Speakers, Titles, and Abstracts
The five conference workshops bring together presenters and discussants from various social sciences. While the majority of contributors are labour law experts, the conference includes presentations and inputs from top level labour economists, political scientists, industrial relations experts, and high rank national and European trade union officials, as well as some political figures. Presenters have been asked to provide analytical papers, with strong normative elements, exploring particular questions and aspects of the larger ‘Resocialising Europe’ theme. The speakers appear in alphabetical order.
A “highly competitive social market economy”? Solidarity, citizenship and collective labour rights within the EU internal market’ This paper examines attempts within the EU to reconcile tensions between EU-level economic freedoms and institutions of social citizenship at national level. Its main contention is that the individualistic conception of solidarity within the EU has [read more...]
Public Procurement and Social Europe The Commission’s long-awaited document on socially responsible public procurement scarcely created a ripple when first published yet it seemed to envisage a greater space for social factors to be taken into account. This theme has been taken up [read more...]
The EU Social Dialogue: From Autonomy to Deliberation? One of the core elements of a fair mutualization of social and economic risk in national labour law systems is the method of social dialogue through collective bargaining. In turn, the concept of ‘collective autonomy’ was deployed as a critical [read more...]
Professor William Brown and Dr Chris F. Wright Supply chain co-ordination: A new form of labour market regulation in the context of collective bargaining decline? The British labour market of the mid-twentieth century was characterised by substantial co-ordination of employer action. Such behaviour provided the basis for industry-based collective bargaining, skill provision, and other strategies [read more...]
Towards an Effective International Labour Code The paper will examine the recent trends and issues around the new role of international labour standards vis-à-vis globalization and the process of European integration. In particular, it will highlight the current efforts made by the ILO in [read more...]
New trends in the use of temporary agency work: the consolidation of the social dumping Jobs in all sectors are being outsourced or subcontracted from temporary work agencies. In the context of externalisation via this kind of intermediaries, it is very difficult -or impossible- to identify the employer that is responsible for the risks [read more...]
Entrenching Neo-Liberalism: The Current Agenda of European Social Policy The paper will demonstrate the main ways in which recent developments in EU social policy, predating the financial crisis but reinforced by it, have insisted on a neoliberal approach to labour and social policy. In a second part the paper will [read more...]
Regulating Atypical Work Beyond Equality There is now an established body of EU legislation addressing the problems faced by certain types of atypical worker: Directive 97/81 implementing the social partners’ agreement on part-time work; Directive 99/70 implementing the [read more...]
Where Now for the Social Dialogue? Since its constitutionalization in the Treaty of Maastricht, the social dialogue has been given a prominent place in EU pronouncements regarding social policy and the postulated European social model. It has been described as [read more...]
EU Austerity Measures and ILO Obligations The paper critically discusses the conditionality measures that the IMF-Com-ECB bailout ‘agreements’ have imposed on recipient countries. It suggests that several of the social and labour market conditions imposed fall short of a number of [read more...]
The Right to Equality in Times of Austerity The paper will examine the role of anti-discrimination law and particularly the positive duty to promote equality in the EA 2010 in facing cut-backs and austerity measures. In the absence of socio-economic rights, litigants will seek out [read more...]
Dr Nicola Countouris and Professor Mark Freedland Resocializing Europe and the Mutualization of Risks to Workers This paper begins by identifying the advancement of Social Europe as inherently embedded in the development of European labour legislation. It analyses the components, but also the ‘false friends’ and the bêtes noires of Social Europe, [read more...]
Completing economic and social integration: towards labour law for the United States of Europe European labour law is concerned with the social dimension of European integration. This is not neutral terrain. While European integration could originally be seen as focused on the realisation of the internal market (economic purposes), [read more...]
Free Movement of Workers and the Many Faces of Solidarity In the area of free movement of persons (as opposed to businesses), the EU institutions have from the Community’s inception attempted to build a social Europe. This is indeed true for the European Court of Justice which did stretch to its [read more...]
Can Fundamental Rights Resocialize Europe? This contribution examines the evolving fundamental social rights landscape in the EU. In the wake of the new EU fundamental rights’ settlement introduced by the Lisbon Treaty, it will examine the potential of the EU Charter, ECHR [read more...]
Conference Opening Address
Dr Aristea Koukiadaki and Professor Simon Deakin The Sovereign Debt Crisis and the Future of Social Europe The sovereign debt crisis which began in Greece in 2010, and which since then has affected other peripheral economies of the European Union, has had profound effects on the labour law systems of the Member States concerned. As a [read more...]
Strategies Against Demutualization – The ETUC Approach The role played by a series of transnational and supranational actors – including the credit rating agencies and others – in European governance has opened a deep crisis in the European Union model which has integrated social rights within [read more...]
Resocializing Europe and the Mutualization of Precarious Work The paper explores the concepts, forms and criteria that frame the European discourse on precarious work. The starting point it to reflect on the model of Social Europe, based on social rights advancing alongside economic growth and [read more...]
Flexibility, Corporate Restructuring and Enterprise Risk In corporate enterprise risk-bearing is associated with two important rights: first, control rights exercised by participation in decision-making and second, the right to share in the firm’s residual profits. For employees, taking on [read more...]
Ms Lydia Hayes and Professor Tonia Novitz Migrant Access to Collective Labour Rights in Europe This paper will consider the extent to which migrant workers from within and from outside the EU are afforded freedom of association and entitled to collective representation. At a time when the European Court of Human Rights has [read more...]
The Uncertain Relationship between EU Social Policy and Anti-discrimination Law As Somek has argued, anti-discrimination law ‘represents that field of Community social policy which has been steadily successful since its inception’. It has a dynamic character that contrasts starkly with the moribund state of other elements [read more...]
Resocialising Europe: A Trade Union Perspective This paper will examine the prospects for the EU social dimension following the economic crisis. It will assess the implications of the ECJ judgments in the Viking and Laval cases and discuss the options for resolving the on-going tensions [read more...]
Employment Protection, Employability and Rights to Lifelong Learning, Training and Education within the Employment Contract Flexicurity, the successful balance between flexibility and security, is central to the development of European employment policy and the ‘modernisation’ of EU labour law and labour law in the different Member States of the EU. [read more...]
The Changing Face of ‘Flexicurity’? This paper will re-examine the EU concept of ‘flexicurity’ (see COM(2007) 359 and also Council conclusions in November 2007 on the common principles of flexicurity). It will question whether the meaning of ‘flexicurity’ has changed during the [read more...]
The European Social Charter: Could it contribute to a More Social EU? In the aftermath of the CJEU Viking/Laval decisions the rhetoric of a “Social Europe” was confronted with the economic reality of market integration. A further reality check was administered by the ongoing economic crisis, leading most EU MS [read more...]
Collective Bargaining and Social Europe The paper deals with the role of collective bargaining during the crisis, using some examples which are currently characterising the transnationalisation of labour law. [read more...]
Pension Mutualisation and the Socialisation of Risk and Reward in Europe Europe has always contained diversity in pension regimes, underpinned by different historical trajectories of state and labour market development, path dependencies, and varying normative models of risk collectivisation (or [read more...]
Fragments of a Legislative Labour Policy This paper advocates the adoption of a new type of Labour Policy, to replace the existing and increasingly discredited ‘employment policies’, including the European one. It postulates that the existing employment policies are premised on [read more...]
Professor Andrzej Marian Swiątkowski European Common Social Rights Platform – the Case of the Right to Strike In order to cope with the negative effects of economic globalization an international society ought to undertake an effort to construct the fundamental social rights platform. Basic human social rights should be equally protected all over the [read more...]
Job (in)stability and Economic and Financial (in)stability The paper provides a critical analysis of some of the contradictions currently emerging between the set of regulatory principles underpinning most of the national (constitutional) ‘social compacts’ and some of the rationales underlying [read more...]
Collective Bargaining and the Charter (Abstract to follow)
Job Security: A Challenge for EU Social Policy According to Article 30 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU “every worker has the right to protection against unjustified dismissal, in accordance with Community law and national law and practice”. It is the EU’s duty to “promote [read more...]