European Labour Rights in an International Context (LAWS0108)

This module provides students with a critical understanding of the questions raised by the EU’s evolving social dimension

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To what extent are labour standards regulated and set at a supranational level? Should they be? What is the role of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in setting these standards? What about other international and regional organisations, such as the Council of Europe?

Should the European Union (EU) be able to prevent Member States lowering their social standards in the search to attract enterprise and investment? Do differences in labour laws across Member States prevent free movement or lead to distortions of competition? Is ‘equality’ respected in the EU as a free standing right, or merely as instrumental to market integration?

What are the terms of the relationship between these international sources of regulation, and between them and the various national legal systems? How could ‘Brexit’ affect the relationship between EU and UK labour legislation?

This module provides students with a critical understanding of the questions raised by the EU’s evolving social dimension, focusing on the regional, supranational, and international regulation of social and equality rights and their interaction with national levels of social regulation.

Students will be introduced not only to the core areas, and regulatory techniques, of ILO, CoE, and EU labour and equality law and policy, but also to a number of important ‘flanking’ policies (e.g. aspects of EU competition law and the four fundamental freedoms, immigration law) and, where relevant, to comparative perspectives on selected national legal systems.

The module will also explore the interaction between collective labour rights and internal and international trade, as well as the interinstitutional discourse developing between the EU/European Court of Justice, the Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights/Committee of Social Rights, and the ILO/Committee of Experts in the area of social and labour rights.

Module syllabus

1. Supranational sources of labour regulation. Between integration and fragmentation.
2. The ILO and its Core Instruments – An Introduction
3. The Fundamental Rights Discourse – Council of Europe Instruments and Mechanisms – the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights
4. The Evolution of EU Social and Labour Law
5. Regulating the ‘European Labour Market’ – Free movement of workers and personal service providers
6. Alternative models of regulation: The interaction between ‘employment rights’ and ‘employment policy’ – De-regulation through ‘bail-outs’
7. Regulating ‘Non-standard’ Work – European and Supranational Perspectives
8. Fair and Just Working Conditions – Working Time and Pay
9. Job Security – Rights in the Context of Economic Restructuring
10. Job Security – Rights in the Context of Transfer of Undertakings
11. Equality: Concepts
12. Equality: Direct and indirect discrimination
13. Equality: The ‘New Grounds’
14. Equality: Substantive equality and Family friendly provisions
15. Equality: Pay and pensions
16. Labour and trade: The Posting of Workers
17. An incipient collective dimension: Freedom of Association, Collective Bargaining, and the Right to Strike
18. An incipient collective dimension: Freedom of Association, Collective Bargaining, and the Right to Strike
19. EU regulation of worker involvement: Rights to information and consultation and ‘Eurocorporatism’.
20. Labour rights in time of Austerity, Brexit, and the future of European Labour Law.

Recommended materials

• Bogg et al (eds), Research Handbook on EU Labour Law (Edward Elgar 2016), or:
• Anne Davies, EU Labour Law (Edward Elgar, 2012), or:
• Catherine Barnard, EU Employment Law(OUP, 2012)

Module reading lists and other module materials will be provided via online module pages, once students have made their module selections upon enrolment.

Key information