Employment Law
Previously taught at the University of Liverpool
“Good teaching. Good resources. All material was topical and relevant to general life. Concrete and useful for my future.”
- LLB student, University of Liverpool. 2019.
“Interesting, relevant, relatable. Lectures were excellent and the module was very well structured. Enthusiastic, passionate, approachable and knowledgeable lecturer.”
— LLB student, University of Liverpool. Sem One 2016-17.
“Very well taught, allowing for our own ideas and interests to be supported and encouraged critical thinking. She is simply the best lecturer I have ever had!”
— LLB student, University of Liverpool. Sem One 2016-7.
“Lecturer is very professional, concise and easy to understand. She is helpful and calming.”
— LLB student, University of Liverpool. Sem One 2017-18.
What is work? What is labour? What does it mean to be in employment, as opposed to a worker or self-employed? How does the law determine and shape our responses to these questions? Teaching labour/employment law begins by asking questions. How we engage with our responses to these questions as well as find relevance in the answers that have been given by scholars, practitioners and people-at-work forms the basis of critical thinking in employment law. Throughout the employment law module that I teach, we return to four basic questions: What is employment law? Where does it come from? What does it concern/Who is it for? And who decides?
Employment law exists as a legal field between private law (contracts, obligations), public (social law, welfare law) and administrative (tribunal processes and industrial relations/human resources regulatory processes and bodies). But even before this, if you step outside; observe news headlines; consider how and why the lockdowns of Covid-19 caused such a profound shock across societies; work and employment issues surround us. Work, labour, how we work, what we do for work, what we aspire to do for work, how we define ‘labour’ or ‘employment’, whether you agree with it or not is the backbone of our social-political-cultural-economic reality. It is an area that most everyone has some experience with: whether through parents who were at some point involved in an employment dispute, trade unions, strike action, self-employment or running a business with employees of their own, or as students who are on zero-hour contracts, in precarious work or looking forward to full-time, standard employment. Employment law is ripe with context, complexities, and contradictory decisions that cannot be divorced from the political, economic and social climate of the day. For this reason, a contextualised, responsive, approach to teaching is particularly interesting with employment law. Like many scholars embracing a tradition of critical legal approaches, I use a contextualised, open-ended and dialogic approach with my students to open up the field of employment law as a rich, interdisciplinary field.
Dr Anastasia Tataryn is the sole co-ordinator and lecturer. All Rights Reserved.
At the end of the module students should be able to:
· demonstrate an understanding of employment law issues and debates in the UK.
· understand the historical evolution of UK employment law and its relationship with changes in labour, workfare and political, economic and social change.
· demonstrate an understanding of the background to some of today’s most contentious economic, social and legal questions about employment, shifts in labour market demands and debates on income, living wage, migration and precarious employment.
· Understand employment law statutory and common law protections and processes
Syllabus
o The history of UK labour law and emergence of ‘employment’ law
o The common law (contracts) in relation to employment contracts
o Employment Tribunals and the Courts
o Statutory Employment Laws and their scope
o Wages, Working Time, Dismissal, Redundancy Rights
o Gender, Class, Race and Discrimination
o Trade Unions and Collective Labour Law
SCHEDULE (subject to change)
Semester 1 Lecture Seminar
Week 1 The Emergence of UK Employment Law: History, Contracts & Terms
Week 2 Employment law in a changing world
Week 3 Common law and Statutory Employment Law – Tribunals in practice
Week 4 The employment contract and employment statute
Week 5 The Contractual Model, Minimum Wage and Working Time Regulations
Week 6 Employers/Employees Duties, Mutuality and Work-Wage Bargain
Week 7 READING WEEK
Week 8 Flexibility, class and gender
Week 8 Discrimination and Equality At Work: an introduction to a large field
Week 9 Unfair Dismissal and Redundancy Rights: inc fixed term; zero-hours contracts
Week 10 Illegality, Race Discrimination and Non-citizen workers
Week 11 Collective Bargaining and Trade Unions
DROP-IN Formative Feedback sessions
Week 12 DROP-IN Formative Feedback sessions
Learning and Teaching
The following points are intended to help you study and to do well in your assessments:
1. You are expected to develop a detailed knowledge of the law. It is important to understand the law in its social, political and economic context, but the coursework assessment will require you to engage with the legal rules, statute and case law.
2. Lectures give you an outline of the law and explain important cases, statutory provisions and on-going debates. Seminars feature one select article which you MUST have read, and prepared questions for, in advance of the seminar (see more details about seminar structure below).
3. You are expected to attend lectures and seminars having READ the cases, statutory provisions and, for seminars, assigned articles. A textbook gives you the framework, but you will not be able to apply the law and answer questions properly unless you have read and thought about the case law and relevant debates.
4. Seminars give you an opportunity to see how well you understand and can apply the law. They are the place to ask questions if you do not understand a particular topic and to think deeply about the issues raised in the case law, textbook materials and lectures.
5. We pay particular attention to communication and analytical skills in seminars. You will be asked to participate in each seminar and will be expected to do so fluently, clearly and comprehensibly. Use the seminars to improve both your oral communication skills and your ability to ask and answer questions. Use the assessment to improve not only your research skills but also your written communication skills and critical thinking.
6. The module needs accuracy, analytical skills and depth of knowledge. To succeed in this module, you must READ and APPLY case law, statute and academic articles.
Assessment
100% Coursework: 3,500 words
Required Texts:
David Cabrelli, Employment Law in Context (OUP, 2018 3rd edition) ISBN: 9780198748335
Richard Kidner, Blackstone's Statutes on Employment Law 2019-2020 ISBN: 978019873602 (or a solid ability to retrieve up to date statutes online)
Also relevant:
Smith, Baker and Warnock, Smith and Woods Employment Law (OUP, 2017 13th edition)
Recommended Supplementary Texts:
Lydia Hayes, Stories of Care: A Labour of Law Gender and Class at Work (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017).
Alan Bogg and Tonia Novitz (eds)., Voices at Work: Continuity and Change in the Common Law World (OUP, 2014).
Brian Langille and Guy Davidov (eds)., The Idea of Labour Law (OUP, 2012).
Alan Bogg, Cathryn Costello, ACL Davies, Jeremias Prassl (Eds)., The Autonomy of Labour Law (Hart Publishing, 2015).
Judy Fudge and Kendra Strauss (eds)., Temporary work, agencies and unfree labour: insecurity in the new world of work (Routledge, 2013).
Mark Freedland and Nicola Kountouris, The Legal Construction of Personal Work Relations (OUP, 2011).
Simon Deakin and Frank Wilkinson, The Law of the Labour Market: Industrialization, Employment and Legal Evolution (OUP, 2005).
Specialist Journals
Industrial Law Journal
Comparative Labor Law and Policy
Current Legal Problems
International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations
Work, Employment & Society