The individualisation of British labour law

Abstract

This dissertation sets out to identify and to resolve a number of puzzles for contemporary labour law scholarship in Britain. Is it possible to offer a systematic account of today's labour law which is as persuasive as the concept of collective laissez-faire advanced by Kahn-Freund and others for the postwar period? Why did Conservative Governments between 1979 and 1997 fail to achieve systematic deregulation of labour law, notwithstanding their inclination to do so? What is the relationship between Conservative policy on labour law between 1979 and 1997 and the policy of the Labour Government since then? And. why have so many of the developments in labour law over the past two decades defied a straightforward economic interpretation? In order to address these questions, the dissertation focuses initially upon the place of the individual worker in labour law. At the level of analysis, the thesis which is put forward is that the dominant characteristic of contemporary British labour law is its individualism, in the sense that it is primarily concerned with the rights and interests of individual workers. At the level of explanation, it is argued that the individualisation of labour law reflects both economic considerations and trends to individualisation in the employment sphere.