinal and lacking in principle, it produces a likely anomaly between the group and individual exploitation. It also stymies claims for the inevitable psychological harm. This paper presents a brief account of the plight of migrant workers in the UK and the legal landscape regarding trafficking. The main body presents a critical appraisal of the Supreme Court’s denial, in Taiwo v Olaigbe and Onu v Akwiwu, that the mistreatment of a sole migrant worker is not discriminatory. It demonstrates that equality law readily can recognise discrimination in such cases. This is followed by some considerations on policy and alternative remedies.","PeriodicalId":45482,"journal":{"name":"Industrial Law Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140673300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Quality, Formality and the Evolution of International Labour Law: The New ILO Quality Apprenticeships Standard","authors":"Deirdre McCann, Andrew Stewart","doi":"10.1093/indlaw/dwae012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/indlaw/dwae012","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In an era of sequential crises and spiralling youth unemployment, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has adopted a historic instrument: the Quality Apprenticeships Recommendation, 2023 (No 208). This article explores the recommendation as both a landmark in the regulation of training and a site of regulatory innovation and contestation at the heart of contemporary labour law. It first traces the history of apprenticeship standards and the discursive processes that generated the new Recommendation. The article then adopts a dual analytical framework to explore key aspects of the Recommendation as driving and illuminating both the regulation of apprenticeships and the broader evolution of labour law. We highlight the Recommendation’s articulation and ascription of ‘quality’, including as crucial to the debates on the personal scope of labour law; the evolving presence of precarious work in the international normative arena; equality, diversity and inclusion as a heightening aspiration of both apprenticeship regimes and international labour norms; the Recommendation’s exclusion of non-apprenticeship training, and traineeships as an urgent site of future international standard-setting; and the significance of the instrument’s notion of informality for the regulation of informal apprenticeships, not least in the Global South, and for the global debates on the concept, transition, and regulation of informal work.","PeriodicalId":45482,"journal":{"name":"Industrial Law Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140677789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Access to Work for Those Seeking Asylum: Concerns Arising from British and Swedish Legal Strategies","authors":"Petra Herzfeld Olsson, Tonia Novitz","doi":"10.1093/indlaw/dwae004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/indlaw/dwae004","url":null,"abstract":"This article seeks to probe the controversial relationship between seeking asylum and the permission (or obligation) to work. In doing so, we recognise the concurrent claims that can be made for asylum and access to the labour market, problematising the concept of ‘work’ and its relationship to freedom and dignity from the perspective of international refugee law and European human rights norms alongside European Union (EU) law. We examine how British and Swedish legal systems have reflected two starkly opposed policy stances. The UK has long denied asylum seekers the financial and psychological benefits that come with work usually until refugee status is formally granted, but the Swedish system has facilitated a complementary pathway for asylum seekers whose labour can make (what is determined politically to be) a sufficient contribution to the economy. We identify the perceived benefits and failings of each strategy. In this context, we observe that the status quo in both countries is changing and even arguably converging around an illiberal consensus regarding the relationship between asylum and work, which will demand further attention and potentially legal challenges in the years to come.","PeriodicalId":45482,"journal":{"name":"Industrial Law Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140117071","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Correction to: One Man, Two Guvnors: Revisiting the Principle Against Two Employers","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/indlaw/dwae005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/indlaw/dwae005","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45482,"journal":{"name":"Industrial Law Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140078859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Landmark Cases in Labour Law","authors":"Meemi Matero","doi":"10.1093/indlaw/dwae003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/indlaw/dwae003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45482,"journal":{"name":"Industrial Law Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139958740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"One Man, Two Guvnors: Revisiting the Principle Against Two Employers","authors":"Charles Wynn-Evans","doi":"10.1093/indlaw/dwae001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/indlaw/dwae001","url":null,"abstract":"This case note reviews the detail of, rationale for, and issues arising in relation to the longstanding principle that in general terms an employee cannot simultaneously have two employers in the context of its impact on the scope and application of labour law protections and its recent consdieration by the Employment Tribunal in its Embery and United Taxis decisions. It is argued that this principle is ripe for recosndieraitona nd restatement, not leasst in the light of the arguments in favour of the adoption of a joint employment model in order, where appropriate, to ensure the effective application of labour standards.","PeriodicalId":45482,"journal":{"name":"Industrial Law Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139921500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}