Labour Law in an Era of Globalization Transformative Practices and Possibilities
, by Conaghan, Joanne; Fischl, Richard Michael; Klare, KarlNote: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.
- ISBN: 9780199271818 | 019927181X
- Cover: Paperback
- Copyright: 3/11/2004
Throughout the industrial world, the discipline of labour law has fallen into deep philosophical and policy crisis, at the same time as new theoretical approaches make it a field of considerable intellectual ferment. Modern labour law evolved in a symbiotic relationship with a postwarinstitutional and policy agenda, the social, economic, and political underpinnings of which have gradually eroded in the context of accelerating international economic integration and wage-competition, a decline in the capacity of the nation-state to steer economic progress, the ascendancy of fiscalausterity and monetarism over Keynesian/welfare state politics, the appearance of post-industrial production models, the proliferation of contingent employment relationships, the fragmentation of class-based identities and emergence of new social movements, and the significantly increasedparticipation of women in paid work.These developments offer many appealing possibilities - the opportunity, for example, to contest the gender division of labour and re-think the boundaries between immigration and labour policy. But they also hold out quite threatening prospects - including increased unemployment and inequality andthe decline of workers' organizations and social participation - in the context of proliferating constraints imposed by international financial pressures on enacting redistributive social and economic policies. New strategies must be developed to meet these challenges. These essays - which are the product of a transnational comparative dialogue among academics and practitioners in labour law and related legal fields, including social security, immigration, trade, and development - identify, analyse, and respond to some of the conceptual and policy challenges posedby globalization.