Events

Tuesday 5 December 2017

The EAT Uber judgment and workers' rights in the 'sharing economy'

Speakers:

• Karen Scott (UCL Laws and part-time Employment Judge).
• Jason Moyer-Lee (General Secretary, IWGB).
• Colm O'Cinneide (UCL Laws, Professor of Constitutional and Human Rights).
• Nicola Countouris (UCL Laws, Professor of Labour Law and European Law).

About this event:

Following the recent judgment of the EAT in Uber v Aslam, it is clear that tribunals are becoming increasingly assertive and keen to interfere with the contractual arrangements shaping the employment status of workers employed through on-line platforms.
Our panel of experts will offer a number of insights on the Uber judgment and on the labour rights of workers in the so-called gig-economy.

Tuesday, 28 February 2017

Brexit and Labour Rights - Challenges and Perspectives

Speakers:
Prof. Keith Ewing (Professor of Public Law at KCL, President of the Institute of Employment Rights)
Esther Lynch (ETUC Confederal Secretary)
Prof. Colm O’Cinneide (Professor of Constitutional and Human Rights Law at UCL)
Hannah Reed (TUC, Senior Employment Rights Officer)
Stephen Timms MP (Member of the SC on Exiting the European Union)

To visit the event website, please click on this link.

About this event:

As it is becoming increasingly clear that ‘Brexit really means Brexit’, a panel of distinguished speakers explores what Brexit would mean for labour rights. How are the rights of workers in the UK likely to be affected by the UK’s withdrawal from the EU? And how are the labour rights of British citizens working, on a temporary or permanent basis, in other EU countries likely to be shaped by Brexit? Finally how are EU labour rights likely to develop once the UK is no longer a Member State of the Union?

Tuesday, 24 January 2017

The Optimism of the Will – Towards a Comprehensive Revision of Workers’ Rights: ‘A Manifesto for Labour Law’

Speakers:
John Hendy QC (Honorary Professor at UCL Laws)
Professor Nicola Countouris (Professor of Labour Law and European Law at UCL)

To visit the event website, please click on this link.

About this event:

Labour law reform debates have been caught between the rock of neoliberal deregulation and the hard place of nostalgia for an often idealised past. With its ground breaking publication ‘A Manifesto for Labour Law’, the Institute for Employment Rights, has sought to open a new discourse on the debate on the future of the world of work and on labour regulation, a discourse that is quickly gaining political traction in the UK and has important echoes in other European jurisdictions.

John Hendy QC, Honorary Professor at UCL Laws, will introduce the key regulatory threads of the Manifesto, and in particular the objectives of giving ‘voice’ to workers, shifting the emphasis of workplace regulation from statute to collective agreements between workers and employers, renewed administrative support and public intervention in labour market regulation (with the establishment of a Ministry of Labour), and the introduction of fundamental and enforceable protection for all workers.

Nicola Countouris, Professor of Labour Law and European Law at UCL Laws, will briefly illustrate a number of other similar regulatory initiatives currently developing in other European systems, in particular the Italian, CGIL backed, Carta dei Diritti Universali del Lavoro and the French project ‘Pour un Autre Code du Travail’.

Tuesday, 27 October 2015

The Trade Union Bill 2015

Speaker Professor John Hendy QC is a leading expert on Freedom of Association and the Right to Strike, and his work on the practical and legal consequence of the Bill is currently shaping much of the policy debate and critical thinking around the proposed reforms.

To visit the event website, please click on this link.

About this event:

‘A critical assessment of its impact on the fundamental right to strike’

Introduced by the new Conservative Government with the declared objective of ‘tackl[ing] the disproportionate impact of strikes in essential public services by introducing a tougher threshold’ in strike ballots, (Conservative Party Manifesto 2015) the Trade Union Bill 2015 has been viewed by both opposition and the union movement as ‘the most significant, sustained and partisan attack on six million trade union members and their workplace organisations that we have seen in this country in the last 30 years’.

If adopted, some of the provisions contained in the Bill would render lawful industrial action virtually impossible by subjecting it to a 50% turnout requirement and, for some essential public services, to a 40% approval rate by all those eligible to vote.

Thursday 23 April 2015

“Changing Times, Changing Relationships at Work...Changing Law?”

Key Speakers:
• The Hon. Mr Justice Langstaff, the President of the Employment Appeal Tribunal
• The Hon. Justice Michael John Walton, President of the Industrial Relations Court of New South Wales, Australia

Chair: Professor Keith Ewing (Prof. of Public Law, KCL)

Introduction: Prof. Mark Freedland (Oxford and UCL)

To visit the event website, please click on this link.

About this event:

We are privileged to host two distinguished members of the Australian and UK judiciary, offering us a unique perspective on the charged question as to whether labour law has kept pace with the constantly changing nature of work relations so as properly to regulate them.

Tuesday 10 March 2015
‘Trade Unions and Economic Inequality’

With Dr. Lydia Hayes and Professor Tonia Novitz

Chaired by Professor Keith Ewing.

To visit the event website, please click on this link.

Please click here for event Powerpoint presentations:

About this event:

Dr. Hayes and Prof. Novitz will illustrate the extremely significant, and often neglected, contribution that trade unions make to the pursuit of more equal societies. Building on their recent IER publication Trade Unions and Economic Inequality (2014, The Institute of Employment Rights) the two speakers will detail some of the economic and social achievements of Trade Unions, and reflect on the key regulatory reforms necessary to renew their ability to address inequalities.

This panel discussion is part of a series on ‘Tackling Inequalities through Labour and Social Regulation’ co-organised by the UCL Labour Rights Institute and the Institute of Employment Rights, generously supported by the UCL European Institute.

About this event:

Ideas long rejected may turn out to be essential or even obvious in another age. Does this apply to the idea of a basic income, that is, a universal unconditional regular payment to every individual?
This talk argued that in the globalisation era, the 20th century income distribution system has broken down irretrievably, resulting in steadily rising inequalities, chronic economic insecurity and a globalised class structure in which the precariat is the growing mass class.
In that context, a basic income is not only desirable but essential. It is also the means of avoiding a situation in which development in emerging market economies will continue to be marked by growing inequalities.
The talk drew on two recent books, A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens and Basic Income: A Transformative Policy for India, both published by Bloomsbury.

This event is part of a series on ‘Tackling Inequalities through Labour and Social Regulation’ organised by the UCL Labour Rights Institute and generously supported by the UCL European Institute.

Tuesday 28 October 2014
‘Equality: The New Legal Framework Revisited’

Key Speaker:
Prof. Sir Bob Hepple, Honorary President, Equal Rights Trust.

Other speakers:
Dr. Nicola Countouris
Professor Mark Freedland
Prof. Sandra Fredman
Dr Virginia Mantouvalou
Prof. Gillian Morris

About this event:

This panel discussion was opened by Professor Bob Hepple’s presentation of his latest work Equality – The Legal Framework (2nd ed., Hart, 2014) and his analysis of the main developments in the UK Equality Law framework since the adoption of the Equality Act 2010.

His analysis was followed by a discussion focusing predominantly on the many outstanding issues that, partly due to the partial and incomplete implementation of the EqA 2010, the next post-election Government may have to address in order to combat inequalities in the UK labour market and in society at large.

This panel discussion was part of a series on ‘Tackling Inequalities through Labour and Social Regulation’ organised by the UCL Labour Rights Institute and generously supported by the UCL European Institute.

The event was been co-organised by UCL Faculty of Laws and the Equal Rights Trust.

Monday 24 March 2014
HIV/AIDS at Work: I.B. v Greece

This event is a joint event by the UCL Labour Rights Institute and Institute for Human Rights.

Speakers:
• Colm O'Cinneide (Reader in Laws, UCL, and Member of the European Committee of Social Rights)
• Professor Matthew Weait (Professor of Law & Policy, Birckbeck School of Law)
• Professor Robert Wintemute (Professor of Human Rights Law, The Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London)

Chair: Dr Virginia Mantouvalou (Reader in Human Rights and Labour Law, UCL)

About this lecture:
In the first ever case relating to HIV/AIDS discrimination in the workplace, I.B. v. Greece, the European Court of Human Rights held that the dismissal of an HIV-positive worker in response to workforce pressure violated human rights. The applicant was represented by the Co-Directors of the UCL Institute for Human Rights, Dr George Letsas and Dr Virginia Mantouvalou.

The case concerned an employee, I.B., who was dismissed from his job in the private sector, when colleagues found out that he had HIV. They refused to work with him, demanding his dismissal. The employee challenged the dismissal as unlawful. However, the Greek Court of Cassation upheld the dismissal on the ground that it was not motivated by hostility towards his HIV status on the part of the employer, but by the need to ensure the peaceful running of the business. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that this the applicant's dismissal violates the European Convention on Human Rights.

This seminar placed the case in its broader context of HIV discrimination and stigma in the workplace, the law on equality and discrimination, as well as the protection of labour rights in the European Convention on Human Rights.

About this lecture:
With less than 1 in 12 young workers holding a union card, what more can Britain’s unions do to reach out to the next generation of potential union members and activists?

Paul Nowak, TUC assistant general secretary, reviewed union efforts to organise and recruit young workers and to build effective trade unions in the private service sector. The session also explored what practical steps unions can take to make trade unionism relevant to Britain’s young workers.

Tuesday 14 May 2013
Symposium on Cure the Disease and Kill the Patient – Labour Rights in Greece after 3 Years of Austerity

Speakers:
•Dr Aristea Koukiadaki (Lecturer in Employment Studies, University of Manchester); 
•Dr Lefteris Kretsos (Senior Lecturer in Employment Relations, University of Greenwich); 
•Dr Giuseppe Casale (Director, ILO Department of Labour Administration); 
•Colm O’Cinneide (Reader in Laws, UCL; Vice-President of the European Committee of Social Rights)

Visit the event website

About this symposium: 
This small symposium focused on the state of labour law in Greece after 3-years of austerity and deregulatory reforms partly introduced to satisfy the requirements imposed by the EU Commission-ECB-IMF Memoranda of Understanding accompanying the country’s two main bailout packages of May 2010 and February 2012.

In recent years, even months, the issue of rapidly declining labour rights standards in Greece has become the subject of intense academic debate and (more recently) human rights litigation, with a number of regional and international organisations assessing recent reforms against Greece’s international human/labour rights obligations. In 2011 a Report of the ILO High Level Mission to Greece, explicitly noted that ‘overall, the changes being introduced to the industrial relations system in the current circumstances are likely to have a spillover effect on collective bargaining as a whole, to the detriment of social peace and society at large’ and reminded Greece of its obligations ‘under ratified Conventions to promote the practice of collective bargaining in general’. These concerns are, if anything, more forcefully expressed in last year’s 356th Report of the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association (cf. page 249-274). The European Committee of Social Rights, in two recent decisions of 2012, was even more explicit in declaring the Greek state in breach of Articles 1, 4, 7, and 10 of the European Social Charter.

This event proposed to debate in greater detail the labour law, industrial relations and human rights implications of these reforms from a national, European, and ILO perspective. 

The event is generously supported by the UCL European Institute.

Friday 30 November 2012 
Symposium on The Legal Construction of Personal Work Relations

Key speakers include Prof. Hugh Collins (LSE), Prof. Guy Davidov (Jerusalem), Prof. Simon Deakin (Cambridge), Prof. Sandra Fredman (Oxofrd), Prof. Brian Langille (Toronto), Prof. Judy Fudge (University of Victoria, Canada) and Prof. Guy Mundlak (Tel Aviv)

Chair: Dr Einat Albin (Jerusalem) and Dr Virginia Mantouvalou

About this symposium:
The speakers participating in this one day event discussed and commented on the recent publication by M. Freedland and N. Countouris, The Legal Construction of Personal Work Relations(OUP, 2011).

This event was organised by the Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies and hosted by the UCL LRI.

Attendance was by invitation only.

Wednesday 14 November 2012
Lecture on Globalisation and the Middle Class

Speaker: Professor Katherine Stone (Arjay & Frances Miller Distinguished Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law)

Chair: Dr Virginia Mantouvalou

This event was hosted by the UCL Labour Rights Institute and UCL Institute for Human Rights.
 

Tuesday 23 October 2012
Lecture on Understanding and Tackling Precarious Work

Key speakers: Professor Sonia McKay (London Met) and Professor Guy Standing (Bath)

Chair: Dr Nicola Countouris (UCL)

About this lecture:
In this public lecture our two outstanding speakers presented their views on the constantly rising number of workers whose employment is seen as ‘precarious’. In doing so they will provide their understanding of the concept of ‘precarious work’, and make suggestions on what needs to be done (and by whom) in order to address the challenges arising from the precarization of work.

Both speakers are recognised experts in the field, with Prof. McKay recently completing an extensive EU funded Study on Precarious Work and Social Rights (2012) and Prof. Standing authoring the much acclaimed and widely circulated book The Precariat(Bloomsbury Academic, 2011).

Friday 25 May 2012, 9 - 5.30pm
Institute for Human Rights Workshop on Right to Work

Participants included::
Professor Guy Mundlak (Tel Aviv University), Professor Hugh Collins (LSE), Professor Sophie Robin Olivier (Paris, Nanterre), Dr Alan Bogg (Oxford), Professor Diamond Ashiagbor (SOAS), Dr Nicola Countouris (UCL), Dr Amir Paz-Fuchs (Ono Academic College), Professor Sir Bob Hepple (Cambridge), Professor John Tasioulas (UCL), Professor David Wiggins (Oxford), Dr Virginia Mantouvalou (UCL). 
 

Friday 18 May – Sat 19 May 2012 
An International Conference on
Resocializing Europe and the Mutualization of Risks to Workers.

See also ‘Resocialising Europe in a Time of Crisis’ – The Project – The Conference – The Book

Participants included: 
Prof. Diamond Ashiagbor (SOAS); Prof. Catherine Barnard (Cambridge); Dr Alan Bogg (Oxford); Prof. William Brown (Cambridge); Dr Giuseppe Casale (ILO); Professor Chelo Chacartegui (PFU Baarcelona); Prof. Hugh Collins (LSE); Prof. Colin Crouch (Warwick); Judith Kirton-Darling (ETUC); Prof. Anne Davies (Oxford); Prof. Simon Deakin and Dr Aristea Koukiadaki (Cambridge and Manchester); Dr Ruth Dukes (Glasgow); Prof. Keith Ewing (KCL); Prof. Sandra Fredman (Oxford); Prof. Mark Freedland (Oxford); Mr Thomas Haendel MEP (GUE/NGL); Prof. Frank Hendrickx (Leuven); Prof. Sir Bob Hepple QC (Cambrdige); Dr Catherine Jacqueson (Copenhagen); Prof. Claire Kilpatrick (EUI); Judith Kirton-Darling (ETUC); Prof. Julia Lopez (PFU Barcelona); Dr. Virginia Mantouvalou (UCL); Prof. Aileen McColgan (KCL); Prof. Sonia McKay (Londonmet); Prof. G. Morris (Matrix Chambers); Dr Wanjiru Njoya (LSE); Ms Lydia Hayes and Prof. Tonia Novitz (Bristol); Dr Colm O’Cinneide (UCL); Ms Hannah Reed (TUC); Professor Mia Rönnmar (Lund); Dr Astrid Sanders (Birmingham); Prof. Monika Schlachter (Trier); Prof. Silvana Sciarra (Firenze); Dr Kendra Strauss (Cambridge); Prof. Alain Supiot (Nantes); Prof. Aurora Vimercati (Bari); Prof. Manfred Weiss (Frankfurt); Dr Chris Wright (Melbourne).

For further info please contact: n.countouris@ucl.ac.uk

About the Event:
Terms such as ‘Social Europe’, the ‘European Social Dimension’, ‘European Social Model’, and, more recently, ‘European Social Pact’, have long resided in the political and regulatory lexicon of European integration. But arguably, after reaching a climax in 2000 with the inclusion of a ‘Solidarity’ chapter in the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the social profile of the EU has entered a deep period of crisis, one may say a phase of ‘social eurosklerosis’.

The status quo is arguably one in which workers once again appear to shoulder most of the risks attendant upon the making and execution of arrangements for the doing of work, and associated with their particular personal work situation in the labour market at large. We define this status quo as one in which a process of de-mutualization of work related risks is seriously undermining the hard-fought and hard-earned social acquis that national social law, and Social Europe itself, once aspired to provide. And we advocate a reversal of the this trend in favour of a process of fair-mutualization of these risks, so as to disperse them away from workers, and share them more equitably between employers, the state, but also consumers, and society at large.

The Labour Rights Institute of UCL (LRI), with the financial support provided by the British Academy Conference Grant (Grant No. CS110461) and by a number of other stakeholders (please see acknowldgements), seeks to bring together an interdisciplinary group of experts from the UK and the rest of Europe to discuss whether this current phase of ‘social eurosklerosis’ is likely to become a permanent feature of the EU, or whether new regulatory trajectories could and ought to be pursued.

Acknowledgments: This event is organised with the support of the British Academy, UCL European Institute, UCL Centre for Law and Governance in the EU 

Thursday 16 June 2011
Migration, Law and Image
Speaker: WJT Mitchell
Respondents: Prof. Parvati Nair (QMUL) and Dr Ingrid Boccardi (UCL Laws)
Chair: Dr Federica Mazzara (UCL Italian)

About this debate:
This lecture aimed at the convergence of three disciplines: 1) the law, with its entire edifice of judicial practice and political philosophy; 2) migration, as the movement and settlement of living things, especially (but not exclusively) human beings, across the boundaries between distinct habitats; 3) iconology, the theory of images across the media, including verbal and visual images, metaphors and figures of speech as well as visual representations. Examining a range of examples from science fiction narratives of alien species, to stories of conquest, colonization, and ethnic cleansing, to the development of contemporary practices of detention and border policing, the lecture will argue that immigration in our time has ceased to be a merely transitional phase in human life, and threatens to become a permanent condition for growing numbers of people. This poses a radical challenge to liberal notions of universal human equality, which depend, paradoxically, on philosophies of exclusion and the policing of borders to protect actually existing liberal polities. The “veil of ignorance” about particular human identities (race, class, gender, and ethnicity) that philosopher John Rawls regarded as foundational to liberal notions of justice and equality comes under new kinds of stress in a time when the borders between peoples have become zones of increasing violence and despair.

The EU Legal Migration Package 

Chair: Dr Nicola Contouris (UCL)

Dr Nicola Contouris chaired a panel discussing the two legislative proposals put forward last July by the European Commission, which addressed the temporary immigration of ‘third country nationals' into the EU for purposes of employment.

This panel discussion presented and discussed the proposed directives in detail, placing them within their policy context, and weighed up arguments both in favour and against EU legislative involvement in this area. 

Confirmed speakers:

• Claude Moraes, Labour MEP
• Professor Michelle Everson, School of Law, Birkbeck College
• Werner Buelen, Political Secretary Construction, European Federation of Building and Woodworkers
• Dr Nicola Contouris, Faculty of Laws, UCL (CHAIR)

The panel was co-organised by the UCL European Institute and the UCL Labour Rights Institute. It was their contribution to  UCL Migration Week - a series of lectures, panel discussions, conferences and exhibitions, which will explore migration from a number of academic perspectives. The week was co-organised by the UCL Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration and the UCL Grand Challenges programme. 

More details here

Wednesday 9 February 2011
Labour Administration, Labour Inspection and the ILO: Current Regulatory Perspectives
Speaker: Dr Guiseppe Casale, International Labour Organization (ILO)
PowerPoint presentation here: