Nicola Countouris - Böcker

The contract of employment is the central legal institution of modern English employment law. It provides the foundation upon which most statutory employment rights are constructed; it provides a conduit for the implementation of norms negotiated in collective bargaining; and it continues to provide a contractual structure for the terms and conditions of employment for a significant proportion of the working population. The Contract of Employment provides the most ambitious and comprehensive treatise on the theoretical and doctrinal aspects of the English contract of employment in the common law world. Under the general editorship of Professor Mark Freedland, the text has been produced by a team of world leading experts in employment law. Part I examines the theoretical context to the contract of employment, studying its structure and development from a wide variety of theoretical and comparative perspectives. Part II provides an exposition and analysis of the doctrinal aspects of the contract of employment. The coverage of The Contract of Employment is unrivalled in its depth, detail and sophistication. The legal analysis is always informed by a keen sense of the modern labour market context of the contract of employment, and it is sensitive to contemporary challenges such as precariousness, the interaction with migration law, the role of legislation in the contract of employment, and the decline of collective bargaining. It will be the principal reference point for the practitioners, judges, and academics concerned with the contract of employment as a legal category, both nationally and internationally.

During the past few decades, industrialized countries have witnessed a progressive crisis of the regulatory framework sustaining the binary model of the employment relationship based on the subordinate employment/autonomous self-employment dichotomy. New atypical and hybrid working arrangements have emerged, challenging the traditional notions of, and divisions between, autonomy and subordination. This in turn has strained labour law systems across industrialized countries that were previously based on the notion of dependent and subordinate employment to cast their personal scope of application. Nicola Countouris advances ideas for a new dynamic equilibrium in employment law to accommodate this evolution, providing a comparative account of the development of the employment relationship in four key European countries - the UK, Germany, France and Italy.

This volume of essays casts light on the shape and future direction of the EU in the wake of the Lisbon Treaty and highlights the incomplete nature of the reforms. Contributors analyse some of the most innovative and most controversial aspects of the Treaty, such as the role and nature of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the relationship between the EU and the European Court of Human Rights. In addition, they reflect on the ongoing economic and financial crisis in the Euro area, which has forced the EU Member States to re-open negotiations and update a number of aspects of the Lisbon 'settlement'. Together, the essays provide a variety of insights into some of the most crucial innovations introduced by the Lisbon Treaty and in the context of the adoption of the new European Financial Stability Mechanism.

Terms such as 'Social Europe' and 'European Social Model' have long resided in the political and regulatory lexicon of European integration. But in recent years, and in spite of the adoption of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the EU social profile has entered a profound period of crisis. The ECJ judgments of Viking and Laval exemplify the unresolved tension between the EU's strong market imperatives and its fragile social aspirations while the ongoing economic crisis, while the various 'bail out' packages are producing a constant retrenchment of social rights. The status quo is one in which workers appear to shoulder most of the risks attendant on making and executing arrangements for the doing of work. Chapters in this book advocate a reversal of this trend in favour of fair mutualization, so as to disperse these risks and share them more equitably between employers, the state, and society at large.

This volume of essays casts light on the shape and future direction of the EU in the wake of the Lisbon Treaty and highlights the incomplete nature of the reforms. Contributors analyse some of the most innovative and most controversial aspects of the Treaty, such as the role and nature of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the relationship between the EU and the European Court of Human Rights. In addition, they reflect on the ongoing economic and financial crisis in the Euro area, which has forced the EU Member States to re-open negotiations and update a number of aspects of the Lisbon 'settlement'. Together, the essays provide a variety of insights into some of the most crucial innovations introduced by the Lisbon Treaty and in the context of the adoption of the new European Financial Stability Mechanism.