Adjudicating Employment Rights A Cross-National Approach

With the decline of collective regulation and the mushrooming of statutory rights in the developed world over the past half-century, individual workplace disputes are now often resolved by the civil courts, by labour courts, by administrative bodies or by arbitration. The nature and operation of these institutions, however, have been largely ignored in the employment literature and this book, by focusing on the institutional architecture itself, fills this gap.

Adjudicating Employment Rights looks at the institutions in ten countries across its chapters: seven European countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Great Britain, as well as countries outside Europe, such as the USA, South Africa and New Zealand. In addition, this book compares these countries' employment adjudication regimes through descriptive comparisons, the analysis of different institutions using well-known theoretical frameworks, and the evaluation of these countries' institutions against a number of yardsticks.

Susan Corby is Professor of Employment Relations at the University of Greenwich, UK. Formerly a trade union official, she has been a lay member of the first instance and second instance labour courts in Great Britain and is currently an arbitrator for a government agency (the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service).

Pete Burgess is a Research Fellow at the University of Greenwich, UK. He has a background in both the academic and private sectors, comparative law, industrial relations and international human resource management. He also offers expertise in international employment research and consultancy.

1 Introduction: Issues and Overview
2 Employment Adjudication: Comparisons and Anomalies
3 France
4 Germany
5 Great Britain
6 Ireland
7 Italy
8 Netherlands
9 New Zealand
10 South Africa
11 Sweden
12 USA
13 Evaluation: Applying Yardsticks